Internet Safety Is STILL A Growing Concern
Internet Safety is a growing concern for children, teenagers and even adults in America. It’s even becoming a common household term. It’s a hot topic and one that gets the attention of the media and therefore the public and it’s rapidly becoming one of the toughest issues facing parents and schools today. Internet safety is so important that the Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act in December 2000 to address concerns about children’s access to inappropriate internet content when using school and library computers. The first part of Internet safety is to never let your children use the Internet without supervision. The second part is to never pass out your private information to people or websites you don’t trust. The third part of Internet safety is to instigate and encourage an active dialogue with your children about Internet safety and their activities on the Internet.
While this life-changing technology offers us unlimited worldwide access to information and instant communication, it has also opened up new avenues for sexual predators to seek out unsuspecting children, as well as provide a global platform for the distribution of hard-core sexually-explicit materials that is harmful to our youth. Online harassment has increased to 9% of youth Internet users from 6%. Online stalkers are the most terrifying when it comes to the Internet. They search chat rooms and social networking sites for naive and attention seeking children. They then ferret out the smallest pieces of information that might help them lure a child to talk with, and eventually meet up with.
45% of people have been asked for personal information by someone they don’t know. As well, 37% of 13- to 17-year-olds said they are “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned” about someone using information they’ve posted online in ways they don’t want, but little do they know it could come back to haunt them later.
Internet safety is extremely important within the youth of America and should be the upmost concern of parents.
Have you heard of Covenant Eyes monitoring and filtering programs? It is a unique program on the market because it gives the user flexibility to filter or simply monitor the Internet or both. A good filtering program is very helpful for children and families, but a good monitoring program is great for adults and children alike who want to be accountable to others about where they go online.
Covenant Eyes monitoring program simply tracks (without blocking) everywhere someone goes online. Then each part of each webpage is rated and scored for its content (scores are based on obscene or pornographic material). Users choose 2 or 3 people that they want to receive a detailed “accountability report” of all their online activity (emails to them or available to see online 24/7). What this does is it allows complete freedom to the person using the Internet, but it takes away the anonymity of online activity; people are more likely to exorcise self-control when they know that others will be reviewing their whereabouts online.
I’ve found the program very helpful.
Covenant Eyes also has a promotional code you can use to get a free month to try out their accountability service. Go to http://www.covenanteyes.com and enter promocode ‘onefree’ to receive a free 30 day trial of the program.