The thought of our children being contacted by internet child predators can be our worst nightmare as a parent. Typically these predators will pretend to be another child who wants to be your child’s online friend. They will eventually convince your kid to meet them somewhere. It often starts in a chat room or social networking site where pedophiles know young children like to connect with each other. This has become such a threat that law enforcement agencies have created special task forces to combat this problem. It’s a wonderful thing that our children can have a world of knowledge, literally at their fingertips when they are online but they need to be protected from the many possible dangers that exist and the best defense starts at home.
Computers and the internet are as common in most households as radios and televisions have been to previous generations. The idea of making and having friends online is not such an odd concept to a child either. It might even seem to them that everybody does it, both children and adults and for the most part they’re right. The existence of the many social networking sites relies on people wanting to do this. Internet child predators count on this too. They also count on children not being properly educated in the dangers of meeting people online and parents not being able to supervise them when they’re surfing the web. The good news is that there are things we, as parents, can do to counter this and make sure our kids are kept out of internet danger.
The first and most important thing we can do is to make sure that our children are aware of the dangers and how to avoid internet child predators as well as the other scammers. Certain rules for going online must be agreed upon. A “contract” for internet safety can be helpful in reinforcing and reminding kids about the agreed upon rules. You can have it written out, signed and posted, in plain sight, near the computer. It should include rules such as never telling anyone that they don’t personally know any personal, family or school information, to never meet in person with anyone that they met online, to only use parent approved chat rooms and to always tell their parents when something doesn’t seem right or someone wants to know personal information.
Parents, as well as children need to be educated in preventing internet child predators. After all, we need to know in order to teach. A good place for parents to start learning is with the internet safety resources at the National Crime Prevention Council, or NCPC. You might know their catch phrase “Take a bite out of crime” and their mascot McGruff the Crime Dog. You can find valuable information on the NCPC website and even download printable brochures for parents, safety posters for children and an internet safety contract for the kids to sign.
Although we teach our children as well as we can, they may not always be able to know when something is wrong; internet child predators can be very crafty. Sometimes children can feel adventurous and may disregard what we’ve taught, feeling it’s no big deal. It’s almost impossible for a parent to supervise their kids all of the time that they are using their computers and we really do need to know what they’re doing online in order to keep them safe. There is computer tracking software available that can be used to keep track of everything your kids do while they are on the computer. It also lets you block any websites that you don’t want them to visit. The computer age has opened the door for these internet child predators and we parents need to do everything we can to shut them out. Let’s all take a bite out of these crimes.
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