Cyber cops: parenting amid social networking requires diligence

When a fellow mom told Nikki Barnes that she ought to be concerned about her daughter’s MySpace page, she responded, “My daughter doesn’t have a MySpace page.”

“Oh, yes she does,” the other mother answered, and she proved it by showing Barnes the site.

Seven months earlier, when her 14-year-old daughter had asked to set up a MySpace page, Barnes had said, “No.” Kali then set the page up anyway, often getting up to chat online on MySpace early in the morning on school days and late at night on weekends when her parents were asleep. Kali’s grades began to slip, and she became irritable.
“We began to wonder why she was getting up at 5 a.m. but never seemed to be ready at 7 a.m., when she had to leave for school,” Barnes said. “Now we know why.”

Nikki grounded Kali, who lost her computer and cell phone privileges for two months. With her daughter now halfway through the sentence with no chance of parole, Nikki shudders to think that she might have remained ignorant about Kali’s online activities if the other mom hadn’t tipped her off.

“My daughter had left all of her comments open; anybody could get on her page and see them,” Barnes said. “There’s a lot of stuff about partying and drinking on her friends’ pages, and, looking at her buddy list, several of her friends’ parents do not know [they have MySpace pages] either.”

Online Dangers

Some adults might respond: What’s the big deal? Kids have been sneaking behind their parents’ backs since the dawn of time. In fact, Barnes said, the mothers of some of Kali’s friends think Nikki went way overboard with the two-month sentence.

But local authorities say that a little sneaking around can become very dangerous when it involves the Internet. Social networking sites often attract adult predators who share and solicit inappropriate materials and attempt to set up in-person meetings with kids.
“Internet safety is as important in Columbia, Mo., as it is in New York, N.Y.,” said James Finch, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, who spoke about the topic this spring at Lange Middle School. “The FBI is working every day to protect Americans no matter where they live.”

In 1998, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) created a CyberTip line for those concerned with keeping children safe from predators. In the first week of March alone, the tip line received 195 tips specifically related to online enticement for sexual acts, John Shehan, deputy director of the NCMEC’s Exploited Children’s Service, said. The online enticement category is second only to child pornography in the number of tips received, he said.

New technology has made it even harder for parents to monitor online interactions. “It’s important to understand that it’s not just computers on the Internet anymore; it’s cell phones too,” said Andy Anderson, a detective with the Boone County Sheriff’s Office and coordinator of the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force. “Anything done on the Internet can now be done on cell phones, and the cell phones all have cameras, videos and text capability.”

Most junior high students have cell phones, Anderson said, but they are not yet responsible enough to handle that kind of technology. He cites examples: a local 13-year-old girl who generated 115,000 text messages in one month and a Columbia junior high school boy who told him that 70 percent of the kids he knew were cheating in class through text messaging.

Tech-Savvy Parenting

So what should a parent do? Parents need to really get involved when their kids are on the computer, Anderson said, to monitor what they’re doing and make an effort to learn the technology. A good start is to place the communication devices in a public part of the house, not the youngster’s room.

How do you get your child to tell you what’s going on? Empower them, Anderson said. “It doesn’t work to shake your finger at the kid and say, ‘Those sites are dangerous.’ They think nothing will happen to them because they’re too smart,” he said. “Ask them instead to ‘teach me how this MySpace works so that I can help protect your younger sister.’ If you ask them to teach you, most kids will tell you everything you need to know.”

When dealing with social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, Anderson said, be sure your child’s site is set to be viewed privately by only a few friends and that it doesn’t provide too much information. Don’t provide photos, he said, because other people can download them.

“It takes a momentary lapse in judgment for a teen that may bring a lifetime of consequences,” Shehan said. “An individual can take an image, research the victim and extort them through it.”

In many cases, Shehan explained, a predator asks for a photograph. A girl takes a photo in a bathing suit or bra, perhaps, and sends it. Then the predator threatens to send the photo to her parents or friends unless the girl shares a more explicit photo, and, on the Internet, that photo may live forever.

Another issue for parents, Anderson said, is that younger kids may be lying about their ages to get onto Web sites. “You have to be 14 to get on MySpace; if your child is younger, he or she had to lie to get in,” Anderson said. “Likewise, if the site has an 18-year-old age limit, it’s probably limited for a reason, and it may be dangerous for a child younger than 18 to be involved.”

One local 14-year-old girl posted a provocative photo on the multimedia sharing site Stickam, Anderson said, and it got 20,000 hits. “Kids think nothing will ever happen to them, but in the real world they can get victimized,” Anderson said. “Everybody wants to be popular, and so do kids. There are lots of people out there on the Internet who will listen to kids, agree with them and manipulate them just so they can victimize them.”

As for cell phones, parents need to monitor the monthly bill. Unfortunately, Anderson said, cell phone plans are now advertising unlimited text messaging, which comes with the downside that kids can text all day and night, and the parents may have no idea to whom their children are talking.

One father in Boone County recently woke up at 3 a.m. to the giggling of his daughter and her friend who was sleeping over for the night, Anderson said. When he went in to tell them to go to sleep, he found them talking on the phone to a 30-year-old Kansas City man they’d met on the Internet.

“The kid’s job is to ask for stuff that’s inappropriate; it’s the parent’s job to say no to stuff that’s inappropriate,” Anderson said. “Unfortunately now, as parents, things are more dangerous. We didn’t have strangers on the phone or the Internet wanting to call and have sex or take pictures. Large numbers of guys are taking photos or videos of themselves and sending them to kids, flashing them over their Web cams right in the comfort of their own homes.”

In addition, Anderson said, file-sharing program sites such as Napster, Limewire and Bearshare, which offer downloadable movies and music, also allow people to search for what they want on individual computers connected to the system, which means children can access and download child or adult pornography for themselves.

“Anything downloadable is automatically shareable with others,” he said. “If you download pornography featuring kids under 18, it is now a felony, even if it’s a junior high school boy downloading it. If he doesn’t change the default settings, even a junior high boy can be charged with not only possession, but also promotion, of child porn.”

When she was first grounded, Barnes said, Kali would constantly ask if she could check to see who was online or text message her friends on her cell phone. But now Kali has gotten used low-tech life.

“It’s an addiction,” Barnes said. “Now we feel like we have our daughter back.”