Invading my space
It’s 2005. Do you know what your kids are posting on the Internet?
While the phrase “digital divide” has been used in the past to describe the gulf between those people affluent enough to have computer and Internet access and those who cannot afford it, another digital divide exists between children and parents.
While many parents are computer literate, they didn’t grow up with computers as an integral part of their lives, as their children do now. Thus, their children are bound to get ahead of them in their explorations. That can sometimes create a dangerous situation for children who aren’t always aware of the threats they are exposing themselves to.
That’s why we published a story last week on MySpace.com, a site that’s become so popular with both teenagers and adults that it gets more daily hits than Google. The site itself, which basically allows users to create their own Web pages, is not inherently dangerous. What is dangerous is the way teenagers and predators could potentially use it.
Teenagers can innocently post personal information that might be a joke to friends but provocative to sexual predators, who can search MySpace like an electronic yearbook containing hundreds of thousands of students. People can search MySpace profiles by name, school, or ZIP code and come up with a list of Web sites to peruse.
Scarborough schools recently sent a letter home to parents urging parents to monitor their children’s Internet use and talk to them about the dangers of posting personal information. When Scarborough High School Principal Andrew Dolloff went online to see what students were posting, he found that, not only were students posting personal information, like names and phone numbers, some of them of them were even posting provocative pictures and comments about sex, drugs and alcohol.
“Once you’re on the Internet, you’re providing access to anyone in the world,” said Dolloff. “You’re really opening the door.”
Sexual predators have proven that they will use the Internet to stalk children. Police arrested a New Hampshire pastor, Charles Gravenhorst, in 2002 for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Windham girl, after he met her on AOL Instant Messenger while posing as a 19-year-old boy.
Just last month, police arrested William Vogel, 42, of Barbara Avenue in Scarborough, and charged him with soliciting sex from an underage child in an online chat room.
Along with Scarborough school administrators, police have already started working to educate children and parents about the potential danger some of the information they post online can pose. In Westbrook, Officer Brian Dell Isola, the school resource officer at Wescott Junior High, is planning to teach kids about Internet safety after he learned about MySpace.com at a national conference. In Windham, the Police Department is planning to put out a memorandum to parents, warning them about Internet crime and the danger of posting seemingly innocent information online.
We urge police and school administrators in other towns and other school districts to do the same. Alerting parents and students to potential danger can’t hurt and could help. Many parents are probably completely unaware of the Web site, much less what their children are posting on it, and many children are probably naA? ?ve about how dangerous posting personal information can be.
The ultimate responsibility in this situation, however, lies with parents, who are the only ones with direct control over what their children do. They don’t have to pull the plug, but it’s important to talk to kids about what they’re posting online and how that information can potentially be used against them.
It’s, unfortunately, not an innocent conversation to have with a child. But the world they’re growing up in won’t always be innocent.
Brendan Moran, editor
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