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Lungelo Mkamba
Parents are much too careless when it comes to monitoring their children’s online behaviour.
So believes Marc Hardwick, a child abuse investigator who addressed parents in Durban on Wednesday.
“Our children are being approached by people we do not know through social media sites, on the internet and their cellphones,” he said.
One of the major threats to children was “sexting”, the sending and receiving of sexually explicit images via cellphone.
“There has been an increase in the number of teens involved in this,” he warned the meeting at Gordon Road Girls’ School.
“Children are receiving these images – often of classmates or friends – and then forwarding them.”
“Girls are being pressured by their boyfriends to have (explicit) photos taken and then to send these images on to them.”
Hardwick warned parents that their children would not tell them what they were up to, although they would often tell friends.
Cyberbullying was also fast becoming a major problem. This was when a child was harassed on social network sites and chat rooms, often by other children but sometimes by adults.
All a parent could do to combat the online scourge that was invading children’s lives was to “be a parent”.
“If you want your children to be safe on the internet then get involved,” he said.
Parents should advise children not to meet people in person with whom they connected with on the internet or give out their personal information.
