Internet safety has been a tremendous problem for our youth for the past decade– but things have progressively become worst, with more exposure to the web through cell phones, ipods, video game controllers, laptops, etc.  Younger and younger children are toting cell phones with internet accessibility and more children are being exposed to independent  computer usage (computers in their bedrooms, for example).

In our home, we limit computer usage for our 7 year old to education based software and sites that we deem safe.  There is no computer in her room and I or her father have to be present as she logs on and we type in the direct URL to the website or start up the software.  This is only the tip of the iceberg regarding safety…

I thought this segment of today’s 700 Club exposed many of the dangers that the web CAN bring to our kids – including two of the most dreaded:

• child abduction
• pornography

I am glad that more awareness is being made about the issues and that parents are becoming more aware of how to protect our kids online.

Take a look:

After reading the news about Phoebe Prince, a freshman at South Hadley High School (in a middle to upper class community in Massachusetts), who hung herself due to cyber bullying, I couldn’t help but to wonder how this kind of behavior could have gone unnoticed, or untreated for that matter.

The “untouchables” is the nickname they’ve been dubbed on The Boston Globe. These mean girls who hounded Phoebe through text messages, social networking groups, and even in person, have been left literally unscathed by the event- even further mocking Phoebe after her death.

The main question I had for this situation was: how do we 21st century parents help to prevent this kind of bullying?

Do we restrict or limit access to the computer?  Do we prevent our children from having social networking accounts?

As a tech savvy parent, I have had to think about this often and mull over some solutions that will fit my kids now in the early years and in the years to come when they become teens.  For now, my children lay low in the social networking arena since they are underage and don’t have Facebook or MySpace accounts.  I have even had to reconsider using full first names for my children under my own blogs and accounts online as well.

But when they are older and become more media savvy, how do I prevent cyber bullying from happening to them?  Some children/teens can be cruel–there’s no getting around that.  How do parents take a proactive role in keeping our kids and teens safe from the exploitation of cyber bullying?

1. Educate our children on web savvy behavior, such as never revealing last names or passwords. I think one of the most important steps to helping to prevent cyber bullying is to help our children to become aware of how to keep themselves safe online.  Small tips like keeping passwords safe and not revealing last names helps.
2. Supervise your kids online.  When at home, it is important for parents to keep tabs on what your kids are doing on the internet.  Placing the computer in a safe, common area (such as the living room), helps keep us parents aware of what is happening with our kids online.
3. Install parenting controls. With software such as Net Nanny, a parent can install internet filtering on home computers as well as for cell phones.  With the onslaught of cyber bullying via text messaging today, parents can also some control over at least knowing what is going on via their kids’ phones.  Here is what the Net Nanny website quotes their software solution does for the cell phones:

Parents now have the ability to view all e-mail messages, along with all (SMS) text messages and multi media (MMS) messages transmitted and received by the device.

Key Word Alert: Net Nanny Mobile “Alert” notification monitors keywords identified by the parents as words that could be potentially alarming. When one of the key words is contained within a text message or email, to or from the child, the parent is notified immediately via e-mail by Net Nanny Mobile.

From any computer on the Internet, parents are given complete insight into the mobile activities of their children.

4.)  Another tip: train your kids to delete messages without opening them.  Not only will this prevent spam and virus attacks, but it also helps to filter out info that could be emotionally harmful to your children.  If they don’t recognize the sender or the subject line looks “fishy”, don’t open it.  Generally, I like to do a quick scan on my email accounts each day for emails that appear in my inbox (which are not first caught by my “junk mail” folders).  If there are emails that I don’t recognize, I have trained myself to automatically highlight and delete them without fully opening messages or attachments.  This should be something we train our students to do as well.

5.)  Apply message blocks. If we learn to use the technology our kids are using, we can effectively help them to block unwanted messages on their cell phones, social networking accounts, and email accounts.

These are just a few small tips to help parents and teachers to step into the direction of being proactive with our kids’ technology experiences.  Although taking away all access to social media and technology can actually prevent our children from experiencing cyber bullying when we are present, it does not effectively prepare our kids to learn how to be proactively careful in their own online and cell phone activities.  We just have to teach them and train them to use technology safely.

