Are We Giving Teens the Tools to Protect Themselves Online?
Reuter’s has a study of Internet Predators (h/t YPulse). They use love and affection rather than trickery and lies to lure teens. This shouldn’t be a surprise to us. The research shows that most sexual abuse happens from someone the child knows such as family and trusted authority figures. These children and teens are looking for self-esteem and for someone who cares about them. While we need to continue to teach children and teens to protect personal information, we need to use this lesson to look at how we help them protect themselves from those who prey on their need for belonging and love. This is very similar to how we changed the way we taught youth to protect themselves from traditional predators. I was brought up with, “Don’t take candy from strangers” and urban legands around panel trucks lurking around schoolyards waiting to kidnap us. Now we teach assertiveness and what to do when someone makes kids feel uncomfortable. It is time to update our Internet safety trainings.
Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the
“From the perspective of the victim, these are romances,” she said.
. . .Wolak said it is important for parents and children to have a clear picture of who these predators are.
“If everybody is looking for violent predators lurking in the bushes, kids who are involved in these relationships aren’t going to be seeing what is happening to them as a crime,” she said.
Read the whole post here.
One of the best resources to see what’s REALLY going on, (instead of media hype/’snatch your baby’ sensationalism being pumped into PTAs and parent hubs) is ConnectSafely.org
Teens and parents worldwide ping the forum with usual social media conundrums like imposter profile probs, and other internet safety issues and the forum offers safety tips for both parents/kids to prevent falling for the ‘grooming’ practices of internet predators that use caring/affection/romance as bait.
Anne Collier, one of the co-directors also blogs at NetFamilyNews with updates on trend-tracking in this realm, and she co-wrote the book MySpace Unraveled which deconstructs the hype too…all good picks.
Here are all the links in my Shaping Youth post about ConnectSafely.org and NetFamily News: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=395
(fyi, they used to be called BlogSafety) I find they’re the most balanced, non-fear-driven resource out there from a pragmatic and poignant snapshot of the digital sphere. Highly recommend. (you probably already have them bookmarked)
Thanks for the link to ConnectSafety.org. They have some great stuff on their site. I was aware of cyberbullying and how serious it could be. I didn’t realize it was that prevalent. I’ve added the book to my wish list as well. I have a bit of a backlog right now, so I’m not buying more until I knock down the pile next to the couch.