While watching the internet safety video, a few things stood out to me.
81% of students spend at least one hour/week online. 38% enter chatrooms at least once a week. Risk-taking, involving giving out personal information, increases with age. Pornographic web pages now tops 260,000,000 and they're still growing. 90% of 8 to 16 year-olds have viewed pornography online, most unintentionally while doing homework. Companies target teens through pop-up ads. *Typo Squatting, the purchase of domain names to intentionally deceive.* It is illegal to knowingly use a domain name, Truth and Domain Act (2003). 20% of child-oriented sites allow gambilng advertisements (study done in 2002). Hate sites, there were 8,667 sites at the end of 2003 and there were 10,296 at the end of April 2004 (these are growing faster than pornography). Many hate sites are specifically targeted to attract children. Text-messaging, blogs, and other internet sites are used to bully, with those being called "the new bathroom wall", referring to how mean messages used to be written in bathroom walls in schools, they are now done even more often and in potentially more public places. Cyber predators grooming process: internet friendship, (there's a step here), decide to meet, criminal act. Boys are victimized as often as girl
Teachers and parents really need to know, as best they can, what children are doing on the internet and children need to have some idea of the dangers that exist and the consequences of risks that can be taken. I still believe the internet is a good thing where so much can be learned and communicated, but there are also a lot of bad things there, so education about how to use this and how to teach others is absolutely necessary in order for it to remain a positive tool.
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