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Sarah J. Blake has a Bachelor's degree in psychology and special education and earned her M.Div. from Anderson University School of Theology in Anderson, Indiana, in 2009. She worked for several years as a child care provider for children ages birth to six. She currently serves as moderator for the BVI-Parents discussion group, which provides support for parents of children with visual impairments throughout the world; and maintains the Growing Strong web site, which provides information about family life, faith, mental health, and living with disabilities and special health care needs. She is a licensed minister with the Church of God (Anderson, IN).
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The Internet is a powerful tool for research and a popular source of entertainment. It also allows people to network personally and professionally. Children begin to learn to use it for all of these purposes at very young ages.
Safety online is one of the most important concerns facing parents today. Of additional importance is the need to balance concerns about safety with accurate perceptions about the Internet and the people who use it. As a person who is blind, I have found that online safety can often be approached in the same way that I approach my need for offline safety. Because I cannot see the people I interact with in "real life," I need to employ creative methods to ensure my safety. The same holds true regarding online safety.
A few practices can increase the safety of all children online.
Do not get your children Hotmail or Yahoo accounts. Spammers (including pornography sources and individuals seeking people's personal information) often send mail to Hotmail and Yahoo accounts at random or en mass.
Teach your children how to target their web searches to avoid offensive material by avoiding slang terms which are generally innocent but may be used as keywords on offensive sites. This necessitates discussing concepts which may seem uncomfortable to you; but it is far better for your children to learn about these things from you than from an offensive site served up by the search engine.
Maintain a positive attitude that helps your children feel comfortable talking with you about their online experiences. Use both verbal and nonverbal communication to let your children know that you welcome their thoughts, are willing to answer questions, and want to help them learn to make important decisions. Most importantly, help them to understand that good decisions do not always need to agree with your personal opinions. If a child senses that you are hesitant to discuss something or uncomfortable with her ideas, she may conclude that she should not discuss them with you. Poor communication hinders safety in all areas of life.
Teach general safety precautions for online interactions in chat rooms and in email. Children are naturally curious about each other, and in many cases this curiosity helps them to relate to one another. Encourage your child to develop healthy boundaries about what kind of information to share and under what circumstances sharing more personal information might be acceptable.
I was 19 years old when I first began using telecommunications in 1991. My parents were fearful of the Internet for quite some time, but I was not. Over the years I have developed a relatively high profile within certain circles online. Safety issues do not change just because a person becomes an adult. I have met over 40 people in person after initial online contact. In fact, I have been an overnight guest in at least 15 homes after initial online contact. Some of the experiences were negative; but I would not classify them as dangerous. Recognizing that the Internet is home to good things as well as danger and sharing those good things with your children will go a long way toward building trust and giving your children a healthy regard for potential dangers. Here are a few of the things I've learned.
If your phone number is listed, anyone can find you online whether or not your child reveals personal information. If you want to ensure that you are safe from unwanted calls and visitors, unlist your phone number in addition to talking with your child about safety precautions. Do searches for your family members online and take steps to remove information like addresses and phone numbers from public sites.
Remember that many people (both children and adults) are safely using their legal names online. In many cases, being secretive about one's name can actually breed suspicion. Would you feel more comfortable with your child talking with a stranger who identified himself as Jolly Joe or just Joe, or with a person who identified himself as Joe Miller from Cincinnati? It is important for people to be as comfortable with your child as you want her to be with them. Achieving a balance in revealing personal information is important when interacting online. Think of the online interaction as if you were in a large room full of strangers. What would you want your nametag to say?
A significant number of children are also open about their ages. Most predators need motivation to stalk a person. A name alone is generally not reason enough unless the person knows you and has a reason to be personally interested in you. I would caution a child against blindly giving too much revealing information to a new contact online, and especially against discussing being home alone. However, it is important to note that if your child participates on a sports team or in extracurricular activities at school, pictures of the group and names of participants may be available on school web sites or other media. (These things have been published in newspapers for many years.) If someone is motivated to find your child, it can be done. I do not say this to frighten you but to help you to be aware that the Internet itself is not necessarily an increased danger to your child provided that your child uses it wisely.
