Internet Dangers for Teenagers

Internet Dangers for Children and Teenagers

The Internet contains an infinite number of high-quality, interesting, intriguing, and well-designed sites, and surfing on the Web is usually a source of enjoyment and acquisition of knowledge. However, because there is no supervision in this environment, it is sometimes difficult to know when positive activity could become dangerous and cause damage. It is thus important for you to be aware of the dangers lurking on the Internet for your children, and that you discuss these with them.

Exposure to Inappropriate Content

Internet content is totally uncensored. Because of this, children surfing the Web can be exposed to sexual, malicious, racist and violent content in e-mail messages, chats and forums. Limit your children to participate in forums on sites appropriate to their age.

Crime Related Dangers

Groups of Web offenders (hackers, crackers) operate on the Internet, breaking into the computers of companies and government agencies in order to destroy and leak information. These offenders sometimes try to recruit children to carry out these assignments.

Sex Related Dangers

While surfing the Internet, children make friends and meet new people, and sometimes they are tempted to meet them outside the virtual space. Meetings of this kind could endanger your child’s safety. Sexual offenders are liable to use chats, forums and instant messaging software (ICQ, Messenger or Odigo) to gain the child’s trust and to arrange a face-to-face meeting for sexual exploitation purposes.

Politically Related Dangers

Extreme groups or organizations could use children surfing the Internet as a means of achieving nationalistic goals. As in the case of the late Ofir Rahum.

Love on the Internet

Romantic relationships on the Web are widespread for all ages, often relationships are created with people not in your child’s age group. In many cases, relationships of this kind move from the virtual to the real world and could result in undesirable consequences, even extortion or sexual abuse.

Intimidation, Annoying and Harassment

Children are likely to encounter disturbing, humiliating, insulting or aggressive content in e-mail messages or in chats. Private chat rooms could turn into dangerous places because not all participants can see the conversation, and it is therefore easier to extort or harass someone.

Privacy Violation

Sites, commercial organizations and harassers of various kinds try to extract personal information from children surfing the Web – name, age, address, telephone number, and the schools they attend. This type of information is often used for commercial purposes and, in more serious cases, for enticing and exploiting children.

Drugs, Alcohol and Other Dangers

One of the major disadvantages of the Internet is the lack of supervision of the content. For this reason, it is possible to find various types of information on the Web, from encouragement of illegal drug use through alcohol use, and up to information about preparing explosives.

Gambling on the Internet

There are many gambling sites on the Internet, and anyone with a credit card at his disposal can enter and gamble. Be aware that it is illegal for minors to gamble, and when you check your credit card payments each month make sure that no unusual payments have been made.

Information Sources