Safer Internet For Kids

I’m a part of a very tight knit group of moms and I trust many of these women, a few of them have even become close friends and business partners who handle my money and my business every day and every month. Recently, a few of us got together since they lived close to each other. This kinda started a thread in our private forums where everyone is so we could maybe get together.

It’s totally innocent and quite harmless. One suggested we create a map so it’s easier for us to visualize and create these local chapters so to speak. So, I thought I’d be the one to do so. Well… while I was creating that map, it kinda hit me square in the face. What if my kids were creating maps that are perfectly harmless like this one? Do I really want people to know where we live exactly? Especially in a small town where we live… even the ZIP is a little too close for comfort.

With that in mind, I set out to examine the features of this mapping site, Frappr. There doesn’t seem to be any settings to make the map private or by invite only. You can take the map off the directory but still, if you post the link to the map in a public site it’s pretty much wide open.

Guess mapping is another one of those things we need to add to that already long list of ‘rules’.

If you have teens, even young adults, this is something you might want to suggest and talk to them about doing. More and more employers are scouring places like Facebook, picture hosting sites and other social networking sites to check up on candidates. It’s not right, but it happens. A picture of a bright and promising kid drunk at a party does not fare well when he or she’s applying for a job. It’s not only pictures. Employers also look at blogs and how candidates behave themselves on their own
blogs. Kids coming out of high school and entering college are not spared either.

Apart from this, my concern mostly is about untruths. Because of the Internet, rumors that once were confined to a local area is now spread around the world. Heck, I remember even those lies and rumors in school itself were hard to take let alone have them online. So how do you find out if there’s any malicious stuff about your child online? Or maybe they unknowingly let slip their private information once and now that information is out there flitting around just waiting to be caught. You could do searches
but here’s something, someone to do it for you.

I found ReputationDefender.com today. For a monthly subscription they will actively search for information about you or your children online. When they find something they’ll report it to you and if you wish, they’ll remove it for a fee of $30 a pop. Kinda steep but may be worth it. I just wonder though, how do they know if the person requesting this service is really me? I mean it could just as easily be someone who wants to track my info
right? Any thoughts?

Due to my involvement in SaferInternetForKids.com and my own kid’s interest too, I troll a lot of sites about security and your child. Many of them are found on sites where many ‘geeks’ gather… I am rather ‘geeky’ after all. Extreme hot points are whether to install logging software or not or if a parent should ‘spy’ on their kids or not. But what I find kinda sad is how parents and non parents bicker.

Now I’m a reasonable person. I don’t like to tell people “You don’t understand” and like to see all points of view. But when it comes to parenting, sad to say it’s one thing I absolutely stand by. If you don’t have kids, your opinion on how to parent a child in cyber space does not count. You see, when I was single and carefree, I had a lot of opinions about parenting. Many of them to the tune of “That happened to me when I was young, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen to my kids” and I’m not talking about serious
stuff here just everyday parent/kid stuff.

When my friends started having kids leaving me one of the few who were childless, I resented it deeply when they told me “You don’t have kids, you don’t understand”. The day after I gave birth to my firstborn I realized how wrong I was and how right my friends were. I understood but I didn’t empathize. There’s a difference because where empathy is concerned, you have a stake in the issue. A person without kids no matter how hard they try will never empathize because they do not have a stake in
the future of the child. That is the pivotal point. Much like people think it’s easy to be the boss until they actually become one.

So, I’ve decided to not let these non-parent opinions bother me too much. If you’ve been bothered by them too, join me. What matters most is what works for each of our families.

I knew this would happen before long. Whenever the media highlights a particular website and plasters warnings all over, creating a frenzy among parents, soon the kids leave. Parents who are just finding out about MySpace continue thinking it’s the space online to watch but their kids have already moved on to yet another ‘secret’ online community. The point?

First, we need to be reactive in our child’s lives not pro-active. There are thousands of MySpace type websites out there. It’s not MySpace that’s the problem. This is a classic case where communication with our kids is the best recourse.

Secondly, we no longer have the luxury of saying “I don’t understand computers” anymore. It is in our children’s best interest we more or less keep up with what’s in. Now I’m not saying to be on top of every new thing online but a general awareness of what’s going on and how to do a little bit of research goes a long way.

After reading about a young man who had to battle with identity theft from the young age of 17 (he’s 22 now), I had a duh! moment. We’re often so concerned and worried about identity theft for adults in the family but never occured to me the same precautions should be taken for our children’s identity too.

Unfortunately, child identity theft is real (see, not everything is my paranoid behavior taking over). Children have lost their identities usually to a so called parent or guardian. Most happen offline, but the way our kids are growing up so ‘wired’ guess this is another thing on the long list of things to educate them about. Any suggestions what nuggets of wisdom you’d pass on to your kids?

My first inclination was to sit with them and create a fun make belief identity both parent and child agree is the only one they are allowed to use online but I dunno. Somehow it seems a bit ‘deceitful’ like I’m teaching them how to lie. Still brainstorming for a creative solution.