With so many horrible stories in the news regarding kids and the Internet, I was glad to get an e-mail from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding Cybertipline.com.
From the NCMEC:
Did you know?
* Approximately 1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online, but only 1 in 4 tells a parent about the experience.
* 70% of unwanted sexual solicitations to children occur while the child is using a home computer.
The Cybertipline handles leads from individuals reporting the sexual exploitation of children not just online, but anywhere. They have some valuable information, please check it out and hope that you never need to use it.
While I was typing all that, I realized that I never updated you regarding Busy Girl's classmates and the MySpace discussion. There's not much to report, really. I was still thinking about what to do and the last time I looked up their pages, they had been changed to private profiles for friends only, so that was a plus. Since Busy Girl still wanted a web page, we came up with a compromise from another service that I won't name on here (you can e-mail me, I just don't want to advertise for them). It turns out that the kids with the MySpace pages have actually changed to pages on this service, and, aside from some raging web design violations, it's much more age-appropriate, and, easier to monitor. It doesn't replace the need to be vigilant as a parent, but, I don't get that skeeved out feeling that I did before. So, so far, so, good. She's enjoyed interacting with her friends, and, other than the site being a little hard on the ol' firewall with all the junk and ads, it's worked out well. While I didn't encourage her to do this, it became apparent that it was something she wanted to do, and, rather than taking a chance that she would do it on the sly (I don't think she would right now, but, you never know) I agreed to this and we did it together.
Like. Oh. Mah. Gawd. You. Rok. Out. Loud.
Recent Entries on Busymom.net:
- We don't need no stinkin' B
- Missing: Today
- Happy Birthday, Busy Girl!
- Please excuse the GE w24R
- How'd it get to be Wednesday?
Good for you. Now go to bed. You've got an early morning coming up. ;)
YAY - by the time my 6 year old gets all into this stuff, hopefully it will be totally foolproof!
I'm glad that you managed to come to a compromise. The chance that she'll do something "on the sly" now is practically zero. I think you handled this extremely well!
Busymom, you are my hero.
interesting - the principal at my daughters school was just telling me how he had just addressed this topic with staff and they were forming policy regarding it -
it is such a great writing tool on the one hand - but I do want to know EVERYTHING at this age (also mom 6th grader)
I would like to know which service you are looking at per your research if you could email me -
my daughter's laptop doesn't even have internet access right now - we need to upgrade but are worried about the wifi in the house (if she uses this computer I get an online activity report, plus right here in same room)
good post!
Adolescence is one breath away...
This kid-online stuff is scary. I'm glad that my husband and I are both very tech-savvy and feel sorry for parents who are not because the challenge must loom larger for them.
My kids access the net only in the family room where the screen faces the room at large. The two biggest rules are no chat, ever. And no filling out forms without our permssion. Other than that we just watch.
Our church has addressed the issue of the myspace world with all the yoots (my salute to the movie 'My Cousin Vinny'). Any way, the local public school system took notice and now most have removed their pages.
As for the Bugs, (she attends a private school which has chosen to handle it similar to what you have done for the Busy chillin's) She is designing her own web page under strong security guidelines and all that jazz.
My oldest daughter could care less about what's going on on the internet and I guess I'm lucky about that. Even though she has a computer in her room, there is one thing she doesn't realize I have. Remote access to her computer so I find out what's going on in there online. My other children, the ones that I'm more concerned about, only surf kid sites, but I still monitor that. I set up Live Journal accounts for the oldest kids but they can't be so bothered. They'd rather chat up the phone than chat up the internet.
How to manage it -- changes to fast. Here's a Facebook article at MotherPie --
http://motherpie.typepad.com/motherpie/2006/02/faceless_danger.html
Cheers! Hattie
I'm just mentally filing all this great info away for when my girls approach the teen (tween...whatever the new term will be then) years. Sigh...
Right after you posted all of that stuff about MySpace my children's school sent home a notice warning parents about these internet sites. They are putting together an information night for parents to learn as much can about the how to protect children.
Right after you posted all of that stuff about MySpace my children's school sent home a notice warning parents about these internet sites. They are putting together an information night for parents to learn as much can about the how to protect children.
BusyMom, will you email me with that site? CK1 has been asking about a My Space page and she's gotten a resounding "Heck, no!" but if there is a kid-friendly option out there, I might be able to resign myself to it. Damn these kids and the whole growing up thing they insist on doing!
Can you hook me up with info on the site too? My son is almost 14, and I would prefer to do something a little more trustworthy than MySpace. If he hasn't done that already. Ugh.
When did the Internet become so mean and scary and ugly? *sigh*