Safety net
If you’re a parent of a teenager who spends a lot of time on the Internet, get ready for some disturbing statistics.
Kentucky State Police trooper Mark Gillingham recently alerted parents to online dangers.
In his presentation, he told them: One in five teens has been sexually solicited while online, and 89 percent of children who have been solicited say it occurred while in a chat room.
The pornography industry made $2.5 billion in Internet sales in 2003, and about 20,000 new images of child pornography are added each week, Gillingham told the parents.
The Internet brought school research, banking and shopping into the home. But it also poses its share of dangers — from information-stealing programs, including some viruses and spyware, to exposure to pornography and predators in chat rooms.
“It can be a real resource,” parent Park Muhlheizler said. “It can also be your worst enemy.”
That’s why Muhlheizler won’t allow his teenage daughters to use chat rooms.
“Nobody tries to contact them, because they’re just not there,” he said.
Instead, his 14-year-old daughter, Erin, chats with friends using instant messaging, which allows users to restrict text conversations to people on “buddy lists” they create.
Erin said she also keeps an online journal she can customize with photos and music, but it, too, is restricted to her buddy list.
Erin said she has never been solicited online.
But to demonstrate how common sexual solicitation is on the Internet, Gillingham showed parents a screen from an online conversation he had while posing as a 13-year-old boy in a chat room for teens.
“I wasn’t in this chat room 30 seconds,” Gillingham said, before someone claiming to be a 35-year-old man asked him his age, sex and location. When Gillingham gave him the information, several people responded with explicit sexual comments.
Parent Melanie Vest said she was shocked to learn from Gillingham’s presentation how much pornography is available.
“In a way, I kind of feel helpless,” Vest said. “There’s no way they (police) can catch all these predators.”
Vest said she learned a lot about such dangers when her now-21-year-old son lived at home. She wants to keep up with emerging dangers after recently adopting a 3-year-old girl, because elementary school students use computers now, she said.
Even if students don’t have the Internet at home, they can access it at friends’ houses, libraries and Internet cafes, for example.
Also, many cellular telephones and personal digital assistants can access the Net.
The Kentucky Center for School Safety offers training for teachers, using the i-SAFE program, said Jon Akers, the center’s executive director. The program is designed by i-SAFE America Inc., a nonprofit California company, and provides age-appropriate curriculum on topics including personal safety, cyber bullying and online predators.
Schools also try to filter questionable Web sites, and some require students to sign contracts, promising not to use their school access to transmit or view inappropriate content.