Keeping Kids Safer on the Internet Part 1

        Over the next few weeks will be giving you some great information about Internet Safety for your kids. Allowing kids to go online without supervision or ground rules is like allowing them to explore a major metropolitan area by themselves. The internet, like a city, offers an enormous array of entertainment and educational resources but also present some potential risk. Kids need help navigating this world. By exploring the Internet with your kids, you greatly expand its capacity as an educational tool. By providing guidance and discussions along the way you increase kids' online skills and confidence along with their ability to avoid potential risk.

Where do kids connect?
--Kids go online almost anywhere. They surf the Internet and send messages from a home computer or one of friend's home, library or school.
--Kids connect at coffee shops and other "hotspots" using laptops and wireless connections
--Internet-enabled, video-game systems allow them to compete against and chat with players around the world.
--Wireless devices enable kids to surf the web and exchange messages photographs, and short videos from just about anywhere

Browsing the Internet
--Browsing the Internet is like having the world's largest library and entertainment system at your fingertips. Kids are able to read stories, tour museums, visit other countries, play games, look at photographs, shop and do research to help with homework
--Potential RISK--
Kids may come across websites containing adult images or demeaning, racist, sexist, violent or false information.

Tips to Minimize Potential Risk
--Chose search engines carefully. Some are specifically designed for kids and others off kid-safe options.
--Tell kids when they come across any material making them feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused to immediately tell you or another trusted adult.
--Help kids find information online. By searching the Internet together you can help them find good resources and show them how to do it the correct way.

Using Email
Kids and adults can communicate and a rapidly and cost effectively with people all over the world.
**Potential Risk
-- Kids are able to set up private accounts without asking parents permission
-- Anyone using email is vulnerable to receiving "spam" which can encourage the recipients to buys something, visit a website or spam may be sexually suggestive or offensive.
**Tips to Minimize Potential Risks
--Talk with your kids about their email accounts. Remind them to never share passwords with anyone but you. Not even their closest friends.
--Teach your children to not open up spam mail and if they do receive something have them to show it to you.


** info from May Clinic--And National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Family dinners may help kids cope with cyberbullying

Dr Jopling found a great article! Another great suggestion in helping our kids!


NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Like victims of face-to-face bullying, kids who experience internet bullying are vulnerable to mental health and substance use problems – but spending more time communicating with their parents may help protect them from these harmful consequences, a new study suggests.
For example, the researchers found, regular family dinners seemed to help kids cope with online bullying. But they say talk time with parents in cars or other settings can also help protect against the effects of cyberbullying.
“In a way, cyberbullying is more insidious because it’s so hard to detect,” said lead author Frank J. Elgar of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University in Montreal.
“It’s hard for teachers and parents to pick up on,” Elgar told Reuters Health by phone.
He and his team used voluntary, anonymous survey data from more than 18,000 teens at 49 schools in Wisconsin.
About one in five students said they’d been bullied on the Internet or by text messaging at least once over the past year.
“The good news is that most of the kids in this sample from Wisconsin had not been cyberbullied,” Elgar said.
Cyberbullying was more common for girls than for boys, for kids who’d been victims of face-to-face bullying, and for those who themselves had bullied other kids in person. Cyberbullying tended to increase as students got older.
Youngsters who’d been cyberbullied were more likely to also report mental health problems like anxiety, self-harm, thoughts of suicide, fighting, vandalism and substance use problems, according to results in JAMA Pediatrics September 1.
Almost 20 percent of the kids reported an episode of depression, while around five percent reported suicide attempts or misuse of over the counter or prescription drugs.
Teens who were often cyberbullied were more than twice as likely to have been drunk, fought, vandalized property, or had suicidal thoughts, and were more than four times as likely to have misused drugs than those who were never cyberbullied.
One survey question asked how many times each week the teen ate the evening meal with his or her family.
As the number of weekly family dinners increased, the differences in mental health issues for kids who were or were not cyberbullied decreased.
“It’s hard for parents to know where kids are spending time online on their smartphone, laptop or other device,” said Catherine P. Bradshaw of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
“It’s more challenging for parents to be able to monitor,” she said.
Bradshaw wrote a commentary that was published in the same issue of the journal, along with the researchers’ paper.
“We don’t know exactly what those parents were talking about at dinner, but we do know they were spending more time together face to face,” she told Reuters Health by phone.
Family discourse can happen in many settings, including at dinner or while driving around in the car, she noted.
“If parents want to try to figure out how many nights a week should I turn off the TV and spend time with my kids, it’s nice to see data on this,” she said.
Parents who have an opportunity to talk to their kids about bullying problems should emphasize that it wasn’t the victim’s fault and that you shouldn’t hit back or retaliate, Bradshaw said.
“The more contact and communication you have with young people, the more opportunities they have to express problems they have and discuss coping strategies,” Elgar said. “Essentially the relationships between victimization and all other mental health outcomes were lessened with more frequent family dinners.”
Family dinners are a proxy indicative of a range of other contextual factors that affect kids relating to family contact open communication, he said. Many families aren’t able to have family dinners together, but that doesn’t mean the kids are out of luck or that communication can’t happen, he said.
“It would be wrong to focus solely on family dinners as the active ingredient in all this,” Elgar said.
“The message that comes through for us is to talk to your kids,” he said. “Unless you take time to check in, a lot goes undetected.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/1unF9Ei and bit.ly/1uahFmU JAMA Pediatrics 2014.

