EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
By Ruth Luse, Managing Editor
To find out what dangers children face online, I went online, because — except for the often nasty, anonymous blog messages, containing hurtful misinformation, I see weekly — I spend little time on the Internet, except to do research.
These online dangers are a big topic today and rightly so. That’s why, I am sure, the Hopewell Valley Regional School District is asking parents and interested community members to a special evening presentation at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19 in the Hopewell Valley Performing Arts Center at Central High School. Topics to be addressed include the questions: know what your children are doing online; is their innocent behavior putting them at risk; and what are your schools doing to protect students from inappropriate Internet content and behavior.
Douglas W. Brower, district supervisor of educational technology, will explain what students are learning in the classroom about acceptable online behavior as well as how officials are safeguarding students from SPAM and objectionable Web sites. He plans to demonstrate how the district’s 12 filters work. Updated daily, these mechanisms intercept as many as 145,000 e-mails that try to penetrate the system daily.
He will be joined by representatives of the Hopewell Township Police Department, who will cover the issues surrounding social networking sites, such as MySpace.com, and the safety implications of camera-equipped cell phones. He’ll also share ideas on what parents can do to protect their children online.
Those who may be ignorant, as many of us probably are, of the dangers posed by the Internet might be interested in what Chris Hansen of NBC Dateline had to say recently — “Instant messaging on the computer has become the phone for kids today. Children spend hours chatting online with their friends, and sometimes with strangers. A recent study found that one in five children online is approached by a sexual predator, a predator who may try to set up a face-to-face meeting.”
Or what Bob Sullivan of MSNBC has said:
”Everything I ever needed to know to stay safe in the virtual world, I learned in the real world. Don’t go scary places by yourself. If someone is making you uncomfortable, just leave, and tell your parents. Don’t look at pornographic pictures, and you won’t have to worry about them. But most important — don’t talk to strangers, and never give them personal information.
But it is not that simple, he said recently. If it were, “you wouldn’t hear repeated stories of FBI raids collaring dozens of pedophiles who swap files — and hunt for children — online. There wouldn’t be thousands of cases of Internet-related child luring tracked by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And one in five children wouldn’t be telling the Justice Department that they’d received an unwanted sexual advance in surveys.”
As Mr. Sullivan said: “It’s not simple because strangers online are hard to identify, since the Net is the land of make-believe. And just as kids are often better than their parents at playing make believe, they’re often better at keeping up with technology, too. They speak a language — the text-message language — their parents can’t understand. And so, they can get away with murder, and, tragically, so can Internet predators.”
Jessica Dolcourt, assistant editor, CNET Download.com, lists the top five Internet dangers for children and families:
• Data theft —stolen passwords, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, and other financial information.
• Malicious software (also known as malware) — adware, spyware, viruses, phishing scams.
• Inappropriate content — pornography, content focused on violence, hate propaganda.
• Cyberbullying — bullying peers via instant messages, social networking sites, online games.
• Predators — social networking sites, chat rooms.
It is unnerving, to say the least, that computers and the Internet, which allow us to do so many wonderful things today, also allow people who do evil to spin their webs and exploit the innocent.
Some may call this progress. I wonder.
Look up the word “progress” on the Internet and you may find something called the “progress trap.” This, the site says, “is the condition societies find themselves in when human ingenuity, in pursuing progress, inadvertently introduces problems that it does not have the resources to solve, preventing further progress or allowing social collapse.”
Interesting?
I urge Valley parents to attend the Nov. 19 session, or at the very least, do some research on this timely topic yourself.