Tangled Web -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 3/17/2006
Last Visited: 3/17/2006
According to parenting author Stacey DeBroff, Himmer's concerns are not unfounded.
"Kids will post their class schedules, phone numbers, e-mails, even home addresses," said DeBroff, the founder and CEO of momcentral.com."They're thinking 'There's 60 million people on here, who cares about me?' They think its just for their friends to look at.They don't realize it's public."
DeBroff said schools became alarmed about dot-com communities like Myspace, Facebook and Bebo long before most parents did, as many students were signing on to the sites from school computers.Many schools have since been working to combat their popularity, DeBroff said, by informing parents and students of the potential dangers involved.
"The problem is," she added, "the more negative publicity they get, the more kids want to check them out."
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While Himmer worries that online communities are making it easier for sexual predators to find victims, DeBroff calls the number of kids willing to set up offline meetings with someone they met over the Internet "alarming."
"They need to realize that it's really easy to imitate a teenager online," DeBroff said.