DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR CHILD IS TALKING TO?

Friends, strangers and predators
By Kelvin Wade December 02, 2010

Who's a stranger? I've told the story of when I was 5 and my family and I were visiting relatives in San Augustine, Texas. Two men drove up in a dirty old truck and asked me if I'd like to go with them to see a sawmill. I had no idea what a sawmill was but I knew I wanted to see one so I climbed into their truck. My brother Orvis saw me and quickly got our mother, who came flying out of the house to get me out of the truck.

Who's a stranger in 2010? Most of us have hundreds of Facebook friends; many or most are friends of friends and other people we've never met. That is the point of social networking, to network and make new friends and contacts. What we've done is turned what we used to call acquaintances into friends. Now 'friend' tends to mean anyone whose name you can spell correctly.

I thought of this when going to log on to my old MySpace account this week. I hadn't logged on to it in a long time as I'm a Facebook user. When I pulled the screen up, my granddaughter Lauryn's account information was already filled in the blanks. I've let her go online after her homework is done in the past.

Of course, I logged on to her account. I was shocked to find an e-mail conversation she'd had with someone who told her he was 18 and wanted to have sex with her. She told him she wasn't interested and that she was only 13.

This sicko persisted in trying to talk her into it, arguing that no one had to know. I was proud of how Lauryn handled the situation, telling the dirtbag to find someone over 18, someone that 'WON'T get you arrested.'

It's important for young people to be careful online. And we adults have to monitor their activities to make sure they're safe. The predators are out there. Just a cursory visit to www.perverted-justice.com yields harrowing stories of children assaulted by people they met online.

One of the problems of broadening the definition of friend is we shrank the pool of 'strangers.' We've had to convince children that strangers aren't men lurking in the bushes and they don't all look like Charles Manson. We've had to tell them strangers were anyone they didn't know, no matter how nice or safe they seemed.

Along comes social networking and just like we adults do, our children are making friends of friends. Sometimes they're inviting people to the party they don't even know. Take a look and see how many MySpace and Facebook friends your child has. Do they really know 500 people?

What's worse, kids are giving out their cell phone numbers and texting and sexting. We've made preying on children so much easier.

Then there are the sickos such as the one who contacted Lauryn, who probably fish for dozens of children a day, hoping one will bite. Lauryn's parents and I, with the aid of law enforcement, are trying to get this guy off the street.

We're the only thing between them and our children. We have to teach children how to handle online predators. We have to report them. We have to know what kids are doing online, who their friends are and who they're texting. You wouldn't drop your child off downtown in a large city and let them go make new friends by themselves. That's what the Internet is, only bigger.

A stranger is still someone you don't know. Peace.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES: It's a shame that something like the internet, one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, is also something that has helped make assaulting children much easier than before.

Parents have got to police this. The police don't have enough officers to do it. Departments that do have cyber crimes division usually can only afford to have one or two officers do it. There are organizations like www.perverted-justice.com but they can't match the sheer number of offenders out there. So it's up to parents to find out who their childrens' friends are and what they're doing online. A child online unsupervised is asking for trouble.

My granddaughter handled this situation properly. I would've only preferred that after it happened, she told her parents about it.

If you come across an online offender, report them to the police. Print out all conversations and or messages they send. You may not be able to get the police interested because they deal with such a large amount of cases that they can't handle every one. And the bottom line is....police and district attorneys don't prosecute every crime. They just can't. I think it's important that if you find an offender and have their screen name or email address, report them to their ISP. If they're on Facebook or Myapsce, report them. Notify people. Put them on blast.

If you're talking to someone you don't know on the internet, then you have no way of knowing if they are who they say they are. People fudge facts about themselves when they meet face to face so talking to someone anonymously online, its best to take what is said with a grain of salt. Parents should tell their kids to only contact people they know. Myspace has a setting where only people who know the child's email address or full name can contact them.

There is software available that will enable parents to keep tabs on their children's activities. You can find information on that here www.spectorsoft.com or www.software4parents.com. Do what you have to do to keep your kids safe. Your child's emotional wellbeing and physical safety trump their privacy. Fight back.