Internet Safety Month

June Is Internet Safety Month

 

For the most part, the Internet is a rewarding place for both kids and teens, but the potential risks to their privacy and personal safety are real. While surfing the Web, your children may stumble upon disturbing information or images, or they may innocently accept or share files that could expose your family to Internet thieves or computer viruses. They may encounter cyberbullies who try to embarrass or intimidate them. Even worse, your children may unknowingly communicate with child predators, who use the Internet to befriend vulnerable children by pretending to be another child or a trustworthy adult and then try to persuade them to meet in person.

Social networking sites are beginning to add additional safeguards for young users. Security software also offers some protection. But being aware of the risks and engaging with your children about safety are the most important things you can do to keep your family safer online.

See the links and resources below for information from HealthyChildren.org and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP

Internet Safety Tips (Audio)Log On to Safety
How to Talk to Your Kids Using Technology
A Minute for Kids: Social Media and Your Child (Video)
AAP SafetyNetThe Internet and Your FamilySet the Rules for Internet Use

**info from Healthychildren.org

Where is your info coming from?

This past week I was looking into purchasing a new camera so --I googled it. Last week, I needed directions to a new restaurant--I searched the Internet for it. Tomorrow I am sure I will look up the current movie reviews by looking at my good old reliable "Fandango". No matter where our information comes from we need to make sure that we are educating ourselves with GOOD information.
We know that we live in a new day in age where people use computers, smart phones, or IPads to look up all different type of information. I am sure MOST of us have "googled" a diagnosis or a prescription to see more information on it. We want to make sure that you are getting your information from correct sources. Generally speaking, most information found with .EDU or .ORG should be a reliable health source, along with the AAP and CDC. Here are a few websites that we recommend:

http://www.healthychildren.org/ (AAP Symptom checker)
http://www.aap.org/ (American Acedemy Pediatrics)
http://autismcouncilofutah.org/
http://www.cpsc.org/

Thanks to Dr Jopling for providing this arcicle that was published in Jan 2011

LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people looking for health information online is set to soar as workers return from holiday breaks, but few will check where the information comes from, according to an international survey on Tuesday.
A report by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) commissioned by the private healthcare firm Bupa said that with smartphones and tablet computers set to outsell personal computers by 2012, more health information is available online and there are more ways to access it than ever before.
The Bupa Health Pulse survey questioned more than 12,000 people in Australia, Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and the United States and found that 81 percent of those with internet access use it to search for advice about health, medicines or medical conditions.
Russians search for health advice the most on the internet, followed by China, India, Mexico and Brazil. The French search for online health information the least, according to the survey's findings.
It also found that 68 percent of those who have access have used the internet to look for information about specific medicines and nearly 4 in 10 use it to look for other patients' experiences of a condition.
"New technologies are helping more people around the world to find out more about their health and to make better informed decisions. However, people need to make sure that the information they find will make them better, not worse," said David McDaid, a senior research fellow at the LSE.
In Britain, where Bupa predicted there would be 40 million hits on health websites this week as people make New Year's resolutions after their Christmas break, experts warned that much online health content is unchecked and people would struggle to know what to trust.
The survey found that of the 73 percent of Britons who say they go online for health information, more than six in 10 look for information about medicines and more than half of them, or 58 percent, use the information to self diagnose.
Yet only a quarter of people say they check where their online advice has come from.
"Relying on dodgy information can easily lead to people taking risks with inappropriate tests and treatments, wasting money and causing unnecessary worry," said Annabel Bentley, a medical director at Bupa.
"Equally, people may check online and dismiss serious symptoms when they should get advice from a doctor."

As you seek parenting or medical information on your own, we can recommend books, web sites and local organizations or services. Please feel free to contact us to help you get your "GOOD" information for your child.