The Faceless Perils Of Cyberia

That’s a genuine exchange on the Net. Maya lucked out-she piled on in a public chatroom to a man with morals who left the room rather than respond. But she did draw responses from three other men in the room who were glad to oblige.

It’s today’s nightmare issue for parents: do you know what your kids are doing on the Net? Maya represents part of the nightmare-a precocious kid who goes looking for illicit thrills in chatrooms and Web sites. She could end up with escalating risks-chats with perverts, face-to-face meetings with all the attendant terrors. If she was unwise enough to proffer her real name, telephone number or e-mail id, she might be stalked. And then there are the kids who get online to do their homework, only to be chatted up by strangers or drift into the more unsavoury corners of cyberspace (chat rooms are higher risk than random websites). Though large areas of the Net are kid-friendly and reasonably child-safe, these are very genuine risks. This doesn’t mean you should cut off Net access altogether-your kid will only head off to cybercafes or friends’ homes where his or her use of the Net is unmonitored.

Start by educating yourself on the Net and child safety issues. While filtering and blocking tools like NetNanny and ChatNanny are not fully effective, there are sites that offer useful tips for parents-try www.safekids.com, www.getnetwise.org or www. netparenting.com for starters.
But ultimately, the real controls lie offline. The rules are a common sense extension of the classic "don’t talk to strangers" dictum. To begin with, share an e-mail account with your child (but don’t abuse his or her privacy). Make sure that your child understands the dangers of offering e-mail ID, phone numbers, school or home address and real name. Do monitor Net time-and ensure that your kids don’t get on the computer when neither parent is around. Don’t breathe down their necks, but do monitor chat sessions. In the end, this is like the real world-there are no guarantees.