Schools

Internet Safety Begins With Parental Oversight

Adults can feel out of their element online, but a child's safety requires constant supervision.

Maria Dennis’ daughter is just turning 10, but she is well educated about Internet safety and what is and what is not appropriate behavior online.

Dennis has conversations with her daughter Pilar about how she spends time on the Internet. Just as a child needs to know about “stranger-danger” while walking home from school, they need to be aware of the dangers lurking online.

“You can’t always be in control,” Dennis said. “They are going to go to a library. They are going to go to a friend’s house. There will be occasions where you can’t be there and know what they are doing.”

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Educating children about online awareness and showing them how people use the data and how predators can use the information is important, Dennis said.

A detective with the agrees. To try and shield children from what happens online is to potentially leave a child unprepared and more likely to be victimized.

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Dennis’ daughter is Internet savvy, but she knows that if she happens onto a site where she shouldn’t be, she should click away from the page. Dennis also has rules and if her daughter doesn’t abide those rules, there are consequences.

“Certainly, you have to give them a lot of freedom, but you still need to parent them,” Dennis said. “They are the child and you are the parent. It’s not like talking with a girlfriend. It’s not ‘this is what you might want to do.’ It is ‘this is what you do.’”

Dennis said she has several layers in place including setting parental controls on the computer. Yet even with the controls in place, benign searches can lead to inappropriate Web sites.

“Beyond parental controls it is about teaching common sense—so if you click on a page and you know you shouldn’t be on it, then click out,” she said. “Whether they are using online media, a mobile phone, chatting with a friend or looking a magazine, it’s about making sure they are using common sense.”

Her daughter knows that when she spends time online she isn’t to ever provide identifiable information. On one of her social media sites she can say, I like blueberries, but not, I’m wearing a blue dress today and going to a friends house.

Teaching by example, is important she said. If her daughter wishes to use a new social networking site, she sits down with her and they discuss what are good passwords and reminds her that she should never give it out.

 The pair also discusses what can and can’t be said online and again reminds her daughter that she should never divulge information that could lead a user back to her.

Detective Richard Wistocki, of the Computer Crimes Unit, said that Dennis is doing the right thing making her daughter aware of her online oversight and starting the conversation with her at a young age.

When parents begin to monitor their children at an early age, then it’s just expected, he said. Trying to monitor a child when they are 15, 16 or 17 is difficult.

“The biggest mistake they [parents] make is that they trust their kids and think their kid isn’t going to do anything wrong,” he said. “Kids make mistakes."

Wistocki said that after every program he puts on a parent always contacts him. The parent goes home and checks a child’s cell phone or Internet activity only to find that their child has been victimized.

In a recent situation, a father found that his 14-year-old daughter had been sending naked photos and videos to men she thought were her boyfriends, Wistocki said.

“The problem is currently parents can say they have talks with the kids about his and that,” he said. “But they have to be able to monitor Internet use and cell phone use. They have to go through the text messages. They can’t just look at the bill.”

Parents make the mistake of caring for their kids in the physical world, but then technology intimidates them.

“It’s like saying, take the keys to the car, bring the car back and I will fill it up. Just don’t tell me where you’ve been,” Wistocki said.

Mark Kreiter is the director of instructional technology for . He also has a 10th-grader at home using the Internet. Even for Kreiter, staying up to date on all of the technology can be a challenge.

Although the district has focused on providing educational tools to students about proper Internet use, and crafting a curriculum for students depending on grade level, Kreiter is also working to help parents develop a better grasp on the technologies.

He said that more and more he is becoming involved with what happens when students get home.

“Our job is to bridge the gap for parents and bring them up to speed,” he said.

At home Kreiter said his son is on Facebook, and there are so many sites related to Facebook and that branch out, it’s a challenge to keep up with where his child may be going.

Kreiter said it requires parents to build a level of trust so that they know what their child is doing.

“Sometimes it is hard for parents to say, ‘that is not appropriate and I don’t want you using that,’” Kreiter said.

During the last Internet safety program that Kreiter offered to parents of elementary students, many parents were unaware of the places children visit online without their knowledge, he said. Parents also were concerned about the information children give out.

“It scared some of the parents,” he said. “They wanted to lock down the computer right away. They wanted Best Buy [which was in attendance] to do that. There are alarming ways that kids can get behind that.

"It is so new to parents that they don’t even know where to start. Sometimes they think they should restrict their child on the computer. But, technology is moving so quickly, you can’t just lock it down.”

Wistocki agrees.

“Keeping the kids in a bubble isn’t going to help,” he said. “The biggest problem is ‘my kid would never.’ That is the parent’s biggest problem. The biggest problem with my cases is that they never thought their child could or would.”

But parents find out the hard way after something bad has happened, that they should have been doing more monitoring, using available technologies to monitor use and having the difficult conversations, Wistocki said.

Putting filters in place is helpful, Kreiter said. But children have so many options for communicating, “right now we need to prepare those kids for using those things in an appropriate manner.”

Kreiter said he has seen his son’s Facebook page and has viewed some of the things other kids are posting, “and that is when we sit down and talk.”

For someone not adept to these new technologies, it can be overwhelming for them to know where to go and what to do, Kreiter said.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Kreiter said “This is not going away so we need to work with parents and students on the appropriate uses of it.”

Computer and cell phone monitoring tools:

SpectorSoft.com

Mymobilewatchdog.com

Detective Richard Wistocki also has a consulting firm that addresses Internet safety issues and teen drug use. To learn more about monitoring Internet and cell phone use, visit his site at Besureconsulting.com.

Indian Prairie School District 204 will host two programs for parents in the district at 7 p.m. on April 20 at Granger Middle School  and at 7 p.m. on April 27 at .

 


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