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We moved into our current home about 7 years ago, my son had just turned 9 years old. Like any good IT person would do I had an Internet connection installed in every room (this was prior to great wireless solutions). Soon after I built a new PC for my son and placed it in his room. I called it "Internet with a door", meaning he could close the door while surfing. Now I realized this was not ideal but I have a good kid and I HAD A PLAN (or so I thought). I would install one of the many available Internet child safety programs on his PC. Boy was I misguided as to their effectiveness and to my son's resourcefulness! The tools were pretty much worthless and my kid was much more clever than I thought.
Before I get into what did and did NOT work, here some facts about Internet usage (stats are from Enough.org and ProtectKids.com, of course most statistical data lags several years so it would be safe to assume the numbers are much higher):
Internet Usage
- 93% of all Americans between 12 and 17 years old use the Internet
- While adults still view e-mail as the must-have, "killer application" online, teens report that they view e-mail as something to use to talk to "old people”; Instead, teens prefer instant messaging — 75% of online teens — or about two-thirds of all teens — say they use IMs, compared to only 42% of online adults
Chat Rooms
- 50% of high school students "talk" in chat rooms or use instant messaging (IM) with Internet strangers
- 69% of teens regularly receive personal messages online from people they don't know and most of them don't tell a trusted adult about it
- One in five children who use computer chatrooms has been approached over the Internet by pedophiles
- 30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7%, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online"
Parental Control
- 31% of 7th- to 12th-graders pretended to be older to get onto a website
- Only 25% of 7th- to 12th-graders with a computer at home say it has a filter or parental controls on it
- Nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. In most cases, the sex sites were accessed unintentionally when a child, often in the process of doing homework, used a seemingly innocent sounding word to search for information or pictures
Online Profiles and Personal Information
- 75% of girls say their parents have set up rules about online use, but most say parental involvement is limited to prohibitions such as "don't talk to strangers," and "don't give out personal information." (Though 57% say they follow parents' rules, 43% admit they don't.)
- Most girls say they can get around parents' rules; 86% say they can secretly chat, 57% can read parents' e-mail, and 54% can carry on a cyber love affair. Nearly half say they're able to set up an in-person meeting with an online friend (46%) and get into a porn site (42%)
- 38% of high school students sometimes hide their online activities from their parents
- 71% percent of teens have established online profiles (including those on social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster and Xanga)
- Teens readily post personal info online. 64 percent post photos or videos of themselves, while more than half (58 percent) post info about where they live.
- Children aged seven to 17 who surf the net, 29% percent would freely give out their home address and 14% would freely give out their e-mail address if asked
- 20% of students in middle school as well as high school admit that they have met face-to-face with someone they first met on the Internet
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