As for cyber bullies- obviously these kids have severe emotional and psychological hang ups, that they would get some demented type of pleasure out of harrassing other people online.

But….that’s another story and another set of solutions to be tackled on another day.

For now, let’s just learn to keep our own kids safe…

And last tip:

Perhaps we can bring more community awareness to this problem by starting up community-wide and school initiatives. Our schools and community programs need policies in place to deal with these types of behaviors.  We can’t wait until it’s already happened- then it’s too late.

I must admit…it does bother me to have my daughter do a “Google” search, although I am right over her shoulder when she does.

There is always the fear that any parent may have – and that’s: pop ups and unsolicited ads.

Furthermore, God forbid our children click on a WRONG link, a trashy URL that takes them to some porn site.  We would never forgive ourselves if our dear children’s innocence were crushed because of this.

Although I don’t want to revoke her Google searching priviliges, I’m just too cautious of a mommy to simply send her away to “Google it!”.

NyGirl LOVES to research.  She thinks of an idea that really interests her, and next thing you know she wants permission to get on the computer and look up more information about it.

“Mom, can I google it?  PLEASE???”

What do I say to that?  Here I have a child whose unsatiable thirst for knowledge has landed her on a quest for answers to every problem she thinks of.  Somehow, dictionary.com and thesaurus sites are not enough.  Of course not…we need GOOGLE.

Okay, not really.

I am not too sure about the safeties of Google for my dear kids, so I began to do a little research of my own for search engines which are safe for kids.

Among these are:

• Yahoo Kids – EXCELLENT resource, by the way!
• Kids.gov
• Fact Monster
• Britannica.com
• The Awesome Library
• ALA’s Great Websites for Kids

Or…if this is too limited of an approach, you can go to sites like Ask Jeeves, MSN Search, or even Google, and  under Content Filtering, select the options for “safe search” mode. There is a wonderful article which breaks down the different search engines, how they rank in comparing commercialized ads versus appealing content to children and relevance to the child.

So at least Google is not completely out of the question for us.  We can give search engines a “go”, so long as we’re on safe mode.

Homeschoolers:  Did you know that the majority of public and private schools are just as concerned about students’ potential harmful viewing online as we are?

Here’s proof: there was a study done on internet blocking in schools.  Essentially, there are laws in regulation that block harmful viewing…but there is a catch.  Here’s a quote directly from the source:

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires all schools and libraries receiving certain federal funds or discounts to install and use a technology for blocking visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or in the case of minors, “harmful to minors.”

Here’s the catch to why much of the internet filters haven’t been working in schools:

The report drew the following conclusions:

• The use of Internet blocking software in schools cannot help schools comply with the law because schools do not and cannot set the software to block only the categories required by the law, and because the software is incapable of blocking only the visual depictions required by CIPA.
• Blocking software does not protect children from exposure to a large volume of material that is harmful to minors within the legal definitions. Blocking software cannot adapt adequately to local community standards. Most schools already have in place alternatives to Internet blocking software, such as adoption and enforcement of Internet use policies, media literacy education, directed use, and supervised use.
• Blocking software in schools damages educational opportunities for students, both by blocking access to web pages that are directly related to the state-mandated curriculums and by restricting broader inquiries of both students and teachers. Teachers and students 17 years or older (most high school juniors and seniors) should be exempt, yet suffer the consequences of CIPA implementation.

After testing nearly a million web pages related to state-mandated curriculums, the researchers found that of the web pages blocked, 97 – 99% of a statistically significant sample were blocked using non-standard, discretionary, and potentially illegal criteria beyond what CIPA requires.

Which, in my opinion, simply means that in homeschools, parent teachers will need to be actively involved in overseeing online and computer usage by our students.  We will need to understand all of the ramifications of our kids’ computer usage and become educated about how to help them learn online, WITHOUT stifling their opportunities to learn.

