The well known British television psychologist Tanya Byron has something very important to say about teenagers and internet usage. She says: Letting your kids use the web completely unsupervised is like opening your own door and saying ‘They don’t know how to cross the road but they’ll work it out’. Teenagers are increasingly being lured into the alluring world of the internet, where they are willingly revealing personal information to complete strangers, and are completely nonchalant about it. It was previously thought that teenagers were duped into revealing personal information by sexual predators posing as teenagers themselves. But recent studies have shown that in most cases, these teenagers are aware that they are creating online friendships with complete strangers, and chatting with adults more than double their age. In spite of knowing these things, they are blissfully ignorant of the dangers of the internet. In spite of constant parental monitoring, a number of teenagers are falling prey to online sexual predators, and are becoming victims of child abuse. With the advent and widespread usage of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Orkut, teenagers have become more vulnerable to the dangers of the internet.
According to Pew Internet & American Life study, 74% of high school age children in the United States use the Internet regularly. By the time kids reach high school, they’re likely to know as much or more about the Internet than do their parents. …click here to read more →




