The Dangers of the INTERNET!

In our day and age technology is becoming more and more personal and available to you and your children. In ways this can be very cool and exciting but it can also be very dangerous when it comes to tweens and teens. 1-3 teens have experienced online harassment. Many of these could be from an online predator trying to get kids to talk about things that are too personal for the internet. There are many way to both protect yourself and others from online predators. Sure you can try the most restricted method of installing website blocking software, but this can be a big hassle when it comes to doing something useful on the computer like homework or a research paper and you need to access several sites that are all blocked.

 According to www.netsmartz.com and their statistics about 1 in 25 youths have received online sexual solicitation where a solicitor tried to make offline contact. If this teen were to ever accept they could be possibly raped, molested or even killed. On the website www.kids.getnetwise.org they talk about how to protect your child from having something bad happening, either physically or mentally/emotionally, over the internet. A few are “don’t let your child chat in unmoderated chat rooms” and “Don’t let your child give out personal info such as email, phone numbers or addresses.” Many online predators pretend to be sympathetic and “listen” to your child’s problems to get close to them and acquire their trust. Some of these problems could be between parents and the child and the predator will give their all to try and drive a wedge further between them.

Have you ever watched the show on NBC called “To Catch A Predator?” well if you haven’t here’s a run down on what happens in each episode: A fake 12-14 year old boy/girl will get in a chat room and agree to meet with a random person to have sex with them. The person that they lure in is usually ugly, lonely, and aged from their late 20’s to late 50’s. When the predator comes to the fake teen’s house they are met by Chris Hansen. He interrogates them thoroughly to get some background info on why they were there and if they had ever seen the show. Funnily enough some of them have but were too stupid to think that that would happen to them. After Hansen has tortured them he lets them leave only for them to be ambushed by the police. At the end of the show they have caught 2-3 men predators that all had come to have sex with a random teen girl/boy they met online.

The best advice you can get about online safety is “just don’t do it.” [Deborah Olivarez] And this is true because if you just don’t do it and you’re personal info’s not out there then you don’t have to worry. UNT campus officer, Deborah Olivarez, has personally known a woman who went through a hard time dealing with the effects of an online predator. According to her the girl found a person on facebook that pretended to be an acquaintance of hers. She quickly became attracted to him because he showered her in attention and kind words about how beautiful she was. But because she trusted him so much, he asked her to post naked photos of herself. The photos ended up on all of her friend’s facebook walls. The detective working on the case eventually found the guy and he was punished. This all happened because she trusted this guy she didn’t even know that she met online. In Christopher O’Kennon’s book Predators and Princesses: the internet safety guide for parents he says “Everyone is vulnerable to someone who pays attention to them” [O’Kennon Location 61 of 183] Also in his book he did an experiment where he created a myspace account with the information and profile of a 16 year old girl. He then friend requested teenagers in his area and none of them rejected his request. [O’Kennon Location 53 of 183] He said that just by reading their profiles and stuff like that he could learn a lot like where they went to school and even where they lived.

Personally I have gone through a time where I actually did some of these things and trust me I’m not proud of it and I am actually relieved that my parents caught me before I could get myself into any actual danger. I have learned a lot just from writing this paper and I hope others will benefit from it as well.

Resources:

O'Kennon, Christopher. Predators and Princesses: The Internet Safety Guide for Parents. Print.

“Internet Safety Statistics.” Parents and guardians. Web. 09 Nov. 2011 http://www.netsmartz.org/safety/statistics.

Chat, Technology:. “GetNetWise| Risks by Technology: Chat.” Getnetwise| your one click away. Web. 09 Nov. 2011. http://kids.getnetwise.org/safetyguide/techology/chat.

Hansen, Chris. “Potential Predators Got south in Kentucky-date line NBC- to catch a predator –msnbc.com “Msnbc.com-breaking news, science, and tech news, world news, us news, local news-msnbc.com. Dateline Nbc.Web.09 Nov. 2011 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22423433/ns/dateline_NBC-to-catch-a-predator/.