Internet Safety and Children

Q: What is the best way to instil a feeling of trust in my daughter, but also educate her and keep tabs on her online activities without being too intrusive? feistydevil
A: In my experience, part of it is definitely about being open about your own anxieties and concerns. A good idea is to sit with your child and ask them to take you through every bit of software they have loaded on the PC and explain to you what they do with it. Ask them what chat rooms they go to, and who they speak to there. Find out if they use Instant Messaging, and who is on their Buddy List. All of this is communicating two things: firstly, that you are interested in what she is doing online, and are not running away from it all because you are a boring old technophobe and, secondly, that you care. Worst of all, don't threaten to take the machine away. That means you'll never find out anything. She'll keep it all secret.

Q: Do the 'parental controls' on major ISPs like AOL work, or are kids too clever and find ways to get around the system? seliab
A: No system is ever going to be 100% foolproof, 100% of the time, which is why one should never wholly rely on technical solutions. It is just as important to educate our children about the hazards of the Internet so they know how to avoid or handle them. But the truth is that many of the parental control packages can be a great help, particularly if you have younger children. And if you do obvious things like keeping the password safe, and making it un-guessable, it will be very hard for the overwhelming majority of children to get round it.

Q: I recently saw a presentation by Joe Sullivan from The Lucy Faithful Foundation, who revealed some very interesting facts about people who are likely to abuse children. These included the fact that the majority of child sex offenders know they have an interest in children before the age of 18, and that sex offenders will often make excuses for their actions in the same way a smoker who is trying to give up might make excuses, if they slip up and have a cigarette. What else do we know about offenders' traits and behaviour? kirstin2002
A: We know quite a lot about child sex abusers, not least because of the work of the people at the Lucy Faithful Foundation. Very few people are actually born as paedophiles. It is behaviour that they have learnt, and so we can say they have been through a process that can be understood. One of the things we understand is the role of sexual fantasy in fuelling their deviant behaviour. For many, child pornography can play a key role in stimulating their sexual desire for children. That is simply one more reason why it is so important to remove such materials from the Internet and elsewhere. Over one in three men who have been found in possession of child pornography are found to be actively involved in abusing children, and many theorise that the other two just haven't been caught yet. As another expert put it 'The only reason why men collect child pornography is because they want to have sex with children, but some of them may not have realised it yet.'

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