The internet can be a family friend. Unfortunately it is also used by theunscrupulous and the downright criminal to gain access to children. Anne Byrne finds websites that offer advice and protection
For most parents, the internet is a source of entertainment and information, useful for school projects, homework and interactive games. Happily, most children will never accidentally stray into a hardcore porn site or become the subject of a paedophile's attention.
In six month's intensive surfing, for the purposes of this page, I have never found myself inadvertently viewing porn. Many of the sites thrown up through web-engine trawls each week, were irrelevant, tedious or just plain out of date, but none, thankfully, were downright offensive.
However, the daily mantra of many parents when their children were smaller - "Don't talk to strangers; never, ever get into a car with a stranger, and don't accept presents or sweets from strangers" - has now changed. We now find ourselves saying to our teens: "Never, ever give out your name, address or phone number on the web. Remember that you may think you are playing a game of checkers on Yahoo, with a fellow teen, but he or she could actually be an adult..."
Younger children usually surf with parents, so teens are the most vulnerable in this regard.
Teenagers have the typing skills and the patience to surf alone and to form intensive internet "relationships". They may seek out porn sites, in the same way they are fascinated by top-shelf magazines.
In this State, parental warnings tend to be informal, and of the broken-record variety. Reading some of the myriad US-based websites devoted to safe surfing can make the average Irish parent feel decidedly guilty and somewhat inadequate. In a trawl of websites, EL found the following.
At www.safekids.com there is a "Family Contract for Online Safety", with a separate pledges for children and parents. So, children pledge "not to give out personal information such as my address, telephone number, parents' work address/telephone number, or the name and location of my school without my parents' permission".
This is just one of eight points which include "I will not respond to any messages that are mean or in any way make me feel uncomfortable. It is not my fault if I get a message like that. If I do, I will tell my parents right away so that they can contact the service provider." Parents pledge to get to know the services and websites their children use.
The site encourages parents and guardians to make the following declarations: "If I don't know how to use them, I'll get my child to show me how... I promise not to use a PC or the internet as an electronic babysitter... I will not overreact if my child tells me about a problem he or she is having on the internet. Instead, we'll work together to try to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again."
The contracts are signed by parents and children and can be printed out and stuck up on the wall beside the family PC.
There are also lots of pieces of software, such as Net Nanny, (that can protect children by filtering out undesirable sites).
Another approach is to have rules for going online, and when your child has earned the right, issue a Cyberspace Passport. The sample passport on a website developed by the US Federal Trade Commission and the National Association of Attorneys General (www.ftc.gov /bcp/conline/pubs/online/sitesee) includes how many hours a child can go online, at what time of day and whether it's okay to go online without a parent being present.
It also states: "I understand which sites I can visit and which ones are off limits. I know an advertisement when I see one. I also know that animated or cartoon characters aren't real and may be trying to sell me something or get information from me. I will follow these same rules when I am at home, in school, or at the library or a friend's."
About one third of homes in the Republic have internet access, with about 560,000 domestic users, the majority of whom are under 25, according to the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation.
The Irish website www.hotline.ie accepts complaints from the public about potentially illegal websites. The Irish Child Trafficking and Pornography Act was enacted in 1998, and the hotline was established in 1999 by Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI).
The hotline received 671 complaints from November 1999 to June 2001, according to its first report, published this month. Of these, 39 relating to child pornography were confirmed, as were two relating to child abuse and 48 relating to "child erotica" - which ISPAI chairman Cormac Callanan defines as "material which relates to children (naked or partly clothed) which does not involve explicit sexual activity and where there is no other illegal material on the site".
Various actions were taken including the forwarding of reports to the US-Cybertipline (many of the sites were US-based), to the Garda and to hosting providers.
If you, or your child, is unlucky enough to come across a suspect site, www.hotline.ie accepts reports via their website, via e-mail (report@hotline.ie), via low-call phone service (1 890 610 710), low-call fax (1 890 520 720) or the post (26 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4).
