Online Child Safety
Are There E-Strangers Visiting your Home?
OK, Parents listen up! This articles is for you.
We live in some strange times, don't we? Things have really changed since we went to school as far as freedom and security goes. Our parents didn't generally feel the need to walk or drive us to school like we do now with our children. Finishing high school and planning to hitchhike across Europe was still considered a cheap and safe means of transportation. Perhaps our loss of innocence began in the 1980's as notorious serial killer Clifford Olson terrorized British Columbia. It was such a scary time that even teachers would offer us a ride home from school. Bad things have always happened but we just didn't have the avenues to report them to the world like we do now. We live in an electronic society which means computers, video games, cell phones, blackberrys, etc. which has taken away some of the imagination needed to play good old-fashioned games. Don't get me wrong, I love techy gadgets like the next techno chick but due to added security measures, which we know we must follow and the availability of electronics, our children have become more or less homebodies communicating via electronic means. I'm not saying that we don't fill our kids lives up with outside activities too but we keep them on a short leash. What I mean is that in some cases, we overload the kids with outside activities to make up for the fact that they can't just go out and play unsupervised. We also want to give our kids the opportunities to learn skills that perhaps we didn't have access to or our parents couldn't afford. Now, once we get our children safely home from school and activities and they jump on the computer to chat with their friends, how many of you monitor their activities online? I know that some of you out there feel a little bit intimidated with computers as your kids know more about them than you do so that's why I’ve written these articles:How safe is your child online? and Instant Messaging Dangers
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