Pornography and Sexual Predators

The Facts: While most kids who receive sexual advances online ignore or delete them, you need to educate your child to ensure his safety.

• 42% of kids (ages 10 – 17) admitted to having seen online porn while surfing the Internet, according to a 2005 a University of New Hampshire study.
• 66% of those kids did not click on the links they saw or look for this content
• One in seven kids between the ages of 10 – 17 has been sexually approached online.
• 43% of sexual advances were made by other kids under 18. 11% of these advances were made by people the victims already knew.

Protect your kids with “show and tell”:

Show:

• If you allow your kids to use IM, chat rooms or blogs, help them sign up. Show what not to fill in, so they don’t give away personal information. Talk about what kinds of conversations are appropriate and what are not.
• Make sure your kids use gender-neutral screen names. Show them some examples of screen names that are not appropriate (for example: girliegrl85)
• Show your children stories about other kids who have been victims.

Tell:

• Tell your kids not to respond to sexual advances and to inform you if someone approaches them.
• Tell them not to respond to emails from people they don’t know. It’s okay not to answer every instant message or email.
• Tell kids not to share personal informationincluding their phone and cell numbers, address, age, e-mail address, screen names, pictures, school and the town where you live. Explain why this is dangerous.
• Explain how people “lie” online. Tell your kids that the “16-year-old boy” who wants to meet you might not be sixteen. He could be a 45-year-old man instead. People also pretend to be members of the opposite sex online. You might show older kids articles about online pedophiles who try to meet kids online for sex.
• Tell them never to meet anyone in person who they meet online. You never know who that person really is.