Seminar gives parent tips to protect their children against cyber bullying

February 19, 8:37 AMDallas Parenting ExaminerChristy Coffman

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A new high tech threat to the younger generation has emerged on the scene.

Cyber bullying has become an issue which appears to be causing harm to young people throughout the country.

Cyber bullying is when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. Some common forums for cyber bullying include instant messenger and chat rooms, e-mail and message boards and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Earlier this week Texas Sen. Florence Shaprio introduced a bill to guard against online sexual predators on MySpace, but it’s not only sexual predators who can affect young people online.

Thursday night, Plano ISD Council of PTAs sponsored a cyber bullying seminar for parents. Justin Nichols, community liaison for Crossroads Family Services, led the discussion and informational meeting. He said the first question parents should ask, if they want to know if their child is involved in cyber bullying, is if the child has their own computer.

Nichols said that 42 percent of children with access to the Internet report seeing online inappropriate, abusive or untrue information regarding someone they know, but only 10 percent ever tell a parent.

An example Nichols gave parents on the effects of cyber bullying was the case of Megan Meier. In 2006, Meier struck up an online friendship on MySpace with “Josh Evans,” who she thought was a new boy in her hometown. The “friend” was actually a group of individuals, including adults, who set up the account to humiliate Meier. Once the online friendship between Meier and “Evans” deteriorated, Meier committed suicide.

The most common forms of cyber bulling are stealing usernames and passwords, altering photographs and posting them to humiliate the victim, recording conversations without the participants’ knowledge and then posting it online, creating online polls and surveys that are mean-spirited and using Web sites and blogs to post embarrassing information and/or to spread rumors about the victim.

“I’m hesitant to let my kids, who are younger, online until I know more about it,” said Tracy Whickstrom, one of the parents who attended the seminar. “I’m very concerned about what’s out there.”

There are ways to protect your child, Nichols said. Establishing the computer in a central location in the home, requiring your child to provide a list of accounts and passwords and periodically checking accounts, explaining to your child that they don’t have to tolerate cyber bullying and listening to your child for anger or sadness over events on the Internet all can help foster an environment to protect children. Nichols also suggested that parents hold their child accountable for their conduct online, blocking who the child can contact and who can contact the child.

In addition to the legislation Shapiro introduced, Congress passed the Kids Act in 2008. The act requires convicted sex offenders to register online identifiers, and for other purposes. Also a pact was signed Tuesday by Facebook, MySpace and Google with the European Union to improve safeguards against the bullying and abuse of teenagers online. The agreement signed by 17 site operators in the EU commits them to limit the risks of misuse by providing a “report abuse” button. This allows users to report “inappropriate contact from or conduct by” another user to the site operator, which will relay the complaint to local authorities.

“Parents can play a critical role to ensure a situation doesn’t come out, but it’s really a partnership between parents and legislators,” Nichols said.

In addition to monitoring children’s activity online, there is various filtering software available for parents.

The Pandora Corporation makes a monitoring software called PC Pandora. It works like a TiVo for your

PC and records all content, this will allow parents to see exactly what their child has been doing online. The software also has a screen capture of activity, logs of IM chats, emails and websites. The program focuses on giving parents knowledge rather than solely focusing on filters.

Another filtering solution is Blue Coat K9 Web Protection. K9 Web Protection implements the same enterprise-class web filtering technology used by Blue Coat's Fortune 500 customers around the world, the software works with a Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista computer.

Even with the best monitoring, it’s still possible a child might experience cyber bullying and the best advice Nichols had for parents was don’t over react. He said parents should calmly talk about it and focus on listening directly to their child. Never handle the matter online or by responding directly to the offender, Nichols said. Parents should print off the conversation, which contains the cyber bullying, locate the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of the offender, contact the child’s parent, contact the school directly in writing and if the bullying contains threats, contact the local police where the child resides and the local police where the offender resides.

Computer classes are offered at Collin College. Most classes are $109 plus the cost of the textbook. There is also a course titled “For the Absolute Beginner,” which is $39. Courses are offered every semester at multiple times; there are two more sections of courses for the spring semester.

For information about classes visit www.ccccd.edu/ce 972-881-5790. For information about the PC Pandora software visit www.pcpandora.com.

Sheri Tipsword youthprotection@planopta.org 972-596-4103. or cell 972-322-5898
 

by Heather M. Smith, Staff writer

Source:Plano Courier