InternetSafety.com Blog » Internet Safety Tips

Dr. Robi Suggests a Little Love and Understanding

Stanley Holditch — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:05:48 +0000

What should you do when you catch a spouse or child looking at porn? Dr. Robi provides some psychological background and a few tips:

There are different types of motivation for behavioral change: negative and positive. Negative motivation focuses on what I don’t want in my life (what I hate). Positive motivation focuses on what I do want in my life (what I love). One type of motivation seeks to replace something because it’s deficient; the other recognizes something is worth protecting or investing in, because it’s valuable.

Negative motivation typically comes from a place of guilt about our actions because they are at odds with our identity. In psychology, this experience is called cognitive dissonance. Shame creeps in when we start to hate ‘who’ we are becoming, based on our repeated poor behavioral choices.

Feelings of guilt and shame contribute to a sense of worthlessness and emotional pain. Our brain perceives these feelings as a threat and therefore seeks after pleasure (even if it’s transient pleasure from the very activity that ultimately made us feel guilty and ashamed in the first place). In the absence of personal esteem, we fail to stand up to the temptation and give in – time and time again. This relapse cycle has been well established in scientific literature on addictions.

Rather than condemning our loved ones, we have the capacity to help set them free. When we understand that it’s more effective to highlight someone’s strengths than continually point out their weaknesses, our loved ones become encouraged to reach their potential. Any behavior that’s inconsistent with their identity and purpose quickly becomes self-evident. When a person recognizes their value and chooses to engage in right choices (behaviors in line with personal beliefs about themselves), they exercise character. Character is significant insomuch that it helps determine both the amount and durability of a person’s self worth.

How can we encourage the development of character in our loved ones and highlight their value?

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Mom Thwarted by Facebook Privacy Settings

Stanley Holditch — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:23:53 +0000

“Why are we all embracing conventional wisdom when the world acts just so unconventional?”
—Built to Spill

This line from Built to Spill increasingly applies to online safety. The Internet simply changes too often for “conventional wisdom” to keep up, and nothing changes more often on the Internet than Facebook’s privacy settings.

One mom recently discovered that the conventional wisdom of friending your kids on Facebook was no longer working. Though she was her daughter’s friend on Facebook, she wasn’t seeing any of her daughter’s status updates, and was instead finding out about them through mothers of her daughter’s friends. And the reason why is because Facebook is trying to give its users more control over their privacy settings.

The daughter had gone into privacy settings and made it so that her mother (or anyone else she chose) could not see her updates. These same settings can be applied to all of Facebook, including comments on posts, friend’s posts, and photos. Here’s how it works:

From privacy settings, she chose Personal Information and Posts, and probably selected posts by me, and chose customize:

She then likely selected to hide posts from her mom, or anyone else she might not want seeing them:

What this illustrates is that manual monitoring of web activity is increasingly becoming an exercise in frustration, where the parent is at a clear knowledge disadvantage to the kid. That’s why we do our best to make parents aware, but also provide Safe Eyes parental control software, which does the monitoring for them so that they can enjoy their kids instead of constantly playing cyber-detective.

Readers, were you aware of this capability in Facebook?

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Dr. Robi on Accidental Exposure to Online Pornogaphy

Robi — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:51:10 +0000

In a recent explorative survey of three hundred Internet users, a significant relationship was found between online exposure to sexualized content and sexual obsession, deviation and perversion (in both online and offline behavior).¹ Given this and other findings that have repeatedly shown sexually explicit material to influence moral values and sexual activity among children and youth (including sexually aggressive behavior)², many parents are understandably concerned about what content their children are gaining access to online.

Conducting an image search for an innocuous subject like ‘MasterCard’ can have children confronted with sexually explicit images in a matter of seconds. Clearly, sexually explicit material is observed not only by those who actively seek it out; rather, exposure to sexually explicit content is often unintentional.³ However, what may start out as ‘accidental’ may paradoxically encourage future sexually oriented surfing habits. One study indicates 25 per cent of adolescent males and five per cent of girls go on to consume sexual content at least once a week.⁴

Internet filter and accountability software are great tools for parents to safeguard children from both accidental and intentional access to sexually explicit content. However, parents also need to foster healthy communication with their child about ethical online behavior. Becoming aware of juvenile surfing habits is the first step for their protection. Do you know about your children’s online activities? How are you safeguarding your kids?

Sources
D Dèttore & A Giannelli, ‘Explorative survey on the level of online sexual activities and sexual paraphilias’, Abstracts of the 9th Conference of the European Federation of Sexology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2008, p. 15
P Greenfield, ‘Inadvertent exposure to pornography on the Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and child development and families’, Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 25, 2004, pp. 741-50.
K Cameron, L Salazar, J Bernhardt, N Burgess-Whitman, G Wingwood, & R DiClemente, ‘Adolescents’ experience with sex on the web: Results from online focus groups’, Journal of Adolescents, vol. 28, 2005, pp. 535-40.
Peter & Valkenburg, pp. 178-204.

On the second Friday of every month, the InternetSafety.com Blog will be posting guest video posts from Dr. Robi Sonderegger, clinical psychologist and founding director of Family Challenge Australia, and consultant and policy adviser on the rehabilitation of trauma associated with war, sexual exploitation (human trafficking) and natural disaster worldwide.

