Teenagers on the Internet

I happen to be aquainted with a few teenagers, and a number of them I know have these utterly grandious ideas where they feel they'll be able to talk with anybody online (even people they don't know where sometimes personal information is exchanged), or post whatever kinds of photographs over the internet (one girl I know at the age of 18 has quite a few provacative ones posted) believing nothing will ever happen to them because they're too "smart" and "worldly" for the preditors out there. This scares me. Anyways, my posting is not about "parental controls" and whatnot for the computers (many of these kids I'm talking about don't have much or any parent's that supervise them), but more along the lines of how can I effectively convey to these teens there are dangerous people trolling the "World Wide Web" looking for adolecents just like themselves to prey on and eventually hurt them?

If I could get a few well thought out responses concerning this subject, it would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

Last Edited DarkEyes on 30-Jan-2006 3:52 PM

Sledge

6 post s
7-Feb-2006
11:45 AM

After reading your post, I had a thought (a rare occurrence lately). How about setting up a couple profiles (fakes) on a setup that simulates sites that the kids are using (myspace, livejournal, or whatever). If you have the time with the kids, let them play detective (I didn't want to suggest that they pretend to be a predator) to see what they can find out about the profile that has been posted. I would advise against giving them new skills to dig into someone's identity, but based on what they already know, show them how easy it is for someone who is not even committed to stalking kids to collect information. Or, let them setup their profile, even knowing that someone will be trying to find out their real identity, and then they can check each others to see what they info can get. This could actually be done with a word processor (to hide their handwriting) and anonymously drawn from a stack of identities- then correspondence would follow between the profiled child and the investigator child. Give them a couple hours altogether and see what happens.

Good Luck- if you find something that works, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

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