Kids In Cyberspace - A Guide for Parents and Teachers

Introduction

The Internet is a wonderful tool for communications, education or leisure. It is a library with an incredible 100 million books on every topic known, easily accessible for research and study . It gives you the ability to chat in real time to anyone, anywhere across the world. Its high speed electronic mail routes link up the entire world into a true global village. Its an exciting and essential resource for all our children - as essential as learning to read, write and do Math.

But there are some risks to our children when they are using the Internet, risks which parents need to be aware of. Internet technology is a tool. A tool can be used or abused. This brochure will explain to you the abuses that can and do occur.

The internet is not only a window through which our children can see the whole world of experience and knowledge; it is also a door through which other people can enter to communicate and reach our children. It must therefore be used carefully and wisely.

If you read the material below and decide that the internet is too dangerous a tool to have in your house, and you decide to prevent your children from using it, then this information will have failed in its purpose. It is not my purpose here to scare you, only to bring to your attention issues that you may not have considered before. No one can harm your child through the internet unless your child opens the door, makes elementary safety errors, or is too naive and trusting of strangers. As long as your kids are careful and safety conscious, nothing can happen to them online.

We hope you will use the information contained here to help make your child's time online a valuable experience. We owe this to our kids. Our children and the Internet are the future.

Internet Addiction

It is a fact that children (and adults!) can become addicted to the Internet. Their school grades and social life may suffer as a consequence.

The Internet, particularly online Live Chat, is an addictive medium. Without good supervision and time management training, teens online may abandon their schoolwork and their school friends in favor of an intensive immersion into the world of Internet Chats. Intensive online usage can be highly hypnotic, causing tunnel vision and loss of a sense of time.

A child may come to view the Internet only as a vast electronic game. They may play for hours and hours, not recognizing the Internet as a gateway to the real world with real-world risks.

A child can become so immersed in the online world that he or she abandons his/her offline friends in favor of an online peer group. School work, sports and offline social life can all be abandoned.