There *are* predators online, yes, but there are predators at the mall and at the local fast food joints. The most common abuser is a family member. Hands down. Nobody’s talking about taking kids away from parents … but –ooooh the skeery internets have to be guarded and managed and blocked and … you get the picture.

It *is* important to teach kids good safety skills, but isolating that to the online world is a mistake. The legislative attempts to deal with kids and the web are misguided and put kids into harms way by restricting access by the adults who might be able to provide a watchful eye and a guiding hand.

This is a serious problem but emotional response and anecdotal evidence do little to address the real issue.

And, ya, we can agree to disagree.

I respect your ideas, but I disagree. Maybe it is because I was once a young teen girl (and I am thinking that you were probably not . Haha!)

I’m seriously speaking from experience. Please understand that I’m no beginner to the world of meeting people online. I was on AOL and Prodigy before they had numbers after them. (i.e., AOL 7.0) I thought it was “cool” when I was 14 and 15 and 30 year-old-men would single me out in rooms. I would laugh and flirt and almost on a daily basis I would have “meeting offers.” There is no exaggeration here. I didn’t take them up on it….but had I lived in a town instead of way out on the farm there is a very good chance that I was stupid enough to do so back then.

I thought I was safe and protected because I was at home and I would laugh and flirt along with them, and I suppose I was to some point. However, I was stupid enough back them to give out my phone number to complete strangers simply because they became “roomies” and I thought I knew them. On into my later teens when I began driving, I met quite a few. Since this was way before the people had digital pictures of themselves online, it is safe to say that usually the people were NOT the people they had described themselves to be and often they were a bit older. My parents were clueless when it came to me meeting these complete strangers. Their daughter would never be stupid enough to do that! However, if you have spent time in chat rooms, you know that the people that you see and meet on a daily basis you begin to feel like you know them better than you do people in the “real world”. There is something about being able to type what you are thinking and feeling which almost makes it easier to be more personal.

I consider myself lucky. Nothing terribly untoward happened to me except for the occasional freak that wouldn’t stop calling or IMing or emailing me when I asked them to. However, this was in the years before everyone was online. Now everyone is online. There ARE predators out there…maybe not many in the sense that they will trick kids into meeting them in order to abduct them or kill them. However, many teen girls (and even teen boys) are easily charmed by the smooth talking older guy (I say guy because I have no experience with women doing this, but I’m sure they are out there too).

They are out there and I do think it is important to teach children that it can be a dangerous environment if they are not careful. It is important to give them the tools to make smart decisions. And, yes, I think it is okay to put a bit of fear into them in order to remind them that just because they are meeting behind a computer at first, it can turn into an unsafe environment if it goes beyond that.

I believe that some educators and parents think if they don’t talk about it or teach about it then the students are not exposed to it therefore they will not see the bad side.. Unfortunatley, we all know that they will find the bad out eventually.

This is FUD that’s promoted by politicians who want to appear to be doing something significant without actually understanding the issues. Please do not buy into this.

“teens and even preteens need to be educated.”

Very true, but who’ll do it when the schools block the sites and don’t hire the people who have the skills.

I started my kids online at 5. They’ve gotten a very serious education.

I think it is sad that they used a site of a girl in their school. I’m sure that it was really embarrassing for this student. However, don’t you think that they used her for a purpose? Was her site like many other young girl’s sites full of clevage and panty shots? If that moment of embarrassment made her realize that she should straighted up, then so be it.

Please don’t mistake me for some internet prude. I’ve been an avid networker almost since the first social networks were open. During my teen years (and I’m now 30) and prior to my professional career I spent time in AOL chat rooms, and God knows there are probably photos out there that I wouldn’t want my grandma seeing. However, with the huge amount of predators out there now, teens and even preteens need to be educated.

Also, on the flip side, teachers should be cautious about interacting with students on their Myspace or Facebook. A teacher with a simple site may be found by a student and the student may try to add the teacher. Sounds innocent, right? WRONG! We had a tenured male teacher fired for interacting on the sites of students. The board found it inappropriate because many of the girls had trashy photos of themselves posted on their pages and didn’t think he should be interacting with them under those circumstances.