Cyberspace – the new teenage threat

To many parents, navigating their children's teenage years is difficult enough within the context of reality.
Online safety tips
1. Establish rules for Internet use such as time limits and acceptable sites to visit.
2. Keep the computer in a common-use room.
3. Discuss the importance of telling a parent or trusted adult if something makes your child or teen feel scared, uncomfortable or confused while online.
4. Communicate.
5. Be informed about the Internet, where your children are visiting, online language and access options such as instant messaging.
6. Consider safeguarding options such as blocking, filtering and rating applications and remember that education is a key part of prevention.
For more information, visit www.netsmartz.org or www.ICACtraining.org.

To many parents, navigating their children’s teenage years is difficult enough within the context of reality.

The cyber world of the Internet adds a whole new dimension.

“It is something that affects all families all over the world because the Internet is a global tool,” said Deric Villanueva, the president of Mount Si High School’s Wildcat Inspiration Network who has a sixth-grade student and a high-school senior.

“People are aware of [the Internet dangers] because they hear about it in society, but a lot of people are unaware of [how it comes] to pass,” he added.

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On invitation from Villanueva, Malinda Wilson, a detective with the Seattle Police Department, spoke to parents at Mount Si High School about Internet safety for children and teens on Feb. 27. About 50 parents were in attendance for the free event.

Wilson will return March 15 to speak to the Mount Si ninth-grade class.

Lisa King, a Snoqualmie resident and parent of a 15-year-old who attended the lecture, said she was surprised to learn how quickly a predator could latch on to children over the Internet to reveal personal information or endanger them.

King, who described herself as less than techno-savy, said she had already developed rules for her child about Internet use, but she learned a lot more tips from the meeting, including how to track her child’s usage by accessing the “history” tab on her Internet tool bar.

Parents reserve the right to do what they need to do to keep their children safe, Villanueva said.

Designed to introduce the concept of Internet safety and awareness, Wilson, who is also a part of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force (ICAC), said that she speaks to both parents and students, presenting targeted presentations depending on the audience.

“I’m not here to tell you to stay off the Internet,” Wilson said about her message. “My hope is that if you are in a chat room, that you keep an open mind.”

With MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Friendster.com and numerous other Web sites designed to chat, play games and communicate over the Internet growing in popularity with youth, there is a real risk of falling victim to an online predator, explained Wilson.

“Something on the Internet might seem safe, you may think you are, but in reality you’re not,” Villanueva said. “It’s a great tool, obviously, but then there’s the dark side of the thing. That is [why] parents and kids should be aware of it and how to protect themselves from it.”

There are 61 percent of parents who say they have rules about Internet use, and only 37 percent of teens who report being subjected to them, according to ICAC.

Parents need to be aware of the potential issues and dangers, Wilson said.

“I arm [parents and students] with information that they hadn’t even thought of,” Wilson said.

The recent lecture addressed why kids make such good victims, explored a predator’s profile and looked at why using the Internet is so appealing to predators, as well as divulged parenting tips on how to monitor activities, develop passwords for parental control and acquire guides to software.

“All of this freedom is still relatively new in the big scheme of teenager life,” Wilson said. “Parents are being naive. They may set the rules, but they are not always enforcing them.”

Wilson noted that the anonymity of the Internet may be a part of why children don’t show the same concern over potentially dangerous communication as they might in a face-to-face encounter.

“I know that a lot of people at school have MySpace accounts and they tend to think that it’s only for them and their friends,” said Leah Pfeifle, a senior at Mount Si who wrote about the site’s popularity in a Jan. 27 column of her high-school newspaper Cat Tales.

Pfeifle, who has a MySpace account, also pointed out that since MySpace profiles are public unless otherwise secured, employers, parents and other authority figures could also access the pages.

“It’s open for everyone to view,” she said.

Of the 1,200 or so students at Mount Si, more than 500 between ages 16 and 18 have MySpace accounts as of last week.

Teachers at Mount Si have put “no MySpace” on assignments, removed Internet access from class computers and read articles about the Internet dangers, Pfeifle noted. The MySpace phenomenon has more than 59,000,000 unique users worldwide.

The free service is considered to be the current online social networking leader. Last July, News Corp. bought MySpace.com for $580 million.

Wilson advises that children should not put real birth dates or school listings on public profiles and that they take advantage of security settings.

She also highlighted the need for parents to continue to communicate with their children, even after they think they have laid down the law.

It is so easy to think ‘it never happens to me,’ Wilson said.

“I’m sure that somebody else thought that, too,” she said.

Out of 1,700 nationwide cases of adolescent sexual assault victims as a result of contact initiated over the Internet, Wilson said that about 25 percent were age 13. The numbers decrease slightly at 14 and then spike again at 15.

About 66 percent of victims are girls and about 34 percent are boys.

“That victim pool would have never existed if it hadn’t been for the Internet,” Wilson said.

Sexual assault victims typically have at least a base familiarity with their victimizer, Wilson noted.

“What they are now finding is that there’s a whole new pool of sexual assault victims and they are Internet related,” she said, noting that 99 percent of offenders or those in the suspect pool are males and 86 percent of those are older than 25.

“The total process involves parent and child working together,” Wilson said. “We can only hope that we arm children with knowledge because awareness is power. And remember to not take everything at face value.”