Biggest online threat is peers, not predators

Eighteen-year-old Shayla McClough doesn’t mess around online.

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ONLINE 101 FOR PARENTS

How to help your teens stay safe online:

Talk to them. Discuss Internet and cellphone activity as openly and honestly as you would real-life sex and relationships.

Go online yourself. Check out your teen's MySpace, Facebook and other online profiles to see what they're saying and doing. This isn't snooping; this is information your kids are making public.

Be cyber-savvy. Learn how to monitor your kid's electronic life. Check their buddy list, what sites they've visited and get the passwords of your child's networking sites so you can chaperone the chatter — even if they won't "friend" you.

Set expectations. Be clear with your teen about what you consider appropriate "electronic" behavior. Just as they know that certain clothing or language is off-limits, they should know what is and is not allowed online.

Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

ONLINE 101 FOR TEENS

Important things to think about before pressing "send":

Nothing stays private. Don't assume anything you send or post is going to remain private.

There's no changing your mind. In cyberspace, anything you send or post will never truly go away. Potential employers, college recruiters and others may all be able to find your past posts, even after you delete them.

You can say no. Don't give into pressure to do something that makes you uncomfortable, even in cyberspace.

Consider the recipient's reaction. A message may be meant in fun, but the person who gets it may not see it that way. You may say something suggestive as a "joke," but the person who reads it may expect a hook-up in real life.

Source: The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

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DOCTOR IS IN

Why worry?

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A couple of years ago, a female classmate on MySpace started chatting online with a teenage boy, and before long the two were sending each other racy photos. Eventually they took off together for several days and became another cautionary tale of online flirting moving into real-life sex.

McClough, a peer educator at the Grady Health System, said plenty of teens flirt online, but she wants no part of it.

Joshua Alexander, a junior at Grady High School, recalls joining a music-oriented site a few years back and quickly realizing many of the teens weren’t there for the music.

Both have seen cases where teen girls send sexy photos to their boyfriends, only to see the “private” images forwarded over and over again.

“Even if they never intended it to happen, it can be a huge problem, and some photos have spread all around Grady [High School] like wildfire,” says Alexander, also a peer educator at the Grady Health System.

Neither has ever been approached online by an older man — the predator so widely feared by parents — and think the chance of getting hit on by an older man is rare.

That’s also the more scientific conclusion of a new report: Young people are much more likely to get into trouble with a peer than with a predator, and most of the sexual talk young people get into online is with friends, classmates and people their own age.

“This report isn’t trying to suggest that predators aren’t an issue,” says Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet Project and a contributor to the report. “It’s saying kids encounter sexual talk online, but most often it comes from their peers. It can be anything from ‘Hey, hot stuff’ to something that’s unprintable in a family newspaper.”

“We’ve probably underplayed some of the peer-to-peer stuff,” agrees Nadine Kaslow, a professor in Emory University’s psychiatry department.

“What this study does is make parents, teachers, therapists and kids mindful that some of the peer-to-peer stuff online can be very threatening,” she adds. “Just like it is in real life.”

Myths and risks

The report, “Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies,” studied more than 400 previous studies and surveys of how young people behave and misbehave on the Internet. It was commissioned by the National Association of Attorneys General and directed by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

“Enhancing Child Safety” failed to find any connection between teens having a Facebook or MySpace account and being propositioned by adults.

“Having a profile on one of those sites means you’re more likely to encounter more people,” the Pew Center’s Lenhart says, “but it doesn’t put you at any greater risk for this kind of solicitation.”

The report found that a lot of teens who end up moving from online flirting to offline sex — including teens who agree to meet adults — frequently have other risk factors in their lives.

“The kids who are most at risk, and it’s a very small group,” Lenhart says, “are kids who come from difficult homes where they are having problems with their families. They’re having social problems, academic problems. They’re reaching out online, and in many cases they know what they’re doing, going into sexually themed chat spaces.”

A related issue — girls sending provocative photos of themselves to boys — is on the rise with the spread of camera phones with e-mail capabilities. Twenty percent of teens say they have sent or posted a nude or semi-nude photo of themselves, according to a recent survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies.

‘Any doubt, don’t do it’

Many teens don’t pause to consider the long-term consequences of sending racy photographs or explicit messages to friends, says Judith Morris-Reichenbach, a counselor at Hightower Trail Middle School in Marietta.

“They see it all around them, and they are very nonchalant about it. They just think in the moment — they are not thinking long-term,” she says. Sometimes girls are lured into flirting by boys their age; other times, the girls make the first move.

Morris-Reichenbach says parents need to step in to closely monitor their children’s online activities and help their children make good decisions in cyberspace.

“Parents need to tell their kids: ‘You send something, you post something to a friend, and you have to live with it being out in cyberspace forever. If you have any doubt, don’t do it,’ ” she said.

Passing a note in class has gone high-tech and, in some cases, gotten very naughty.

One in five teens admit to “sexting” — sending sexually explicit texts, or nude or semi-nude photographs, via cellphone, according to a survey of teens by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Jessica Sheets, spokeswoman for organization, says she is not surprised hormonally charged teens are sending X-rated chatter and images to each other.

“This should be a wake-up call for parents. You give kids a powerful tool and eventually that teenager is going to figure out you can do more with a camera phone than take pictures of your dog.”

— Helena Oliviero