Web-safety lessons from teachers and 12-year-olds

Virginia schools are the first to mandate Internet safety classes. But are kids listening?

from the April 16, 2008 edition

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Liam confirmed for me that he's never had an actual class about Internet safety in his middle school, but that teachers do talk to them about it.

"They'll tell us to be careful before we go into the computer lab, to not go to certain sites, and how to tell spam from regular e-mail, and why we should never open certain attachments and stuff," he tells me. "And there are posters up in all the hallways and in classrooms."

But Liam is not sure how much kids listen.

"Some kids just run right through it. They don't care what their teachers say. They just do what they want to do."

Sometimes the media can help teachers reinforce this message. When I asked a group of Liam's friends about why they thought they had to be careful on the Internet, several said they had heard about the young girl who committed suicide when the mother of a former friend used a phony Facebook identity to attack her. My 10-year-old daughter's best friend said it was "scary" to think that an adult would do that to a kid.

But kids can still be pretty naive about using the Internet. When all their friends are using Facebook and MySpace, the peer pressure is to join and share, not to be cautious and prudent. Teaching Internet safety in schools can be one way to reinforce the message "don't talk to strangers online."

And as the parent of a student in Virginia, I have to say that it seems the application of the program seems rather patchy. The first school the kids attended in September was in a suburban area of northern Virginia. It offered a variety of programs and material for parents about Internet safety. But we moved to a much more rural area in January, and the new school, while being very good educationally, does not seem to have the same priority about the issue. (Could the Internet be seen as more of a danger in an urban setting, where parents are already hyper-alert on such issues as drugs, guns, and gangs? Not that they don't exist rurally – particularly drugs – but they don't seem as omnipresent.)

Look for more states to follow Virginia's lead on this issue. And if you're interested in following this story, and getting some good tips and materials on how to keep your kids safe online, check out WebWiseKids.org, a nonprofit group funded by corporations, including Verizon and Symantec, and the federal government to provide schools with no-cost Internet safety lessons.

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