Internet Safety Solutions Blog

Kids Online – Its time for Parents to take charge

Many teens share large amounts of personally identifiable information on social networking sites such as facebook, which can put them at risk from child predators. As stated by Don Tapscott, author of Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, “Kids are very savvy about the technology, but I’m not sure they totally understand the implications of a billion people being able to see them doing whatever is posted.”

Schools are struggling to cope with this new reality. Aside from punishing students, they are sending letters home, changing policies to reflect the online world and bringing in speakers, including police and safety experts, to educate parents and teens about how to use sites safely.

Parry Aftab, head of WiredSafety – a non-profit organization dedicated to educating parents and teens about safe practices online states that “Kids are not connecting what they’re doing on the computer with real life, they do not believe they’re accountable.”

This brings an iteresting question:

Is it parents responsibility to understand what kids are doing online?

Personally, I believe that at least parents should start taking interest in their children online profile. As we do not leave our kids in front of the TV all alone, why should we leave our kids in front of the computer? Its time for parents who don’t understand the technology start learning it, for the safety of their own kids.

Following are some stats on growing danger of online predators:

At any time, there are 50,000 sexual predators online.
Around 1 in 4 had an unwanted exposure to some kind of image of naked people or people having sex in the last year.
Around 1 in 5 kids had received a sexual solicitation.
One in 33 kids had been asked by someone to meet them somewhere, or called them, or sent them regular mail, money or gifts.
22% of targets for online predators were between the ages of 10 and 13.

Please visit http://internet-safety-solutions.com/InternetChildSafety.html to learn how to protect kids online.

Helicopter Parents

Don Tapscott coined the word “helicopter parents” — parents who are involved closely with all aspects of their grownup children’s lives. TheOnion.com, one of the world’s funniest web sites, has a great takeoff on a digitally savvy mom showing how she uses Facebook and Twitter to keep a close eye on her son at university. Watch the video here.

Wikipedia now tells us there are specialized kinds of helicopter parents:

Helicopter parent is a colloquial, early 21st-century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child’s or children’s experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. These parents rush to prevent any harm or failure from befalling them and will not let them learn from their own mistakes, sometimes even contrary to the children’s wishes. They are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not. In Scandinavia, this phenomenon is known as curling parenthood and describes parents who attempt to sweep all obstacles out of the paths of their children.

An extension of the term, “Black Hawk parents,” has been coined for those who cross the line from a mere excess of zeal to unethical behavior, such as writing their children’s college admission essays. (The reference is to the military helicopter of the same name.) Some college professors and administrators … are now referring to “Lawnmower parents” to describe mothers and fathers who attempt to smooth out and mow down all obstacles, to the extent that they may even attempt to interfere at their children’s workplaces, regarding salaries and promotions, after they have graduated from college and are supposedly living on their own.

On how to keep your children out of internet threats visit http://internet-safety-solutions.com/InternetChildSafety.html

Helicopter Parents

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