Being a parent in the digital age is challenging, but parents need to be aware of what their children are doing online and what personal information their children make available on social networking Web sites, according to an online safety advocate.
Kris Eckstein, a computer education professional from Sleepy Eye, gave parents an eye- and ear-full of online safety information Tuesday evening in a presentation at the Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City Junior and Senior High School in Grove City.
"Being a step ahead of your kids is hard," she said. "Being a parent is harder in the digital age."
According to surveys by the Polly Klaas Foundation, teens frequently communicate online with people they don't know or have never met and four in 10 have posted personal information about themselves online, probably at a social networking site like myspace.com or bebo.com.
Statistics from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children find that one in five children will be solicited online by a sexual predator.
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Eckstein, the mother of four grown children, offered several suggestions for parents concerned about what their children are doing online and about the tactics of online sexual predators.
Her first suggestion is moving the computer to a high-traffic location in the home, setting specific house rules for computer use and communicating consequences for breaking those rules. She encouraged parents to monitor computer usage and tell children that their computer usage is being watched.
"You have to monitor. Be the parent and protect the kids," she said.
Parents need to know how to access tools to review what their children are seeing online. Those tools include checking the history of sites visited via a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer, and reviewing temporary Internet files.
Parents can also set higher filtering levels on commonly used search sites, such as Google. Monitoring software can be installed that informs parents via e-mail when a Web site with explicit information is visited or software that takes periodic screen shots to show what the computer user is doing while online.
The second step is limiting information posted by teens on social networking sites like MySpace.com.
"Nowadays, kids aren't going to chat rooms," she told parents. "They are going to online social networks that allow them to put too much information out in the public sector."
Red flags that should alert parents that their teen has too much information online include the use of first and last name, even if they aren't listed together, school information such as schedules and extra-curricular activities and places they like to go.
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Such information could easily inform an online predator to the child's routine and allow the predator to find him or her at school or hang-out locations, Eckstein said.
"Photos are dangerous, teens are putting their friends at risk too," she said. "Kids think this is OK; they are just showing they like their friends."
But, Eckstein added, photos help predators find teens, especially if school colors and mascots are listed. For example, if a teen posts a photo of himself and friends in uniforms emblazoned with the word "Chiefs," that points to Sleepy Eye High School's sports teams, thus locating the town where a teen lives and the school he attends.
With school and personal information, online predators posing as other teens can keep a teen involved in an online conversation, either via e-mail or instant messaging. The longer the conversation goes on, the more the teen assumes that they are "friends" and the more likely the teen is to give out even more personal information, like a home phone or address. A predator can use a wide variety of Web tools to pinpoint the teen's location and encourage the teen to meet him.
Teens and college students must also remember that what they put online will be archived forever and may impact their future, Eckstein said. College students who post detailed information and graphic photos about their drinking parties or drug use may find that potential employers find that information and will not hire them. Similar information posted by younger teens may impact which college they are accepted into, she added.
The first line of defense to protect children -- from predators and from posting too much information -- is parents, she concludes.
"The best firewall is between your child's ears," she said. "Put the information in their heads so they know how to handle themselves."
