Information to protect your children online
Concerned Parents Online

Tips for Parents

So we’ve established there is a need to keep our children safe in our homes and out of the news… But what actions can we take to make that happen?? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but here are my few, simple recommendations:
  1. Talk to your kids. Openly and honestly. If you are at a loss for what to say, I wrote an article directed to teens: http://www.concernedparentsonline.com/tipsforteens.html/ You don’t have to use it verbatim (although you are welcome to)—this is just what I would say to my teenage sisters (and my daughter, if her online repertoire included much more that Nick Jr. and PBS Kids Online.)
  2. Sign up for these sites. I realize that may seem like snooping; however, look at it this way—there are hundreds of thousands of people out there with access to information regarding your children… you need to know what they are seeing for your kids’ protection. Signing up is simple:
    1. www.myspace.com: As soon as you access this site it will ask you for your member name and password—if you do not have these, click the orange box proclaiming “Sign up!”: your screen will tell you that signing up is simple and free… Follow the prompts to create a user name—you can make your profile as simple or elaborate as you might like. You may even find yourself using this service to connect with old friends as the site was originally intended (I have a myspace account and have renewed communication with old high school and college friends!) To look for your children on this site, follow the tabs to “search” and select “by name”. Enter your child’s first and last name. Perhaps the most terrifying part of this site is that even if members do not have their full name posted online, it is recorded in their membership information and allows searching by name and geography!! For more information, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace/
    2. www.facebook.com: You will not be able to access your children’s FaceBook profile thanks to the security settings on this site. Originally intended for college users and then extended to some high schools—members must provide a valid school email to sign up for the service. Once a member, profiles are only fully visible to students at the same school. In order to see a profile from another school—users must invite or accept an invitation from another user. In my opinion, this is one of the “safer” networking sites for this very reason. Still, you must talk to you kids about they posting and make sure they are careful about who they are accepting as “friends.” This privacy feature protects them only if they are selective about whom they are communicating with. For more information, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook/
    3. www.friendster.com: Signing up is free and easy. A relatively older networking site than either of the two aforementioned, Friendster is not as popular among the younger circles. This website allows searching and viewing all profiles, but only allows people to be listed as friends if there is proof of actual friendship (by providing email address or last name.) For more information please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster/
    4. www.xanga.com: xanga is a bit different from the first three mentioned as it is a true blogging site —an online diary of sorts. It also serves as a networking site. Registration is free and allows users to view other user blogs. As the “Xangans” are prompted to create usernames that may or may not give away their identity, it is harder to search by name; however, users subscribe to blogrings that may give some identifying clues. Ie: for my local high school, there is a blogring for virtually every middle school grade—giving away not only location, but age of its participants. For more information please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanga/
    5. www.livejournal.com: Yet another where signing up is free and easy—noticing a theme here? LiveJournal is another online blogging/journal site that allows users to write a diary directed toward the online community. For more information please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livejournal/
  3. Educate yourselves on this medium. These sites and their enormous usage is in the news every day—and the popularity is not going to disappear. Keep up on the developments so you are armed with knowledge when talking to your children.
Should you have any further suggestions, feel free to post them on the comments section of this webpage. As new technology emerges and bring along new complications, we as parents are all on the same learning curve—figuring out better and more effective ways to protect our children. Your comments are welcome and appreciated.