Is Your Child an Online Target?

By Debbie W. Wilson

A local librarian recently told me she was helping a local pig farmer look online for a part that he needed for his operation. She typed in “pig” and was surprised to find pornography websites included. According to safeplace.net, 300 new porn sites open daily on the Internet.

Pornographers make pornography easy to find by including their sites under search engine topics you might expect, such as “sex”. However, would you expect your child to find sexually explicit sites when he types “boys” or “Beanie Babies” in? Pornographers also launch stealth sites, ones that take advantage of misspellings ( “sharware” instead of “shareware”), placing addresses for pornography sites under brand names that children will frequent (such as Disney cartoons), and by creating mirror sites (such as whitehouse.com, rather than whitehouse.gov.).

You would think that society would strongly support efforts to clean up the Internet or at least protect children from Internet sleaze. However, you encounter opposition to these efforts from some powerful lobbies, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association among them.

ACLU President Nadine Strossen called porn stars “human rights heroes” for “your fight and contribution to First Amendment freedom.” (Citizens for Community Values at www.safeplace.net/ccv/quotes.htm)

John McChesney, host of the Internet radio program Hot Seat, asked ALA president Ann Symons, “(I)f I were 13 and I went into a public library...and wanted to get a variety of pornographic material,...would there be any attempt to keep me away from it, to interfere with me?”

Symons’ response was, “ I would say from my point of view there shouldn’t be, and if the library doesn’t own this material and you as a 13-year-old asked for an interlibrary loan, that should be granted to you just as it would be to an adult patron.” (Citizens for Community Values)

As a matter of fact, the American Library Association website lists a link for teens to Go Ask Alice, a sexually graphic site for teens put in place by Columbia University. Alice urges virgins to experiment, and describes sexual play and bestiality graphically.

The Huntington Township Library has tried to curb problems by not allowing anyone to access pornography or chat rooms, a frequent lurking room for child molestors. A first time offense kicks the violator off the Internet computers for a week. If violators call up a chat room or porn a second time, their names are blacklisted and they are kicked off permanently, unless they get the explicit approval of the head librarian.

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Work Force is working on H.R. 2560, the Child Protection Act of 1999, which would require public schools and libraries that receive federal funds for acquisition or operation of computers to install filters to protect children form online pornography. Fifty other bills dealing with online pornography have been introduced this session and riders have been attached to some appropriations bills, so Congress is attempting to deal with the problem in ways that the Supreme Court will not strike down.

Tips to Protect Children Online

• Learn more about the computer and the Internet.

• Place your family’s computer in a place where the family will see it frequently. A public place allows you easier access for monitoring. Limit the amount of time your child can spend online. Too much screentime can hurt eyesight and keeps children from other recreations, social interactions, and exercise.

• Consider installing filtering software or signing up with an Internet provider that blocks pornography.

• Reject or eliminate online chat rooms. Make sure that any you allow your children to participate on are age appropriate. Do not allow them to give out personal or family information, answer personal intimate questions, meet with anyone they have chatted with online, or tell anyone where they’ll be at a certain time. They should never meet someone that they’ve chatted with online without you being present, nor should they give out your phone number or address.

• Do not allow them to send or receive pictures, (files that end with GIF, JPG, or JPEG), without your being with them. Be especially careful about their sending their photograph to someone else online as that person may not be an innocent child in spite of what he says.

Foster a close relationship with your children by spending time with them. Listen to them. Talk to them of the dangers of online friends and pornography. Let them know how precious they are to you. Encourage them to come to you with fears, concerns and questions about the behaviors of chat room contacts or contents of websites.

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