Parental Consent for Social Networking?
In my previous post, I wrote about how dangerous it may be for a young person to post an invitation to a party on a social netwoking site such as Facebook. Situations like these are a reality, and there is so much more...
I came across a blog that was talking about the fact that North Carolina was trying to pass Senate bill 132 that would restrict and reduce children's access to social networks without parental consent. I cut and pasted this paragraph from the Bill:
[Social networking sites are the new playground for predators. As of July, 2007,
MySpace has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders on its site, four
times more than its original estimate. That number includes just the predators
who signed up using their real names, and not the ones who failed to register or
used fake names, or who haven’t been convicted.]
This is really scarry stuff!!! I think that passing a Bill would be a step in the right direction although there are many, many loop holes that one can capitalize on when they are in the world wide web to get around a Bill such as this.
As a parent and a future educator, I believe that it will be up to us to educate our children on the dangers and then follow up constantly to ensure that they are using technology safely.
I came across a blog that was talking about the fact that North Carolina was trying to pass Senate bill 132 that would restrict and reduce children's access to social networks without parental consent. I cut and pasted this paragraph from the Bill:
[Social networking sites are the new playground for predators. As of July, 2007,
MySpace has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders on its site, four
times more than its original estimate. That number includes just the predators
who signed up using their real names, and not the ones who failed to register or
used fake names, or who haven’t been convicted.]
This is really scarry stuff!!! I think that passing a Bill would be a step in the right direction although there are many, many loop holes that one can capitalize on when they are in the world wide web to get around a Bill such as this.
As a parent and a future educator, I believe that it will be up to us to educate our children on the dangers and then follow up constantly to ensure that they are using technology safely.
posted by Jane at 9:54 PM
5 Comments:
It is such a scary situation on some of these sites. Thanks for posting the stats
Hey Jane, thanks for posting those stats. I know see the scary facts of sites such as facebook. I often find myself getting "invited" to events and have even thought of posting my own event. I will definitely be thinking about these stats next time I do things on facebook.
HI Jane
I watched a show on America's Most Wanted and they showed how hard it is to catch predators on the internet. They used the current Miss America to chat to people on line and set up a police ring to catch them. She would lure them into coming to her home (police apartment) and tell them she was 13 years old. They managed to catch a few of them but the show said there is so many more out there. It is hard to tell kids because it is the same as we were, at that age you are invincable and will live forever and nothing will ever happen to you. The old fogies like us parents do not know a thing and the teachers know even less about what it is like to be young.
I have a good friend who works at the Regina police department and her daughter is on facebook and has her profile on there with her phone number, her home address, her age, her full name. I looked her profile up and told my friend that her daughter had all the information on there and she basically told me to mind my own business; so even people who should know, do not often realize the danger and think it can never happen to them.
With my older niece who is fifteen, and knows it all!, we set up a facebook saying we were 15 and 16 years old and she finally could see that if I can be 16 and reply to her friends - then so could any weirdo out there and it finally sunk in after two days and we deleted it. Sometimes kids need to see for themselves.
Yeah Ronda, you are right...there are definitely things that they will unfortunatley have to figure out on their own.
I agree it's important that we watch them physically but just as importantly digitally. Brian
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