Allowing kids to go online without supervision or ground rules is like allowing them to explore a major metropolitan area by themselves. The Internet, like a city, offers an enormous array of entertainment and educational resources but also presents some potential risks. Kids need help navigating this world.

Where Do Kids Connect?

• Kids go online almost anywhere. They surf the Internet and send messages from a home computer or one at a friends home, library, or school.

• Kids connect at coffee shops and other hotspots using laptops and wireless connections.

• Internet-enabled, video-game systems allow them to compete against and chat with players around the world.

• Wireless devices enable kids to surf the Web and exchange messages, photographs, and short videos from just about anywhere.

You cant watch your kids every minute, but you do need to use strategies to help them benefit from the Internet and avoid its potential risks.

By exploring the Internet with your kids, you greatly expand its capacity as an educational tool. By providing guidance and discussion along the way, you increase kids online skills and confidence along with their ability to avoid potential risks. And you might be surprised by what kids teach you at the same time.

You can't take it back...think before you type.

We at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® (NCMEC) urge you to do one of the single most important things to promote safety begin a dialogue with your kids about the rewards and potential risks of Internet use. We also encourage you to visit the NetSmartz® Workshop at www.NetSmartz.org and NetSmartz411sm at www.NetSmartz411.org or call 1-888-NETS411 (638-7411) to learn more about about online safety.

Its up to parents and guardians to assess the potential risks and benefits of permitting their kids to use the wide range of Internet websites and applications available. This brochure provides a list of the most popular online activities for kids along with the strategies for and benefits of reducing the potential risks associated with those activities.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 23 percent of nursery school children in the United States use the Internet, 32 percent of kindergartners go online, and by high school 80 percent of children use the Internet.1

Benefits

Browsing the Internet is like having the worlds largest library and entertainment system at your fingertips. Kids are able to read stories, tour museums, visit other countries, play games, look at photographs, shop, and do research to help with homework.

Potential Risks

• Kids may come across websites containing adult images or demeaning, racist, sexist, violent, or false information.

• It is hard for kids to distinguish reliable sources of information from less reliable ones. Some believe because information is posted online it must be true.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risks

• Choose search engines carefully. Some are specifically designed for kids, and others offer kid-safe options.

• Tell kids when they come across any material making them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused to immediately tell you or another trusted adult.

• Help kids find information online. By searching the Internet together you help them find reliable sources of information and distinguish fact from fiction.

Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer filters to prevent kids from accessing inappropriate websites. Contact your ISP about what safe-search options they offer. Remember, as a consumer you have a right to choose an ISP with the services meeting your familys needs.

Benefits

Adults and kids use e-mail to communicate rapidly and cost-effectively with people all over the world. E-mail transmits messages, documents, and photographs to others in a matter of seconds or minutes.

Potential Risks

• Kids are able to set up private accounts through free Web-based, e-mail services without asking permission from parents or guardians.

• Anyone using e-mail is vulnerable to receiving spam, messages from people or companies encouraging recipients to buy something, do something, or visit a particular website. Spam may be sexually suggestive or offensive in other ways.

• Senders sometimes disguise themselves, pretending to be someone else a friend or acquaintance, a well-known bank, a government agency for illicit purposes. This is known as phishing.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risks

• Talk with your kids about their e-mail accounts, and discuss the potential risks involved. Remind them to never share passwords with anyone but you, not even their closest friends.

• Before you sign up with a service provider, research the effectiveness of its spam filters. You may also purchase spam-filter software separately.

• Teach kids not to open spam or e-mails from people they don't know in person. Remind them not to respond to any online communication in a sexually provocative way. Ask them to show you suspicious communications.

• If your kids receive e-mail containing threats or material making them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused, report it to your service provider. Your provider s address is usually found on their home page.

Instant Messsaging

Benefits

Instant Messaging (IM) allows adults and kids to have conversations in real time through their computer. IMing is particularly appealing to kids who use abbreviated lingo to communicate with each other. Most IM services offer a feature showing a users contacts, known as a buddy list, which tells the user whether a buddy is online and available to chat.

