The Virtual Hangout

by Cathi Herrod

Gone are the days when the cool place to be was the local cinema or the popular pizza joint. Now there’s a new location where teenagers are hanging out: the Internet. Unfortunately, new technology has brought new dangers. Today our kids are venturing alone into a virtual community full of strangers and predators that we can’t see.

MySpace.com, the popular “social network community,” has over 50 million members. Kids can have personalized pages where they chat with friends, show their sports pictures, or even join support groups – all things that certainly aren’t bad in themselves.

However, there are plenty of people on MySpace and other social networking sites that want to use the Internet to hurt our children. Predators can easily find information about where our kids live, what school they attend, and what their weekend plans are. MySpace can be a “one-stop shop” for sexual predators and pedophiles, says one Internet safety lawyer.

How can we protect our children? Last year, CAP worked in the Legislature to pass a law that requires convicted sex offenders to register their online identities with law enforcement officials, just like they register their home addresses. Parents can check their kids’ online “friends” against this list. This year, we supported another law that makes it a crime to misrepresent your age on the Internet for the purposes of committing a sex crime against a minor.

But laws alone are not enough. Parents need to be vigilant. Talk to your kids – especially teenagers - about their Internet use. Supervise your child’s Internet time. Establish privacy restrictions on sites like MySpace (settings that allow only approved friends to access your child’s information). Be wary of any new “friends” that your child makes online. Remember that the computer is no longer the only gateway to the Internet – many cell phones and video game consoles offer web access, too.

No matter the generation, predators will always be looking for new ways to hurt our children. Today, they are just using technology. We parents need to be proactive to prevent these dangers from hitting home because, unlike the Internet, you can’t hit the “back” button in life.

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Cathi Herrod is the President of the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP). To learn more about CAP visit their website at www.azpolicy.org.

© 2008 Good News Tucson™