RateItAll: The Opinion Network

This shouldnt be a fear unless your actually dumb enough t give out your info over the internet. Its highly unlikly that somone will contact you if you dont give out your info.

because we know of the dangers that do lurk there and the possible consequences we need to be responsible adults and even more important we need to be responsible parents and educate our children and take that extra time to be involved in what our children are doing. as for those children that fall through the cracks because they have self centered or negligent parents maybe there are those that can find a little time and a little room in their heart to maybe volunteer in a girls and boys club or become a Big Brother/Big Sister. i believe God never gives us more than what we can handle though sometimes it doesn't feel that way. We can't change the world but we can always try to make it a better place.

There are lots of people who use the internet and can easily hide behind easily made lies.

Used to scare me more, but as I get older I am less afraid. I'm not quite sure why it scared me though. I was never one of those kids who posted her pictures or gave away personal information to anyone. I certainly understand why parents are worried now though, as the internet is the one place where kids feel safe, as they are talking to a comuter screen rather than sitting in front of a stranger. They just don't realize that what they say online, could actually bring that online stranger within touching distance.

Thanks to MySpace.com, teen-agers are now vulnerable than ever to sickos who are addicted to kiddie porn.

This is mostly just another distraction from real problems.It is IMPOSSIBLE to be "molested" over the internet.Kids who fall prey to such perverts have parents who never bothered to teach their children common sense.You don't get in a car with a stranger,or tell them your personal information.In fact,kids of a certain age should not be left alone with a computer any more than they should be left alone at the mall.If anything,the internet has probably led to the capture and arrest of such sickos,who may otherwise have gone out in the REAL world and done something horrible.

When my sister and I were pre-teens, there was this weird phone number you could call that became a short-lived fad among the kids in our school. It was called the Beep Line, and what you would do is call the number by dialing the same number over and over again or something like that. Once you got through, you would hear the voices of lots of people (though very faint as I recall). Everyone would be yelling all kinds of things, including personal phone numbers. We would invite our girl friends over and everyone would get on a different phone (or share one since we only had a couple of extensions at our house at the time). We would never yell our own number but would write down the ones we heard. Of course, the next step was to dare someone to actually dial it and talk. In the process we ended up talking to this guy who was obviously much older. It didn't take long before the conversation would become kind of risqué (by yesterday's standards, not necessarily today's). We thought it was funny and we called this one guy several times lying about our ages and everything else of course. Then he started to ask us to meet him somewhere. So, eventually we told him a place in town and a time without ever intending to go there - which I recall we also thought was hilarious. Also, I think we were just a tad curious and who knows what we might have done had one of us been old enough to drive. I shudder to think. Now, if 4 pre-teens could get that far into something that potentially dangerous, imagine the lethal capabilities of the web (which have sadly already been proven). I can only hope that most parents are on top of their children's Internet usage - but I'm very glad I don't have that daunting task to deal with. Luckily, my dogs have yet to figure out how to access either of the browsers I have on my desktop or you know it would just be nude corgis all over my hard drive.

My younger brothers who use the internet are smart enough not to get into trouble so the issue doesn't bother me on a personal level but I do fear to some extent for the parents of other young children who use the internet. I'd like to see all parents become more involved in monitoring their kids' use of the internet.