There was once a time when you only had to worry about children when they were outside or not at home. Those times have changed. Strangers can now enter your home,Tips to Keeping Children Safe Online Articles without a key or coming through a door. How you may ask? These strangers enter your home using a keyboard. These strangers can befriend your children online.
Social networking has become increasingly popular and websites like Myspace have thrived with adolescents and teens. While pedophiles may be the minority on these sites, the threat of having a pedophile enter your home, under the guise of being someone their not, is just too big of a threat to ignore.
It may seem harmless enough, at first glance. I mean, เว็บสล็อต what do other web surfers really know about your child? They might even live half a world away. How could they possibly harm your child? Perhaps you might even see the educational value of your child interacting with individuals from other cultures and understanding the global nature of today’s world, but consider this…
Children online don’t feel that these “friends” are strangers. They “chat” with them daily. These people, who parents consider strangers, are their friends. They understand what the child is going through and they listen in ways the parents never seem to. The recent riveting testimony of a young boy that was drawn into online pornography at the age of 13, should be a wake up call to all parents. Computers and the Internet can be far more dangerous than most parents ever imagine. The likelihood of a child online will encounter strangers is far higher than a stranger wandering into their backyard.
Parents warn their children about strangers as they grow up, perhaps its time to redefine the term stranger. Consider the following to protect your child, adolescent, or teenager while online.
1. Webcams.
Do not allow your children to use a webcam unsupervised. Children will often forget that the webcams are there or even worse, what may seem harmless online flirting might result in unwarranted or undesired attention from an anonymous predator. Additionally, webcams have been tied to home robberies where burglars viewed items of interest through a webcam. A little online digging resulted in the home address, and items were then stolen.