Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other social media sites can be a dangerous environment for children. “In my opinion the parents hold ultimate responsibility for protecting their children from Internet threats.” That’s how I phrased it in a 2006 blog post in response to one of several law suites related to child safety online. A Texas judge’s ruling in one of these cases in 2007 agreed with my opinion.
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ruled Wednesday that MySpace, like other online forums, should not be held responsible for what happened. “If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace,” he wrote.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/15/BUGEKO4VU01.DTL#ixzz1P7xeMMsu
Many parents including the ones on the other end of this law suite don’t agree with the ruling. Many parents would like to hand over responsibility to others in dealing with the hard issues they face. There are plenty of arguments about how kids sneak around and some say it can’t be prevented. That is a very weak excuse for parents to do nothing and the law is not on your side if you are one of these parents.
I have been focusing my attention on this issue of child safety online for more than five years. I am a computer security expert with 15 years of experience in dealing with Internet, computer, and network security. I have seen or heard of just about everything. And there are answers to the problems.
There are some great tools and web sites out there to help parents protect their children, but there are just as many if not more sites that teach kids how to circumvent the parent’s best efforts. I will help you detect if your child is trying to get around your Internet monitoring and security solutions. That will lead you to the more basic parenting issues of dealing with your child’s character and trust relationships.
The computers and cells phone are just tools. It is important to remember that kids are using these tools to create and grow relationships in the same way many of us did in malls, movie theaters, skating rinks, on the cruising strip, or even in churches. Regardless of where a child meets a stranger, that child needs to have the built in ability to make good decisions when making new friends. There are no classes in your local public school to teach kids character and how to build healthy relationships. Academics are the focus and that leaves no time for character training. There are some great resources to help parents learn how to get to the heart of their child so that the child will respect the parents advice and teachings in these areas. You will find some of these great resources in the Parenting section of my Book Recommendations page on HOEI.com.
Stay tuned to this blog for my upcoming articles aimed at Internet Safety. I will be educating you parents on the ways your tech savvy teens may be bypassing your best attempts to secure your computers and Internet connection. Then I will help you determine what to do next and how to do it.
About Hank Osborne
