Source: Horse & Rider Press
Edition: Summer, 2007
PDF Version: Download
Parents’ worry about their children being lured by strangers on the street or bullied by other children in the schoolyard has expanded to include the Internet. While the Internet is a very valuable resource, it also increases the potential for children to be harmed by bringing these problems into your home. Now, children can be lured by sexual predators into giving out personal information, or harassed day and night by other children, without ever setting foot outside their bedrooms. This means parents and educators need to develop new tools to help youth stay safe.
Kit 101 was produced by Internet 101, an initiative of the RCMP and local police forces in the National Capital Region, in partnership with Industry Canada’s CyberWise.ca, the Mounted Police Foundation and the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. The toolkit comprises a DVD, cue cards and a handbook that will help police officers, teachers and community workers teach children “to look both ways before crossing the information highway”.
On February 7, 2007, at the RCMP Surrey Federal Operations Building in Surrey, BC, the partners hosted a regional launch event for this Internet safety toolkit. Local educators and members of the media gathered to see first hand how the toolkit can help youth and parents learn to surf safely in the online world.
Community Policing Services distributed copies of Kit 101 to detachments throughout the Division following the regional launch.
• 28 percent of grade four students use instant messaging on an average school day, a number that jumps to 43 percent in grade five and 86 percent in grade 11.
• 34 percent of students in grades 7 to 11 report that they had been bullied within the current school year. Among those, 27 percent say they had been bullied over the Internet.
Source: Young Canadians in a Wired World Survey, Media Awareness Network, 2005
• The largest group of viewers of Internet porn is children between ages 12 and 17
• The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old
• 7 to 17 year olds who would freely give out home address - 29%
• 7 to 17 year olds who would freely give out email address - 14%
Source: Family Safe Media, December 15, 2005
• 84 percent of Canadian children are “wired”; the majority has no parental supervision while on the Internet
• 60 percent participate in chat rooms and 15 percent have gone to meet someone they had met in a chat room
Source: MNet 2000
• One in five children who use computer chatrooms has been approached over the Internet by pedophiles.
Source: Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Akerman, Telegraph.co.uk January 2002