Keeping Teens Safe on the Internet

Teens can spend hours on the internet and there are many predators that hang out online. A good rule of thumb is to teach your teen not to spend time in chat rooms (it only eats up their precious internet time anyway), since a lot of them hang out there. Teach your teen not to trust anyone to be who they say they are on the internet, and to know that if someone gets offended by their carefulness, that person is almost certainly a predator.

Keep the computer in a public room where you can check on your teen occasionally and clearly see what is going on on the screen. There's no reason why a teen should have a computer in her bedroom. Make sure your teen feels secure talking with you about things that bother or worry her. She needs to know that, should she feel uncomfortable with any situation, she can talk to you about it, even while it's happening on the screen in front of her. Let her know that you won't be angry with her if she comes to you to get help.

Make sure your teen knows to never, ever give out any personal information on the internet, and then define what kind of information that is (besides the obvious home address and phone number, there's also the less obvious school, for example). And talk with your teen about what he does on the internet. Have him show you where he goes and what his friends' pages look like. Ask questions, like, "Is this Facebook profile set to private?" or, "Do you talk to people you don't know online? What kind of people? And how often?"

Learn how to block obscene content via your web browser or other software, and be aware that your teen may be accessing the internet somewhere else where controls may not be as strict, such as school or the public library. Be aware and your teen will be a little safer on the internet.