Another Child Goes Missing!
Here we go again; another 14 year old girl has gone missing from Escondido, CA. This is the second time within a year that this happened from Escondido and rumor is the latest missing girl, Amber Dubois, is yet again another child that may have met someone on the internet and run away. Last year it was Kristen Smith.
What are we doing as a society or as parents to prevent our children from making sometimes deadly but always dangerous decisions to develop relationships on the Internet with people they do not know? You always think to yourself, “Not in my home, not in my town!” especially when you run an Internet Safety company in the same town as these two instances.
A little less than a year ago, there was an article written by Michelle Renee about Internet Safety and Education. She listed the following facts:
* 64% of teens post photos or videos of themselves online, while more than half (58%) post info about where they live.
* 32% of all teens and 43% of teens active in social networking have been contacted online by a complete stranger.
* 69% of teens regularly receive personal messages online from people they don’t know and most of them don’t tell a trusted adult about it.
* 23% of children have had an encounter with a stranger on the Internet, including 7% of children who reported having met someone in the real world from the Internet.
* 79% of sexual solicitation incidents happened to youth while they were using their home computer.
* 40% of solicitations began with a solicitor communicating with a youth through an instant message or “IM”.
* 56% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send photographs of themselves to the solicitor and 27% of solicitations contained a request for the youth to send a sexual picture of themselves.
* 34% of youth have encountered unwanted sexual material while online.
Obviously, the message did not hit home with Superior Court. The Superior Court stated that there were enough resources available to the public that the Government did not need to regulate or censure the Internet. We as a society must take action on our own. We can’t wait for someone else to protect our kids for us.
What we need to focus on is the education of these children on the dangers of the Internet and we need to provide all the protection we can as parents. Researchers have proven that Parents are THE most effective teachers of Internet Safety to their children.
You may think “Oh, I have a filter or parental controls on our PC“
but have you really educated your child on Internet Safety?
We, as parents and as a society, need to instill safe practices into our children’s minds. CEN is different than all the other parental control software providers because they combine Education with Technology.
ClubTUKI, the social media platform of Children’s Education Network, actually rewards kids with TUKI Moola (virtual currency) for playing games that teach Internet Safety and Best Practices. What better way to get kids to learn something than to reward them? Club TUKI also teaches financial literacy with their auction and bank systems by allowing kids to use their Moola to bid “eBay style” on real items like Nintendo Wii’s and iPod’s and other cool KidSafe products.
It all comes down to interacting with your children from age 3 and beyond about safe internet practices, providing families with the technology that will protect them, and continuing to monitor and reward good choices.
Missing children, whatever the cause or reason, is not something you would ever wish on anyone. It really doesn’t matter whether Amber Dubois chose to runaway, planned a meeting with an Internet “friend,” or was abducted. Amber is a child, a child of our community, she is in danger and we all need to do what we can to help her get home, as well as prevent others from the same fate.
