DANGERS LURKING ON THE INTERNET

This is an essential guide written for GulfWeekly by Karen Moffat, one of the leading educationalist in the kingdom, for all families in Bahrain ... if YOU have a child with access to the internet. The Editor suggests you keep these pages stored in a 'safe place' at home for future reference.

If your child is not yet 'online', it is very likely that he or she soon will be joining the millions of other children who are already using the internet.

The good news about the internet is that it is a wonderfully effective tool for education and learning, as well as for entertainment and communication.

The internet is full of vast amounts of information, images and resources, such as virtual museums and libraries. At its best, the internet is about communication, creativity and experimentation and sharing human knowledge.

But, like with most other things, there is another side to the digital technology coin that is much less welcome and that presents a serious challenge to parents.

Some people use the internet to promote things you certainly do not want your children to be exposed to. But, does this mean that you should try to prevent your children from using the internet? Even if it were possible to do that, blocking your children from using the internet is not the solution.

We live in a digitally-connected world and children need to know how to navigate through that world safely.

It is connectivity that gives the internet its tremendous power and appeal. It is also connectivity that can make the internet a very dangerous place for children and even for adults.

Children are no longer restricted to their schools and their home environments to meet new people.

The world around them has become digital and highly accessible. From inside their homes, children can set up a free e-mail address, web pages and online photo albums within minutes.

Children today are communicating over the internet and connecting with other people through a multitude of ways: through instant messaging, chat rooms, games, blogging and social networking sites.

Many children have discovered that MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, Facebook - just some of the more than 200 available social networking websites - are a great way to communicate with friends all over the world. They are able to post messages, photos, information and list all their favourite things about themselves.

Unfortunately, what children don't always understand is how public and accessible this information really is.

In lots of ways, dealing with the internet is just like dealing with any other risk to children and how you deal with the issues depends on the age of your child and your parenting style.

Just as you wouldn't send your children out into the real world without teaching them safety guidelines, nor should you send your children out into the virtual world without protection and training.

And, nothing can take the place of an informed and involved parent when it comes to safeguarding a child on the internet.

Even if filtering and blocking programmes are a part of your internet safety plan at home, you can't just rely on software to do the job for you.

One of the best ways of keeping your children safe on the internet is to get up to speed with it yourself.

There are lots of ways to get involved: you can participate in cyber safety classes or parent evenings; you can spend some time listening to and speaking with other concerned parents and you can find out how to use things like social networking sites, blogs, chat rooms, micro blogging sites like Twitter, computer games and podcasting. Of course, you can also ask your children questions and get them to teach you!

Talk with your children specifically about using the internet.

Talk with your children about their internet usage and discuss your family's goals and values, your expectations and what you consider to be acceptable uses of the internet.

Talk with your children about the fun things as well as the dangers and spend time using the internet with them.

Visit some cyber safety sites together to learn about safety on the internet and talk with them about the issues such as internet etiquette and respect, plagiarism and intellectual property rights and cyber bullying.

You and your family need to know that internet technologies can be helpful, exciting and interesting, but you also need to learn how to use them wisely and what the dangers are.

Parents need to be proactive in becoming informed and knowledgeable about the already familiar and the new emerging digital technologies.