All of the NBC Dateline coverage of sexual predators using the internet and chat rooms to contact children and adolescents has made parents much more aware of the dangers of the internet. What parents may not realize is that many gaming consoles allow children to access the internet. Even if parents are aware that children can access the internet through gaming consoles, savvy children can bypass parental controls.

Police officers are now going undercover to to catch predators playing interactive games and they are making arrests. For example, a man in Utah was arrested after he enticed a 12-year-old boy into having sex through an online game. A similar situation occurred in Michigan and involved a 12-year-old girl.

Xbox, Playstation, and Wii all allow children to access the internet directly, but all of the have ways for parents to turn off the access to the internet or to track the content. We can’t cut off all the contact our children have with others, but we need to monitor internet contact as vigilantly as we monitor personal contact.

As a parent, it is important to recognize that any way children can communicate with others becomes a way that sexual predators can target your children. Technology invites sexual predators into the lives of our children. We have to be sure that we are keeping the door closed to cyberspace solicitations aimed at our children.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.