Internet Predators

The most difficult areas to monitor, from a parent's point of view, are Internet chat rooms, which permit the kind of individuals that you would avoid by crossing the street to easily and readily approach your children. It happens like this:

Robert, a middle school student, enters a chat room for young teenagers and gets into the flow of conversation. He tells how old he is and where he goes to school. He gets a response from someone who appears to be a 13-year-old girl named Jennifer. Her messages come with misspelled words and typing mistakes, and she sounds like a teenager, but in reality she is a 42-year-old man who is trolling for young teenage boys. This pedophile may select Robert out of the group and invite him to enter a private room.

Pretending to be Jennifer, the pedophile might talk to Robert over several nights or weeks, becoming friendlier and friendlier and perhaps easing the conversation into sexual topics. Sooner or later, in most cases like this, Jennifer may ask where Robert lives and perhaps his phone number. Worse yet, the individual may try to set up a meeting with Robert.

Although this sort of scenario doesn't happen very often, parents can minimize the chance of this happening by:

• Restricting the hours that kids spend on line. As a general rule, the later at night one is on line, the weirder things get.
• Asking your kids what they are doing on line. Sit down with them from time to time to see for yourself.
• Pointing out stories in the newspaper about cyber predators. Make sure children do not give out information that would help someone find them in real life.

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