Teen and tween relationships: How to keep kids safe in the digital ...

A Vancouver mom recently contacted Omamas about online dating sites aimed at young adults, calling the sites "a magnet" for sexual predators. Although most such sites have a minimum age of 18, minors often are on them.

Websites aren't the only mouse hole parents have to watch. In June, the social networking app Skout dropped its flirting app for 13- to 17-year-olds because three men were charged with raping minors they met via the app.

Here are Internet tips for concerned parents from Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use in Eugene; Portland FBI Special Agent Chuck Dodsworth; Beth Anne Steele, FBI spokeswoman in Portland; and Brandon Kaopuiki, special agent with the Oregon Department of Justice's Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

Think digital -- Relationships among today's youngsters inevitably include a digital component that parents need to keep in mind, Willard said. Either kids meet in real life and start communicating electronically or they meet online first.

Get digitally literate -- Dodsworth said today's parents often know less than their kids about computers and technology, including online lingo. "If parents start to see acronyms that they're not familiar with, go Google that stuff," Dodsworth said. All parents should know one acronym, he said: ASL, or age, sex, location.

Steele recommended that parents visit these websites:

Set basic rules -- Most kids know the obvious no-nos, such as not posting phone numbers. But kids might think nothing of saying online, "I play on such-and-such soccer team," Steele said, and that can be enough to figure out who the child is.

Steele said parents whose kids have social media accounts -- like Facebook -- should insist on privacy settings at the strictest level.

Know where they go -- Dodsworth said when it comes to cyberpredators, "any site that kids go to is a potential target." So parents should visit their children's electronic playgrounds. "If you don't have a Facebook or Google Plus account, create one. ... Go into a chat room, see how easy it is."

Willard suggested watching your Internet browser's history file to see which sites your child is visiting. If you find the history file regularly erased, that's a sign, she said. Check your operating system for ways to preserve the file.

Build fences, carefully -- While teens are adept at finding their way around electronic fences, parents need to provide some supervision. Kaopuiki said it's not so much about playing "gotcha" as it is about minimizing teens' natural lack of impulse control. "A kid who has a laptop computer with a webcam and they're allowed to use it in their bedroom and they've got open access to the Wi-Fi in the house" -- that's asking for trouble, he said.

Kaopuiki said parents should keep family computers in a common area to "build in that extra psychological barrier" against the temptation to talk dirty online or take a suggestive photo. Dodsworth recommended against giving kids their own laptops -- if your child already has a laptop, know the password so you can check what's going on.

Watch their friends -- Willard said teens definitely take cues from peers. "If all of their friends have nice relationships with people whom they've met in school and are being modest and careful, then that's what they're going to be," she said. But if your teen's BFFs like to look for hotties online, guess what your teen will do.

She pointed out a new teen sexting study by Eric Rice of the University of Southern California. The study analyzed data from more than 1,800 Los Angeles teens and concluded that teens whose friends sext are about 17 more times likely to do so themselves.

Watch the mail -- If your child suddenly starts receiving letters or packages from someone you don't know, Dodsworth and Steele said, someone he or she met online might be grooming him or her by sending gifts or money.

Picture the consequences -- It's not unusual for teens or tweens to request sexually explicit images from each other, Willard said, and a lot of kids comply. Usually the request and compliance are merely exploratory behavior -- but kids need to understand that such pictures can be forwarded anywhere and live online forever, Willard said. She recommended having that talk starting around seventh grade.

For kids who aren't convinced, Willard said, parents can type "revenge porn" into a search engine and show their kids the results.

Encourage empathy -- When teens head into cyberspace, they're largely doing so without adults by their side, Willard said. But they're not necessarily alone.

"Virtually every child who has gone off to meet with some person they've met online who ends up sexually exploiting them had friends who knew what was happening," Willard said.

So, she said, it's important for parents to instill the value of looking out for other kids' cybersafety. She suggested this dialogue: "I know you're not likely to be making mistakes, but you may notice that somebody else is. If you notice that, tell me or go talk to somebody at school."

Keep calm and contact authorities -- If you find your child involved in an unsavory online conversation, it's important not to blow up or confront the other person yourself, Dodsworth said. That only causes the child to clam up and the predator to go into hiding.

Instead, he said, find out what's going on and then contact police or the FBI.

Kaopuiki said parents can also go to cybertipline.com to fill out an online report.

- Amy Wang; on Twitter
The Omamas on parenting: omamas@oregonian.com; Twitter: @omamas

Source: http://blog.oregonlive.com/themombeat/2012/09/teen_and_tween_relationships_h.html

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