Teens generally don’t think twice about including their first names and photos on their personal online profiles, but most refrain from using full names or making their profiles fully public, a new survey finds.
A rising trend in parenting today is worrying about their children on the Internet. As the threat of online predators grows it seems that the youth of today have also grown in their habits of protecting themselves. The owners and operators of social networking sites such as Loowa (http://loowa.com) and the better known MySpace (http://myspace.com) have mechanisms in place to help protect the young audience. And it has been proven by this recent survey that the majority of youth take advantage of those features and do protect themselves.
The opportunities presented to the youth of today to share themselves with others of their age are astonishing. Something that hasn’t been presented to a growing generation before. It seems that contradictory to the media hype of unsafe web habits, youth actually take the steps to protect themselves. This is not to say let your children run around on the internet alone, but instead teach them safe habits and why they should use them. Continue to teach youth how to be safe and they will continue to use the knowledge. It just goes to show that the youth of today can indeed be trusted with the current technology and can continue to develop new ways to bring the world together.
Read the full article regarding the latest survey on teen safety on the internet: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/19/internet.youths.ap/index.html
Learn more about safety on the Internet:
SafeTeens.com
Netsmartz.org
IS the threat of online predators growing? Can you show that statistically?
Yes, the perception of a threat IS growing. However if the real threat is growing is been greatly debated. Though few instances actually occur they receive over the top press. Feeding the publics reception of a great threat online.
I have to say I do agree with you Kevin regarding “teaching” the youth to be safe rather then trying to protect and filter everything for them. The fear has already been created by the media, parents and peers so now rather then hiding from these issues or covering them up we can educate students how to protect them selves and as we already know, students know more then we usually give them credit for.