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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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In Our View: Parents Must Stay Vigilant

They are first line of defense as children participate in a dangerous online world

The Columbian
Published:

It is no secret that the world is a more complex place than it used to be. That is especially true for childhood, with kids being brought up in an interactive landscape that was inconceivable when their parents were young.

And while the digital age carries with it copious benefits that include round-the-clock access to information and friends, it also is accompanied by newfangled dangers. That was the lesson that accompanied a recent story about online predators by Columbian reporter Emily Gillespie, and it is a lesson that calls for reminders of how parents can assist their children in navigating the labyrinth of a wired-in society.

Among the most profound risks is that posed by those who contact teens or pre-teens and groom them for sexual exploitation. While the prevalence of smartphones and tablets and computers gives kids access to a world without boundaries, it also gives would-be predators access to the children.

This leaves law enforcement with no shortage of possible crimes to investigate. The local multiagency Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit, which also investigates crimes such as identity theft, reports that it receives between 200 and 300 cases a year to pursue.

To combat sexual exploitation, it also conducts occasional sting operations by having officers pose online as teens in chat rooms and seeing who contacts them. One recent sting, conducted out of a middle-class Vancouver neighborhood, resulted in 11 people being arrested for the attempted rape of children. Vancouver police Detective Rob Givens said, “My philosophy is: If the bad people are chatting with me, that means they’re not chatting with your kids.”

But law enforcement can only do so much. A tip line run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year received 8.2 million reports of potential online child exploitation. With the world becoming increasingly interconnected, that number is certain to grow.

Because of that, it is essential that parents serve as the first line of defense for their children. Among the recommendations from experts in the field:

• Talk with your children about the dangers presented and the methods used by online predators. This is not a scare tactic; it is simply a nod to reality and an understanding that going online requires informed and responsible kids.

• Limit the use of computers, tablets and cellphones to common areas in the home. Children need to understand that if they want to keep activity a secret, they probably should not be engaging in it.

• Teach kids that they should not befriend somebody online who they have not met in the real world.

• And get children to understand that photos sent on a cellphone can be placed on the internet and stay there forever.

There are other guidelines, as well, and parents should be aware of those as well as the latest apps and methods that are popular tools for online predators.

The most important aspect of helping children to navigate the online world is maintaining open communication. Children should be aware of the dangers but not fearful of them, and they should have confidence that they can approach a parent about a situation that makes them uncomfortable.

In that regard, the basics of parenting have changed little over the generations, even if parenting is more complex these days.

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