The only way to effectively do both (keep our kids safe online, AND teach them to independently use technology resources) is to educate ourselves about the digital world.  Truth be told, many of us are just not willing to do that.  (I’ve talked to many parents who shy away from the idea altogether due to fear of the unknown).  However, I’d like to encourage all home educating parents to do this with me:  let’s take the time to learn a bit about online environments, specifically:

• internet safety and tools
• internet research for education
• online educational curricula and software

There are TONS of good resources out there- as indicated in the book “Homeschool Your Child For Free“.  We just have to be open enough to give our children access to these materials.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t LIMIT access to some degree (and that limitation is up to each parent teacher).  But complete limitation probably isn’t a good idea either.

There is a lot of talk these days about whether or not the internet is safe for our kids. I think this is a valid discussion and has its place in education.  We definitely need to keep our kids safe online.

But there is a flipside…

If we become too stringent on keeping our kids totally away from the dangers of the internet, we may neglect to introduce them to the wonderful educational opportunities that are available.  These opportunities  may include online educational games, math drills, news for kids, podcasts of classical books -and for our older children, courses on how to use multimedia- such as designing websites, creatively podcasting, and even enriching their online experience even more through keeping a weblog.  That’s not to mention the variety of college level courses offered by universities such as MIT, which are absolutely FREE.  Our kids are living in an age when they can not only be a consumer of online media, but can also be creators.

I don’t think this is the time to passively let these opportunities slip by us.  As homeschoolers, we can use this digital era in history to our advantage- capitalizing on all the GOOD that the web has to offer our students.

There was a study conducted by Yahoo which indicated technology online is actually helping kids and families – keeping families connected and helping kids with homework, etc.  To directly quote:

The learning channels. As for the purpose of the time spent with technology, parents pointed to beneficial uses such as access to news and information. More than half (56%) said the Internet has helped children with schoolwork, and nearly two thirds (61%) said the Internet has “exposed my children to a broad range of cultures.”

That’s good news for homeschoolers.  Again, with all the dangers that ARE pervasive on the web, we need to begin looking for the positive factors involved in using online media in our home schools.

We don’t have to allow technology to control us - either through negatively impacting our families by taking up too much of our time, energy, and resources.  Examples of this are improper usage of Twitter, Facebook, and chat rooms.  If we spend too much time using social media it has the same demise as spending way too much time in front of the television screen, too much time on the phone, too much time at the coffee shop, too much time at the hair and nail salons…you name it.  ANYTHING can be controlling of our time, if we allow it too.  Same with technology.  Don’t be afraid of using it, but neither let it control your family.

Joe Uva says it best:

“It’s clear that within the ’43-hour day,’ families are making concerted efforts to spend time together and to live out a new family value that says ‘we control technology — it does not control us,’” said Joe Uva, president and CEO, OMD Worldwide.

Michele Madanski, Yahoo’s vice president of sales research had this to say about the idea of technology and how it impacts families:

“Father doesn’t always know best. He may not have a clue about what MP3 player is the best value, but daughter can be the expert because she has spent time online comparison shopping prices and features.”

And what does this mean for us home educating parents? It means that we can finally take a deep breath and relax, knowing that as our children have grasped the basics of the three R’s and are ready for more, they can learn to use technologies (with our supervision) and explore these things on their own. Before long, they will be teaching us!

Isn’t that what we want- children who are independent learners and can turn around and teach what they have discovered?

I know that’s what I’ve set out for.  I want to raise godly, independent children who are able to think and reason beyond the reach of my influence.  I want them to be empowered to conduct online research and creatively explore the opportunities for delivering a project in more ways than a 3 dimensional poster board.  I want them to tinker with ideas through collaboration with other kids (this can be done online on group projects with kids from around the globe, or in local homeschool co-ops).

Creativity, exploration, independent learning, group learning…all of this can be accomplished online for the homeschooler.

The internet is far from a perfect environment, but there are definitely things we parent teachers can do to ensure a much safer and meaningful online experience for our kids.

I’ll be covering these ideas in later posts…