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Do you have computers in your house? Do your children or grandchildren use them to go online? If so, you probably know that letting children roam where they wish on the Internet can be like letting them loose in the bowels of a big city without adult supervision. After all, the Internet is a portal to just about everything, everywhere.

The Internet has become a parallel universe in which young people work their way through adolescence with mouse clicks, uploaded photos and group chats. The Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 94 percent of teens go online and nearly 60 percent keep their online profiles on social networking sites like Facebook up to date.

By and large, that’s a good thing. The Internet gives kids access to vast troves of information, research for homework, a glimpse of the great wide world. Especially if they are headed for college, learning the power of Google and other online tools is essential. And even social networking, with the right limitations, can serve a positive function and may be better than some of the places where kids might try to meet otherwise.

But just as you would impose boundaries for kids out in the real world, there are steps you can take to control their access and behavior on the Internet. Most of the information and advice you need is found—where else?—on the Internet itself. A good starting guide for parents is "Know The Rules…Internet Safety Quiz for Adults." 

The Hazards

Although computer and Web use is generally safe, there are some dangers you need to know about. Kids can be exposed to all kinds of content, notably pornography, that most parents would prohibit as age-inappropriate (the law requires that viewers be 18 or older). Children can easily find websites that augment self-destructive tendencies, like plunging into anorexia or nurturing suicidal impulses. Such problems were explored in detail earlier this year in a one-hour PBS documentary entitled Frontline: Growing Up Online, which you can view online in its entirety.

Besides what comes in over the Internet, there is the equally sensitive issue of what goes out. Unwitting teenagers can expose themselves to cyberpredators, for example, by posting photos and detailed personal information, or by getting into chats with strangers who have ill intent. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to which you can report inappropriate advances to children and other online misconduct at www.cybertipline.org, estimates that one in seven children has received an unwanted sexual solicitation online.

Teens often don’t grasp that, unless they use privacy controls, what they put on the Internet is available for the whole world to see. What they consider an inside communication with a single classmate or small group of friends may in fact be viewed by hundreds or thousands of people. The booming popularity of blogging—writing an online journal of random thoughts about the day’s events—is a good example, according to NetSmartz411.org, a guide to Internet safety on the site of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “Children see their blogs as personal diaries and, without realizing how many people have access to it, forget to censor them accordingly,” notes the site.

The same concern applies to photos, which kids increasingly like to post online—the racier, the better. “A new craze that is fast becoming a national trend is nude photo-sharing amongst kids,” says Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. “In some recent cases, kids have been charged with producing, distributing and possessing child porn.”

Say a girl puts a revealing picture of herself on MySpace, Facebook or YouTube (the world’s largest video-sharing site), intending perhaps to please her boyfriend or to one-up the other girls at her school. She may find her world turned upside down if someone drawn by her looks starts flirting with her from across town or across the country.

A far greater problem, some experts argue, is cyberbullying—peer-to-peer harassment of teens by teens that sometimes leads to tragic consequences. Typical cyberbullying involves calling another teen fat, ugly, unpopular or homosexual—with a piling-on effect that easily occurs in chat rooms. Worse, the name-calling is witnessed not merely by the handful of kids who would physically see it in a playground confrontation, but by a whole class or a whole school who see it online, says CommonSenseMedia president Anne Zehren in an online video called “A Common Sense Approach to Internet Safety." Another very clear illustration of online bullying is available at www.stopcyberbullying.org.

In the worst instances, cyberbullying has led to teen suicides. Most famous is the case of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missourian who hanged herself in 2007 after a MySpace courtship with a “boy” turned abusive. Her online companion turned out to be the fictional creation of the mother of a girl who lived down the street from Megan. (The mother has been charged in federal court; she denies all the charges.) Kids can join an online campaign to stop bullying by signing a “Megan Meier Pledge."

Besides the potential for bullying, social networking sites offer teens the opportunity to create a separate identity for themselves, and an alternative lifestyle to go with it. “I had a whole different persona online,” said a popularity-starved teenager who called herself “Autumn” in PBS’s Growing Up Online. “I was only 14. I looked like I’m 18.” Autumn’s parents knew nothing of her parallel life until the documentary was made.

One reason that parents and grandparents are often in the dark about their kids’ Internet lives is that teens have an online lingo all their own. If you try to look over your child’s shoulder to see what they are writing, they may quickly send a message to their frieds: POS. This means “parent over shoulder” and alerts them to avoid taboo topics. A good guide to online jargon is at www.netlingo.com.

What’s a Parent to Do?

The potential dangers of the Internet for children was recognized more than a decade ago, and numerous organizations have sprung up to deal with the problem. All can be accessed online and offer a wide range of advice and tools for gaining some control over your child’s or grandchild’s life in cyberspace. Here are basic rules that they recommend:

• Talk with your kids about their computer use (and digital phone messaging), their Web browsing, their interaction online. Explain that you’re looking out for their safety online. Take charge of their computer lives, just as you would any other major aspect of their lives. Let them know you’re watching and may impose controls. Consider drawing up a formal contract with your child about computer use—times of day, total hours, off-limits websites.

• Keep computers (and games that can communicate through the Internet) in open spaces, like kitchens and family rooms. Don’t let a child spend time online behind closed doors.

• Put in parental controls. Some operating systems, like Windows Vista, have fairly powerful filters. There are many commercial products that go much farther by also monitoring everything your kids do online—every keystroke, every website visited. You can set time limits on computer use, both by the time of day and by total time online. Some programs allow you to monitor the child’s online activity remotely, from, say, your office computer. Reviews of monitoring software are available on the Web, including an extensive review on PC Magazine’s website.

• On the social networking sites like Facebook, kids should use the privacy settings so that only their real friends can see their stuff. They should be sure they really know everyone on their buddy list. They should keep all passwords private—except from their parents.

• Teach kids to think twice before putting online things that can be seen—and passed on—by anyone in the world. This includes personal data like photos, real names, phone numbers and addresses. Make sure children tell you if someone begins asking for personal info or tries to lure them into doing something inappropriate, like posting a revealing photograph.

• Tell kids to never accept an invitation from a stranger to a face-to-face meeting. This could be an adult, posing as a teenager, who is “grooming” the child for direct contact. Kids should never even reply to messages from strangers, over the computer or their phones.

• Make sure children never post humiliating videos or pictures of others without their permission. They should never pass along cruel messages about other people.

• Don’t allow kids to download any content without parents’ explicit permission. Not only may the material be inappropriate, but it also may be infected with viruses.

• Stress manners. The Internet is a new hangout for kids. They should be as nice as they would be in any other social situation. Just as manners and rules apply when hanging out at the local library or smoothie shop, they also apply online.

Peter Ross Range is a freelance writer based in Washington.