If your child is interested in chat rooms or email pals, there are safe places for this type of interaction. These places are generally set up and monitored by adults with a good knowledge of the Internet and relevant safety issues, and those adults take precautions to ensure the safety of the group. Sometimes things happen that shouldn't; and, like sexual misconduct in the "real world," those events lead to better safety protocols in the future. In this way, Internet groups are very much like offline groups: rules are developed, relaxed, and reinstated based on the make-up and needs of the particular group.
An important word about email-based groups needs to be said. In many groups, only five or ten percent of the members participate in discussions. This often creates the impression that the group is very intimate when in reality the group may have 100 or even many more members. For this reason, it is very important that addresses, phone numbers, and other such personal information never be given out on an email group, included in an email signature, etc. This piece of safety information is important for adults as well as for children. As an email group moderator, I have encountered this problem in several forms. Occasionally adults with cognitive disabilities post to groups, assuming that everyone on the group is their friend, and deliberately request that someone call them. As another side to the problem, many adults subscribe to groups from their work-related email accounts. Their office contact information is thus included in a signature which is appended at the bottom of every email that is sent out. When they post to the list, that contact information is delivered to hundreds of strangers who do not need it. Most can be assumed to be trustworthy; but this cannot be guaranteed.
If your child wants to meet a person with whom she has been corresponding or chatting online, I recommend that the first contact be by phone. Tone of voice can be a good indicator of some potential for problems, and a phone contact will also allow for monitoring of some types of background noise that indicate that a person is being truthful about things he/she has told your child. For instance, if a person says she is 15 years old and has six younger siblings, it is reasonable to assume that children would be heard in the background during a phone conversation.
If your child wants to meet someone in person after communicating online, a supervised meeting might be arranged. Alternatively, if your child is nearing adulthood, you may feel comfortable permitting an unsupervised meeting if you have also communicated with the person in question or know something about the environment where the meeting will take place.
I am not convinced that Internet contact is more risky than face-to-face contact. As a blind person, I have to make judgment calls every day about whether it is appropriate to give out certain types of information and whether a person is telling me the truth about who he or she is. I have the same concerns about safety whether a person is offering me assistance in public, striking up a conversation with me about my dog guide that leads to discussing other aspects of my life, or putting information on my web site. When I am in contact with a person, I use open-ended questions and my own research techniques to get information and determine whether it is likely to be true. I might ask questions of other group members just as I might ask questions of people nearby regarding a person who claims to be a police officer when offering me assistance. I might enquire about the person's occupation and family, other activities and interests, and I might even do a bit of research about the town where they live so that I am able to confirm information and identify consistency or potential deceit. On the Internet, I also have the advantage of being able to use Google to look up a person's name and email address to see whether their posting habits are consistent and whether they talk about the same things on other groups. Too much inconsistency in a person's posts tells me that I should not trust them.
I am fairly open about my life. However, I also expect people to respect boundaries I set. In any situation, there are certain things I would absolutely not permit a person to do. I also know that I have the right to decide that I am not comfortable with other behaviors, and I expect people to abide by requests I make when something is not comfortable for me unless there is a very good reason not to. For instance, I generally don't like to have someone touching or pulling on me without my permission in public. However, if the building is on fire and I am injured or incapacitated, I would prefer getting out of the building rather than insisting that people respect my touch preferences.
I use this example to make a point. It is necessary to cultivate the skill of discernment. It is impossible to make safety into a formula. A great player in the equation is the personal sense that someone is trustworthy. That personal sense can be accurate or not. It must be trained well. Parents can help train it by being careful not to overbreed suspicion or underbreed caution.
Finally, it must be emphasized that every sexual offender is not an adult male. Some are female; and some are teenagers. The best safety precautions are knowledge of things that indicate that a person may be unsafe and knowledge of what to do if/when you feel you are in danger. Safety is not only about avoiding getting hurt. It is also about how to respond when you have been hurt. There will be instances in every person's life when hurt happens; and growing up must include preparation for those times.
Sarah J. Blake