AWARENESS PROGRAM
BMS students learn about Internet dangers

Julie Pharr told Bullard Middle School students last week that 20 minutes was all the time an Internet predator needed to track down personal information about them - including an address, age, school, parents' names and the students' schedules.

Pharr demonstrated this through an online presentation she gave students hoping to increase their awareness of Internet safety.

"You need to be careful," Pharr cautioned teens. "Time spent talking to someone doesn't equal knowing someone."

P h a r r , the community outreach director for Cherokee County Crisis Center, makes many presentations like this to school in the Cherokee County area.

"I know it's hard for them - especially at this age - to understand the danger out there," she said. "I'm not trying to scare them.

"The Internet - when used correctly - is a great tool," she said. "But with all the good stuff comes some very real risks."

To illustrate that point, Pharr showed two stories of teens who had bad experiences with predators on the Internet.

Most of the time, according to Pharr, it begins innocuously.

"But teens - both male and female - are targets, especially in chat rooms, instant messaging and sites like MySpace," she said.

The program presented by Pharr is a product of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The center, in conjunction with Cox Communications, did a survey and analysis recently, and the results, Pharr said, can be alarming.

"More than just teens are at risk, there was a recent case in Tyler where an online relationship went sour," she said. "The suspect drove states away, came to the woman's house and killed her.

"She'd never told him what city she lived in."

The program, entitled "NetSmartz," also found:

Online behavior:

! Teens have established significant presence on social networking web pages: 61 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds have a personal profile on a site such as MySpace, Friendster, or Xanga. Half have also posted pictures of themselves online.

! Older teens (16-17s) and girls especially use the Internet for social interaction, meeting friends, and networking.

! However, many have also been exposed to the Internet's accompanying potential risks.

! 71 percent reported receiving messages online from someone they don't know.

! 45 percent have been asked for personal information by someone they don't know.

! 30 percent have considered meeting someone that they've only talked to online

! 14 percent have actually met a person face-to-face they they've only spoken to over the Internet (9 percent of 13-15s; 22 percent of 16-17s).

! When teens receive messages online from someone they don't know, 40 percent reported that they'll usually reply and chat with that person.

! Only 18 percent said they'd tell an adult. Perceptions of Internet Safety:

! 20 percent of teens report that it is safe (i.e. "somewhat" or "very safe") to share personal information on a public blog or networking site.

! As well, 37 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds said they are "not very concerned" or "not at all concerned" about someone using information they've posted online in ways they don't want.

Families talking to teens about Internet safety helps reduce some youth exposure to potential threats and encourages safer online decisions among teens:

! 33 percent of 13- to- 17-year-olds reported that their parents or guardians know "very little" or "nothing" about what they do on the Internet.

! 48 percent of 16-17s said their parents or guardians know "very little" or "nothing"

! Fully 22 percent of those surveyed reported their parents or guardians have never discussed Internet safety with them.

! On the other hand, 36 percent of youth-girls and younger teens most notably-said that their parents or guardians have talked to them "a lot" about online safety, and 70 percent said their parents or guardians have discussed the subject with them during the past year.

! Fewer teens whose families have talked to them "a lot" about online safety have an IM name or pictures of themselves on the Internet, compared to kids whose families have not talked to them at all. More teens who've talked to parents or guardians also ignore messages from unfamiliar people, refuse to reply or chat, block unknown senders, and report these occurrences to trusted adults. Parents' Internet monitoring study

! Over half (51 percent) of parents either do not have or do not know if they have software on their computer(s) that monitors where their teenager(s) go online and with whom they interact.

! 42 percent of parents do not review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via Instant Messaging.

! Teenagers who Instant Message use chat lingo to communicate and parents don't know the meanings of some of the most commonly used phrases. 57 percent don't know LOL (Laughing Out Loud), 68 percent don't know BRB (Be Right Back), and 92 percent don't know A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location).

! 95 percent of parents couldn't identify common chat room lingo that teenagers use to warn people they're chatting with that their parents are watching. Those phrases are POS (Parent Over Shoulder) and P911 (Parent Alert).

! Nearly three out of 10 (28 percent) of parents don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online.

! 30 percent of parents allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office. Parents say they are more vigilant about where their teen(s) go online if the computer is in a public area of the household.

! 58 percent of parents surveyed say they review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via Instant Messaging; 42 percent do not. Characteristics of youth who form close online relationships

This report used the data from the above-mentioned national sample of Internet users, ages 10 to 17, to explore the characteristics of youth who had formed close relationships with people they first met online and found that

! Fourteen percent of youth reported close online friendships and 2 percent reported online romances. Girls were slightly more likely than boys to have close online relationships with 16 and 12 percent, respectively.

! Girls aged 14 to 17 were about twice as likely as girls who were 10 to 13 to form close online relationships.

! The two problem characteristics associated with close online relationships were high parent-child conflict and being highly troubled. The girls with high levels of parent-child conflict reported yelling, nagging, and taking away privileges by parents at a higher level than the other girls. The highly troubled girls had levels of depression, victimization, and troubling life events at a higher level than the other girls in the sample. Girls in either of these categories were more than twice as likely as the other girls in the sample to have formed close online relationships.

! Boys who had low communication with their parents, and who also reported that their parents were less likely to know where they were and who they were with than the other boys in the sample were the most strongly associated with close online relationships.

! Youth with problems were more likely to have formed online romantic relationships, been asked by online friends for face-to-face meetings, and attended face-to-face meetings with people they first met online.

! Youth who communicate well with their friends and family have people to talk with about online encounters; can get advice about behavior they find weird or unnerving; and, therefore, develop a sense of appropriate and inappropriate online behavior.

For more information about Internet safety, go to www.netsmartz. org