The internet has changed the fabric of society within a generation. It is a brave new world that can enrich our children’s lives beyond measure, expanding their horizons to embrace an infinite wealth of knowledge and ideas. But this power to inspire and inform is offset by a potential to harm and corrupt. The World Wide Web can be a dangerous place, and kids are especially vulnerable.
There are many dangers your children might encounter when surfing the web or chatting online. The biggest concerns for parents include:
Offensive and Threatening Web Site Content
Online Predators
Internet Addiction
Illegal Activity
Peer Threats
Offensive and Threatening
Web Site Content
Because there are no rules governing the internet, anyone can set up a website to serve any purpose. Consequently there are millions of sites containing material that is inappropriate for your children. Among them are those that:
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Advocate extreme prejudices, hate or anarchy
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Incite violence
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Sell drugs and other illegal merchandise
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Explain how to grow and process narcotics
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Sell stolen goods
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Sell or show how to make fake IDs
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Offer online gambling
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Promote dangerous religious cults
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Elicit personal information for illegal purposes
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Show how to fabricate counterfeit money
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Offer money-making schemes that put your family at risk
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Promote eating disorders
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Encourage self-harm
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Explain ways of committing suicide
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Show how to make bombs
By far the most common source of inappropriate online content is pornography. The internet is estimated to contain 4.2 million pornographic websites (12 percent of all websites!), totaling 372 million pages of pornographic material. 100 000 of these sites relate to child pornography which is illegal across the world. A 2002 survey from the LSE showed that nine out of ten children aged 8-16 have viewed pornography on the internet. In most cases the sex sites were accessed unintentionally by using a seemingly innocent term to search for information or pictures.
Even the most legitimate topics can be linked to something offensive, and pornographers will often use child-targeted brand names to attract kids to their sites. The recent trends for “porn napping” ( - where pornographers purchases addresses previously owned by safe, family-friendly websites - ) and “mouse-trapping” ( - which effectively makes it impossible to escape an adult site once you have entered it - ) only increase kids’ vulnerability.
In 2005 it was discovered that the average age for first exposure to internet porn is 11, and children aged 12-17 make up the largest section of internet porn viewers. Whether by accident or intentional searching, it is more than likely your child will access a sexually explicit site if you do not employ a powerful filtering software.
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The internet is a favorite tool of sexual predators who prey upon children. Cyber-molesters are not a new breed of offender. The internet has simply given them a powerful new medium through which to target their victims. Chat rooms, blogs and instant messaging pose the biggest risk to children on the net. Predators use these devices to meet and ‘groom’ their victims, gaining their confidence by posing as like-minded kids who share their interests in music, fashion and the latest celebrity gossip. Great conversationalists, they will often attempt to drive a wedge between the victim and their family, exploiting any existing tensions. Sexual content will gradually be introduced into these conversations and it is not uncommon for phone calls, gifts and even face-to-face meetings to follow. This inevitably results in a number of rapes and abductions.
Consider the tragic case of Casey Woody from Greenbrier, Arkansas: She was a typical 14-year-old junior high school student, talking in a Christian chat room. Casey thought her new online friend was a 17-year-old boy. In fact he was a 47-year-old man in California. The predator made two trips to Arkansas to plan the kidnapping and eventually came to murder her. He gleaned information from talking to Casey online, stalking the teenager to learn her plans and habits.
The most recent studies show that 75 percent of kids use instant messaging, half of them on a daily basis. One in five 9-16-year-olds visit chat rooms, while youth-oriented blogging and networking sites such as MySpace, FaceBook and Xanga are enjoying a boom in membership, placing them among the 20 most popular sites on the web.
30% of children admit to having made an “online contact” while 46% have given out personal information online. Although the majority of kids claim to be wise to this risk, internet predators can be highly skilled at piecing together obscure clues to a kid’s identity.
One in five child internet users is believed to have been sexually solicited by a cyber predator.
What’s more, pictures posted online or sent to ‘virtual’ contacts can be manipulated by pedophiles and used to create child porn.
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Internet Addiction Disorder is already an established phenomenon that is known to affect children more than any other age group. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to internet addiction, partly because they tend to enjoy more free time than adults, but also due to the anonymity and freedom the internet affords them, allowing them to escape the social pressures and loneliness of adolescence by creating an entirely new online identity. Cyberspace can satisfy so many of the adolescent’s needs, but internet abuse poses many dangers to a child’s mental and physical wellbeing, encouraging withdrawal from real life in favor of a one-dimensional ‘virtual’ existence. As with all addictions, IA disorder can often be symptomatic of other unresolved problems and anxieties that a child may be experiencing.
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Peer to Peer (P2P) networks are hugely popular among kids, with the majority of users aged between 12 and 18. Used primarily to exchange pirated audio, video, software and other inappropriate content, applications such as Kazaa, Limewire, Morpheus and Bearshare expose file-swappers and their computers to a range of severe risks. Many files exchanged in P2P networks contain viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware that can seriously damage a family’s computer(s). There is also the potential for exposure to legal or criminal liability. The music and film industries have really started to crack down on illegal downloading, with children as young as 12 facing thousand dollar lawsuits. The practice of file-sharing is so widespread that kids who engage in it are often unaware that they are doing anything wrong. This was the case of Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old from New York whose illegal swapping of children’s rhymes and pop songs resulted in a $2000 settlement.
Under-age Hackers may represent a less widespread phenomenon, but there are still countless examples of highly able kids who have sought to prove their technical wizardry by defacing websites around the world, causing extensive corporate damage and even triggering international security threats. 15-year-old Jonathan James became the first child hacker to be handed a custodial sentence after he penetrated a Pentagon computer system in 2000.
Illegal Money-Making Schemes have also landed thousands of US kids in trouble with the authorities. Examples include setting up businesses with no legal value and defrauding honest consumers by selling goods that do not exist. Such activity has been facilitated by the rise of Paypal and Ebay.
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So-called cyber bullies have adopted the internet to humiliate and abuse, with growing numbers of kids falling victim to online stealth attacks and anonymous harassment. The most common form of cyber bullying occurs when victims are targeted through strings of abusive emails, instant messages or forum postings. However, denial of service attacks, mail bombs, and even hidden trojans and keyloggers are also being used by children to spy on and bully people they know. In the UK, an online forum for local kids in Hertfordshire turned into a vicious gallery of hatred and abuse that caused one humiliated teenager to attempt suicide and another to lose all his friends after abusive messages were given out in his name.
