Internet Tips

Kids Safety On The Internet

I cannot blame technology, the Internet included, for your kid’s safety (or unsafety) on the Internet. I have spent more than twenty-five years in the technical field, and it would be ironic and shameful if I were promoting something that was putting my kid in danger. However, something is to blame, and I tend to return to the same question: “Are your kids in more danger today compared to when you were their age?”

Internet Safety for Kids: Teaching Kids About Internet Safety

I truly believe they are in more danger now than we were kids. Let’s look at three different scenarios to give some context to my opinions: bullying, sexual predators, and violent content.

Stop The Cyber Bully?

Think about when you were roughly the same age as your child. What were you doing in the schoolyard? If you were unlucky, you may have been bullied by other kids at the school. Maybe you even witnessed a bullying incident. Bullying in your childhood typically remained in the schoolyard. When it was time to go home, the mental effects of bullying possibly trailed home with you, and when you returned to school the next day, the bullying may have picked up from where it left off – verbal and possibly physical abuse. The key is that you did not drag the bullying home. It stayed at school. Today, a kid usually does not have the luxury of leaving the bullying on the school grounds. The bullying can follow them wherever they go, called cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying is Internet-based, and you did not have the Internet as a kid. The closest resemblance to the Internet was probably a telephone or a ham radio — and I’m stretching my imagination. If someone wanted to spread the bullying word about you, the best they could probably do is tell their school friends or maybe spread the bully word by telephone — a very slow and laborious way of spreading the bully word.

Today, however, the word bullying spreads exceptionally fast, and it’s difficult to stop cyberbullying. I have witnessed live bullying episodes on the Internet, namely Twitter and Facebook. Not only does the bullying word spread fast, but those who instigate it can do so anonymously. During your kid days, bullying was usually face-to-face, so you knew exactly who was behind the events. Today, the probability of the bully remaining anonymous is fairly high. They hide behind fake profiles and user IDs, then launch “operation clandestine bully spread”.

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Predators On The Internet?

Then there is the predator world. As a kid, did you ever have a fear of being stalked by a predator? Did you ever think they (the stalker) would take you away and do mean? Did your parents feel behind every dark corner lurked a predator? I know I never feared such a thing, nor did my parents. Suppose my parents had concerns; it did not overwhelm or rule their lives. Once in a while, they may have reminded me “Not to talk to strangers”. I felt extremely safe — I walked to school & my friends by myself and played outside after sunset. Even though there may have been real dangers, I never felt threatened. I felt safe!

As a parent, I am extremely conscious of Internet Predator. I have already educated my kid about chat rooms and how not to communicate with strangers. I’m not an old-fashioned parent, but my instincts tell me to keep myself alert and watch for any tell-tale signs that my kid is in predator danger.

Predators on the Internet are a real concern among many parents. I am constantly witnessing parents telling their kids not to friend anyone on Facebook that they do not know. The hip parents say to their kids “NOT TO LMIRL” to anyone they have not met in real life (aka. Don’t talk to strangers). In the Twitter world. Many Twitter Teens already have a huge number of followers, and I would venture to guess that they do not even know who most of them are. I’ve seen kids with thousands of followers, and even if they had a fraction of their followers, there is no practical way that they know every one of them. So basically, if your kids are on Twitter, they are probably talking to strangers – I’m sure many more strangers than you spoke to as a kid.

The Meaning Of Violence?

When you start comparing the violence that you, as a kid, were exposed to compared to today’s kids, there is a dramatic difference. When I was the same age as my son is now, the extent of the violent content I was exposed to was negligible compared to that of today’s kids.

I was born in South Africa, and as a form of entertainment, my parents rented 16mm reel-to-reel movies on the weekend. The 16mm reel-to-reel movies were South Africa’s equivalent of North America’s once-popular Beta or VHS. The 1967 Bonnie & Clyde was the most violent movie that my parents ever rented, and we (the kids) were sent to our bedrooms to play while they (our parents) watched the movie. Every once in a while, we used to sneak a peek and get our dose of blood & gore. Bonnie & Clyde, by the way, is rated R by the MPAA and Age 14 by Common Sense Media.

Fast forward to 2011 — I can list at least a dozen Internet or console-based games that are extremely violent, and I know of kids under ten years old who play these games. I won’t go into details about the games, but they are rated “Not for Kids” and “5 circle violence” by Common Sense Media. Today’s violent content does not fit into the Bonnie & Clyde genre – what was rated R in 1967 seems to be rated OK for today’s teens. It is relative, though; in 1967, as a kid, I was trying to watch content that was “not for kids,” in 2011, kids are still immersed in content that is “not for kids”, albeit the content is more graphically violent — eg. “Call of Duty”.

About The Internet For Kids

So when you compare kids to now and when you were a kid, it should be clear that today’s kids are more susceptible to dangers than yesterday’s kids. Your initial clue, after taking into account bullying, sexual predators, and violent content, is to blame the Internet. Isn’t the Internet the big difference between now and then? It may seem so, but I do not believe the Internet and technology are to blame.

The Internet is just an efficient mechanism to get messages, information, and content from one place to another, and it has not changed the underlying cause or motivation of human behavior. Many documented stories show bullying, violence, and other related incidences and are part of our history. Internet or no Internet, there will still be bullying, sexual predators, and violent content. The Internet has made access to content, messages, and information much easier and more pervasive than ever.

I believe that we can not eliminate bullying, sexual predation, and violent content because to do so, we will need to dig deep and start altering almost everything about society — not a realistic endeavor. We need to live with the consequences of our progression and keep on managing and taming the elements that have put our kids in potential danger. Even though I do not blame technology and the Internet as the source of our kid’s safety (or unsafety), I fully recognize that the Internet has given bullying, predators, and violent content an easy and inexpensive way to access and abuse the unassuming kid.

The bullying message can be carried more quickly, efficiently, and anonymously than a face-to-face conversation; Predators can hide behind smoke screens and pretend to be younger than they say; Content, violent or tame, can be distributed through the Internet more easily than renting a game or a video. The Internet is not going away and is evolving quickly.

About author

I work for WideInfo and I love writing on my blog every day with huge new information to help my readers. Fashion is my hobby and eating food is my life. Social Media is my blood to connect my family and friends.
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