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Community Unit School
District 95 is providing the following information to help
educate our parents and students about child safety when using
the
Information Highway. The following excerpt
is from a
January 27, 2006 Newsweek article, "Predator's Playground".
The complete article can be found at
Newsweek: Predator's Playground.
The article addresses today's concerns about
keeping our kids safe while they surf the internet. The
links to the right provide useful information to help parents
and kids understand how to safely use the internet. CUSD95
is aggressively monitoring and restricting access to
social-networking sites using our internet filtering service.
Excerpts from the Newsweek article:
"NEWSWEEK's Susanna Schrobsdorff spoke to
Monique Nelson, executive vice president of Web Wise Kids, a
nonprofit Internet safety organization based in Santa Ana,
Calif., about how parents can reduce the risks for kids on
social-networking sites.
NEWSWEEK: Why can sites like
MySpace be so risky for teens?
Monique Nelson: Kids just don't get it that there are real
people beyond the screen—not just their friends. They post
private information and they don't understand that a predator
could be looking at it and tracking them. They are naive and
vulnerable. They think, "Nothing bad is going to happen to me,"
just like we did when were young.
How can parents
who don't know a lot about the Internet keep
their kids safe?
Every parent should do some
homework. Find out what your child's online
aliases are. And, if you don't know about this
stuff, let your kid teach you. It's a perfect
time to sit down with them and let them show
you. A really direct approach is to restrict
Internet access to times when parents are home.
You can do that with a password system. Almost
every safety expert recommends that the computer
be in the family room where parents can see it,
but guess where most kids have their computers?
Their room. Parents can also install monitoring
software which can track where the kid goes and
what they are typing. FilterReview.com is a
great Web site that reviews the different
monitoring software for parents.
Some schools in Boston and
Washington are restricting access to the
social-networking sites on school computers.
Yes, but kids go to
friend's homes or get online elsewhere, so
parents still need to get involved and talk to
their children.
(excerpts from Newsweek used by permission) |