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Awareness Friday: Robi Sonderegger’s Three Steps to Raising Kids on the Net

Stanley Holditch — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:56:16 +0000

The Internet has become a fully integrated component of our daily lives. Our kids primarily use the net for education, personal entertainment, and networking with friends. The Internet is allowing them access to information with greater efficiency and autonomy than at any other time in history. Yet along with the many wonderful practical uses, there are dangerous misuses. Most parents are aware of the potential dangers online associated with predators and bullies, but we also need to pay attention to what our children are viewing online. Exposure to inappropriate material (in particular sexually explicit material) can have adverse developmental consequences. So let’s consider what more we can do to help safeguard our kids online.

Install internet filter and accountability software:
While Internet Filter Software companies are quick to acknowledge that technology is no surrogate for proper parenting, we certainly want to employ every good resource available to safeguard our kids online. In the same way that responsible driving is the key to avoid collisions, seatbelts are employed as necessary protection in case of accidents. Is your child or family’s computer buckled in?
Educate kids on what is and what isn’t appropriate to post online:
Kids often have a different understanding of privacy to what their parents do. For parents, privacy is about social/public boundaries and protection of personal information and images. However, for children, privacy is often defined as what we do online without mum and dad’s knowledge. In the same way we as parents want to know where our children are at all times in public, do you know where your kids hang out online, who they are with, and what information/images they are sharing?
Up skill yourself online:
To help parents in becoming more savvy, a great online parent resource center has been established in different countries: Visit http://www.thinkuknow.com/parents/ to find out ‘everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask!’ This educational resource helps parents gain insight into predators who groom children, the use of Internet enabled mobile phones, issues associated with online games, as well as social networking and chat sites/rooms.

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Internet Safety Tip: The Workplace

Stanley Holditch — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:22:26 +0000

A 2004 study of 350 companies in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia found that one-third of workers admitted passing along porn at some time – and half of all workers said they’d been exposed to sexually explicit material by co-workers. – MSNBC, Sept. 6, 2004, on study conducted by Queen’s University in Belfast

The InternetSafety.com blog will be posting tips to highlight important issues in Internet Safety, and to provide practical tips on dealing with these issues.

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Internet Safety Tip: Cyberbullying

Stanley Holditch — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:54:43 +0000

If your child is being cyberbullied, contact your phone or internet service provider and report what is happening—they can help you block messages or calls from certain senders.

The InternetSafety.com blog will be posting tips to highlight important issues in Internet Safety, and to provide practical tips on dealing with these issues.

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Internet Safety Tip: Workplace

Stanley Holditch — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:33:26 +0000

70% of all online pornography access occurs during the 9-5 workday, according to Message Labs monthly report March 2004.

The InternetSafety.com blog will be posting tips to highlight important issues in Internet Safety, and to provide practical tips on dealing with these issues.

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How to Keep Kids out of Cyber-Trouble: Top Tips for 6 Problem Areas

Stanley Holditch — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:22:09 +0000

We blog a lot about the dangers out there, and there are so many that take so many different forms it can at times seem overwhelming. Because of this we decided to isolate six problem areas and give parents one really useful strategy for dealing with them. These strategies are just a starting point, and please visit our tips section for more.

Sexting – The increasingly common practice of sending sexually suggestive text messages, photos or videos through cell phones is a big worry. It can invite public humiliation, cyberbullying or even sexual assault. Teenagers are even being charged with child pornography for sending or posting racy photos. One way to limit children’s sexting opportunities is to retrieve their cellphones at night and charge them in the parents’ room. Phones today are simply small computers, and they should be regulated in the same way as those larger machines.

Social Networking – Rule #1 is that children should never post anything they wouldn’t be comfortable showing to their parents, teacher, or youth worker. One way to discourage inappropriate entries is to join the social networks that your kids are on and ‘friend’ your own children so that you can monitor what they’re posting.

Chatting – Chat rooms are not only nesting places for predators, but they often indirectly encourage rude and even abusive interactions between users due to the anonymity and lack of consequences. If your child is using chat rooms, find out which ones and check them out for yourself. If you are uncomfortable with specific chat sites, you might consider using filtering software to block access to those sites or log all chats for later review.

Gaming – Increasingly popular MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) like Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft are massively addictive, with reports of non-stop sessions as long as 48 or 72 hours. To prevent the unhealthy practice of spending more time in a virtual world than a real one, parents should either refuse to buy these games or impose time limits. (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours of screen time per day per child 12 and under.) If the child breaks the rules, simply uninstall the game from the computer or confiscate the disc.

Searching – On most popular search engines including Google, the safe-search settings aren’t completely effective and are easy to turn off. For that reason, younger children should not have a computer in their room, and their computer use should be supervised. Filtering software can also protect both younger and older children from exposure to websites with adult, violent or other inappropriate content.

File-Sharing – Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent, uTorrent, Bearshare and Limewire allow totally unregulated access to files that other network members have shared, including illegal pirated material and child pornography, not to mention opening computers to security risks. Banning these programs in your home is a good idea. Check your family computer periodically to be sure that no one has downloaded any of them, and remove them if they have.

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Internet Safety Tip: Social Networking

Stanley Holditch — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:33:10 +0000

You can control how much people see about you on Facebook by setting up a “Limited Profile”. To do this, go to the “My Privacy Page” after logging on and click on the “Limited Profile Settings” link.

The InternetSafety.com blog will be posting tips to highlight important issues in Internet Safety, and to provide practical tips on dealing with these issues.

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Internet Safety Tip: Cyberbullying

Stanley Holditch — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:00:28 +0000

Keep a record (including time and date) of cyberbullying incidents, as this may help you (or the police) to find out who is sending the messages.

The InternetSafety.com blog will be posting tips to highlight important issues in Internet Safety, and to provide practical tips on dealing with these issues.

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