Parents Stand First Against Online Dangers

Responsible parents don’t leave their children home alone with all the doors and windows wide open. They shouldn’t let dangerous strangers in through the Internet, either.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper is becoming a leading voice for protecting children from online predators. This week, he proposed seven steps to improve safety. Six are sound. The seventh shuts the front door but leaves the rest of the house as open as before.

That seventh initiative has drawn more attention than the rest. It would “require social networking Web sites like MySpace to get parents’ permission before children can join.”

MySpace is a phenomenon, an online hangout for tens of millions of members, many of them teenagers. It also attracts cyber– stalkers who try to entice children into real–life meetings.

Some online pedophiles have been arrested thanks to stings set up by law–enforcement officers. Cooper seeks tougher criminal penalties for solicitation of minors for sex via the Internet, for child pornography and for other offenses —- all good ideas.

Keeping minors out of MySpace and similar sites unless they have parental permission presents problems, however. Online gathering places proliferate almost at light speed. Youngsters are adept at finding them and at sidestepping age requirements and other measures intended to exert some control. MySpace already asks members to accept a detailed terms–of–use agreement that limits participation to individuals 14 and older and prohibits disclosure of last names, phone numbers, residential or e–mail addresses and all the activities that concern Cooper and others, but that doesn’t lock out trouble. Nor will parental permission make any child safer unless parents keep a close and consistent watch on their children’s online interactions.

It’s commendable that Cooper wants to police Internet threats to children’s well–being. Stronger laws and effective enforcement operations will accomplish a lot by their deterrent value. Pedophiles may prefer computers to park benches because they think they’re invisible online, but that isn’t true. They can be detected and, if they’re careless enough, caught. They deserve to be punished.

But the most important responsibility belongs to parents. If they leave children at home alone, with doors and windows open, they’re inviting danger to enter. It’s the same if they allow their children unlimited and unsupervised access to the Internet.

Roy Cooper himself and all the law–enforcement officers in the community can guard the front door, but if other entryways are unlocked and parents are nowhere around, the children still aren’t safe in their bedrooms or at their computers.

(c) 2007 Greensboro News Record. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.