The protection of our children is a powerful instinct in the hearts of parents. Beginning with the ride home from the hospital with them in our arms and lasting throughout our lives, we do everything within our power to protect our precious children from dangers at every stage of life. Sadly, the dangers children face today are much more sophisticated than those that existed when we were children. Access to computers and advances in technology expose our children to unimaginable threats today.
The Internet is a wonderful educational tool for children as it opens up a rich world of information and resources. Unfortunately, it can also be a high-tech haven for sick predators scheming to molest our children.
Law enforcement is working hard to thwart this growing threat by finding and prosecuting the predators. New laws have been passed to make it easier to arrest those vile individuals. And while this effort is needed, it has done little to control the problem. We need to arrest the bad guys for sure, but we must also work to properly educate everyone else on how to protect children by reducing online dangers.
We pretty much understand how Internet predators stalk children. It should be our job as a society to arm families with effective tools to protect children from falling prey to those predators. Simply waiting on government to solve the problem is not a good option. Our focus needs to quickly shift towards reducing the number of potential victims -- our precious children.
One of the best things parents can do in this regard is to supervise their children online. Ask them about their favorite websites and openly discuss with them the dangers they face in cyberspace. Keep their computer screens visible in a common room in your home to reduce the likelihood of predators contacting your child without being detected. Learn about parental controls that are available through Internet Service Providers to foil a predator’s attempts to contact your children.
Warn your children never to arrange secret face-to-face meetings with people they meet online. Explain why it could be dangerous to post their pictures and other identifying information on Internet sites like MySpace.com and Yahoo! Groups. Instruct your children never to give their name, home address, school name, or telephone number to Internet strangers who might be merely posing as a new friend. And finally, make certain your children know never to respond to messages that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, or harassing. Insist that they tell you if they run into that behavior from anyone on the Internet.
These are a few things we all can do to help protect our children from online dangers. Educating our precious children and ourselves is one of the most effective ways to fight this menacing problem. Our children deserve our best effort. Let’s work together to shrink the threat of online predators by defending our children from them. Then let’s find the predators, lock them up, and throw away the key. A free society should allow no room for these monsters.
The Internet is a wonderful educational tool for children as it opens up a rich world of information and resources. Unfortunately, it can also be a high-tech haven for sick predators scheming to molest our children.
Law enforcement is working hard to thwart this growing threat by finding and prosecuting the predators. New laws have been passed to make it easier to arrest those vile individuals. And while this effort is needed, it has done little to control the problem. We need to arrest the bad guys for sure, but we must also work to properly educate everyone else on how to protect children by reducing online dangers.
We pretty much understand how Internet predators stalk children. It should be our job as a society to arm families with effective tools to protect children from falling prey to those predators. Simply waiting on government to solve the problem is not a good option. Our focus needs to quickly shift towards reducing the number of potential victims -- our precious children.
One of the best things parents can do in this regard is to supervise their children online. Ask them about their favorite websites and openly discuss with them the dangers they face in cyberspace. Keep their computer screens visible in a common room in your home to reduce the likelihood of predators contacting your child without being detected. Learn about parental controls that are available through Internet Service Providers to foil a predator’s attempts to contact your children.
Warn your children never to arrange secret face-to-face meetings with people they meet online. Explain why it could be dangerous to post their pictures and other identifying information on Internet sites like MySpace.com and Yahoo! Groups. Instruct your children never to give their name, home address, school name, or telephone number to Internet strangers who might be merely posing as a new friend. And finally, make certain your children know never to respond to messages that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, or harassing. Insist that they tell you if they run into that behavior from anyone on the Internet.
These are a few things we all can do to help protect our children from online dangers. Educating our precious children and ourselves is one of the most effective ways to fight this menacing problem. Our children deserve our best effort. Let’s work together to shrink the threat of online predators by defending our children from them. Then let’s find the predators, lock them up, and throw away the key. A free society should allow no room for these monsters.