Potential Risks

IM is one method used to cyberbully, harass, or intimidate others. It may also be used to engage kids in a sexually explicit conversation. IM interactions may go from an innocent conversation to a sexually explicit or otherwise inappropriate exchange without warning.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risks

• Remind kids to IM only people they know in real life and who have been approved by you.

• Use privacy settings to limit contact to only those on your child's buddy list. Make sure other users cannot search for your child by his or her e-mail address and username.

• Make sure both your kids and you are familiar with the blocking features available on most IM services. Tell your kids to block any sender they don't know who IMs them.

• Take the time to learn the online lingo used by kids so you understand what they are talking about with each other.

• Whats a P911? Its shorthand for parent alert a code some kids use to let others know a parent or guardian is watching. If you have trouble translating your kids online lingo, visit www.NetSmartz.org. There you'll find a list of popular terms and abbreviations used in IM and chatrooms.

Benefits

Social-networking websites allow kids to connect with their friends and other users with similar interests. Kids socialize and express themselves by exchanging instant messages, e-mails, or comments and posting photographs, creative writing, artwork, videos, and music to their blogs and personal profiles.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles on a social-networking website such as Facebook or MySpace.2

A survey of 10 to 17 year olds revealed 34% had posted their real names, telephone numbers, home addresses, or the names of their schools online where anyone could see; 45% had posted their dates of birth or ages; and 18% had posted pictures of themselves.3

Potential Risks

• Some websites and services ask users to post a profile with their age, sex, hobbies, and interests. While these profiles help kids connect and share common interests, potential exploiters may pretend to be someone else and can and do use these profiles to search for victims.

• Kids sometimes compete to see who has the greatest number of contacts and will add new members to their lists even if they don't know them in person.

• Kids cant take back the online text and images theyve entered. Kids may post information and images that are provocative and inappropriate. Once online, chat as well as other Web postings become public information. Anything posted online may be saved and forwarded to an unlimited number of users. Remind kids once images are posted they lose control of them and can never get them back.

• Kids have been reprimanded by their school administrators and families; denied entry into schools; and even not hired because of dangerous, demeaning, or harmful information found on their personal websites or blogs.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risks

• Urge kids to use privacy settings to restrict access to profiles so only those on their contact lists are able to view them.

• Remind kids to only add people they know in person to their contact lists. location.

• Encourage them to choose appropriate screennames or nicknamessuch as those that refer to sports and interests, but are not sexual, violent, or offensive. Make sure the name doesn't include information revealing their identity or location.

• Visit social-networking websites with your kids, and exchange ideas about what you think is safe and unsafe.

• Ask your kids about the people they are communicating with online.

• Insist your kids never give out personal information or arrange to meet in person with someone theyve met online without first checking with you.
  

• Encourage your kids to think before typing, Is this message hurtful or rude? Also urge your kids not to respond to any rude or harassing messages or ones making them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused. Have them show you such messages.

Benefits

Many parents and guardians look at cellular telephones as a necessity for their kids. It is reassuring to know they may reach you or call for help in an emergency. Cellular telephones/wireless devices may also be used to send text messages, images, and videos.

Potential Risks

• Cellular telephones make it easy for kids to communicate with others without their parents or guardians knowledge.

• Kids are increasingly using cellular telephones/wireless devices to take sexually explicit photographs of themselves and send them to their friends. Once these photographs are sent, there is no way of getting them back. In some instances children have been prosecuted for production of child pornography for taking these pictures.

• Kids may also take embarrassing or revealing photographs of others and post them to the Internet, leaving victims few options to defend or protect themselves from this form of bullying.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risks

• Create rules about the appropriate use of cellular telephones/wireless devices and set limits, including who your kids may communicate with and when they may use their cellular telephones/wireless devices

• Review cellular-telephone/wireless-device records for any unknown numbers and late-night telephone calls

• Teach your kids to never post their cellular telephone number anywhere online

• Talk to your kids about the possible implications of sending sexually explicit or provocative images of themselves or others