Thank You Bishop Ireton High School
October 16, 2009
Bishop Ireton High School
Yesterday I had the opportunity to share an Internet & Mobile Safety Workshop for Parents with Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, VA. As a 1988 graduate of DeMatha, a cross-town rival, the last time I visited the school, I wasn’t exactly on the same team. A very special thank you to Mr. Tim Hamer, Principal and Ms. Erin O’Leary, Director of Counseling Services for hosting the event and welcoming me to the campus. As a fellow parent concerned with the well-being of our children, I felt very much a part of the same team on this visit. Thank you for your interest in this issue.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Kevin Jennings: The Right Person for “Safe School” Czar?
September 24, 2009
Sexual Relationship Between a Student and an Adult Male Met in a Bus Station Not Reported by “Safe School” Czar
Kevin Jennings: Obama's 'Safe School' Czar
Kevin Jennings, now the “safe schools” appointee in Barack Obama’s US Department of Education, is a prominent activist. As the Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), he has done much to make schools safer for students who identify as gay. But that alone doesn’t qualify him to be the “safe school” czar. Rather, I believe it is the position he takes regarding the following account that casts doubt about his qualifications for such an important role.
Since Mr. Jennings began his career as a teacher it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he often uses former students to make various points when he is speaking to groups or in his books. One such student he referred to as “Brewster”. In at least one talk to a GLSEN rally in Iowa in 2000, we get a clear picture into Mr. Jennings’ qualifications for protecting children and promoting appropriate school-parent communication. Below is a transcript of the section of Jennings’ speech that speaks to “Brewster” and an audio of the speech can be heard here.
And it took me back to 12 years ago at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts where I taught, where I was a very scared young gay teacher. I had been fired from my first job for being gay.
And in my second job I wasn’t sure how I wanted to deal with that. And I was in my first month on the job and I had an advisee named Brewster. Brewster was missing a lot of classes; he was in the boarding school so I said to his teacher, his first period teacher, I said, ‘next time Brewster misses a class I want you to tell me that he’s missed that class and, uh, I will go find him.’ So I went and found Brewster one morning when she had called and he was asleep in his dorm room.
And I said, “Brewster, what are you doing in there asleep?” And he said, “Well, I’m tired.” And I said, “Well we all are tired and we all got to school today.” And he said, “Well I was out late last night.” And I said, “What were you doing out late on a school night.” And he said, “Well, I was in Boston…” Boston was about 45 minutes from Concord. So I said, “What were you doing in Boston on a school night Brewster?” He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, “Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.” High school sophomore, 15 years old. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people. I was a closeted gay teacher, 24 years old, didn’t know what to say. I knew I should say something quickly so I finally said, My best friend had just died of AIDS the week before. I looked at Brewster and said, “You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.” He said to me something I will never forget, He said “Why should I, my life isn’t worth saving anyway.”
Mr. Jennings did not notify authorities that a 15 year old boy left the boarding school at night to travel 45 minutes away to a bus station and then went to an adult stranger’s home and likely had sex with him. He didn’t notify anyone that the boy expressed that his life wasn’t worth living.
Today Jennings claims he had no reason to believe that the child was engaging in sex with a strange man he met in a bus station. What do you think? Why did he ask the boy if he used a condom if he didn’t think the teen was engaging in sex with strangers from bus stops? Did he know the boy left school grounds or go to the home of a stranger? Did he know the boy was severely depressed? Of course he did – it is Mr. Jennings’ own accounting of the Brewster incident. What was Mr. Jennings’ response to the National Education Association (NEA) for bringing this issue to light? Jennings hired a law firm, Nixon Peabody LLP, and threatened to sue the NEA for libel, saying there was no evidence that he knew the student in question was sexually active, or that he failed to report the situation. In fact, The Washington Times reported in 2004 that “state authorities said Mr. Jennings filed no report” with the Massachusetts Department for Children and Families, the department to which Jennings — as a Massachusetts teacher — would have been legally obliged to report the situation.
It is totally reasonable for parents to expect that the “safe school” czar is someone with an unambiguous record on appropriate school-parent communication. Instead of threatening law suits, Mr. Jennings could have taken a different position. Had Jennings said something like – “I was a new teacher, in over my head with that situation. I should have alerted someone about a troubled 15 year old boy being 45 minutes away from his boarding school without permission and potentially having sex with an adult he met in a bus station,” then maybe he would deserve a pass – assuming the rest of his record stands up to scrutiny.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Tim raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations. He is also a co-founder of KidSafe, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe while teaching healthy online habits.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
Facebook reaches 65 million mobile users
September 17, 2009
Facebook milestone - 65 million mobile users
Assuming you haven’t been living on a deserted island, you already know that Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the planet. In fact, it gets more popular every day. But the way you use Facebook is not the way your teen uses Facebook. For this generation, Facebook has replaced face to face communication, talking on the telephone and even e-mail.
According to a June 2009 Neilsen report, “How Teens Use Media”, almost 50% of teens have a Facebook account and by comparison to adults, they are described as “prolific” users. But alas, technology moves as quickly as our children.
Facebook has announced that they’ve hit a new milestone – 65 million people now access Facebook via their mobile phone. Just eight months ago that number stood at “only” 20 million people. Facebook’s web site m.facebook.com works on any mobile browser and x.facebook.com is designed specifically for touch screen phones. Since 37% of teens have access to the web via their mobile phone, your “prolific” user may actually be using Facebook more than you think.
Social Networking Safety Tips for Mobile Kids:
- Talk to your teen about how they use social networking sites. Having an open dialogue creates a more comfortable environment to talk about this part of your child’s life. If you’re not comfortable, your child won’t be comfortable talking to you about this aspect of their life.
- Place limits on when and where your child can use their mobile phone. When we were children, we all used the telephone wired to the wall in the kitchen… and we survived. In fact, this probably kept a few of us from getting ourselves into an awful lot of trouble when we were younger. Kids should be expected to use their mobile phone in public areas of the house – just like their Internet connected computers .
- Clearly communicate your expectations.
Create an appropriate username Set the privacy settings for the account so that only approved “Friends” can access their profile Do not accept “Friend” requests from strangers Do not post personal info online such as their real name, their age, address, school name or phone number Do not post, send or forward explicit pictures of themselves or others Do not talk about drugs, sex or other inappropriate topics for children (yes, teens are still children) Treat others online the way they would like to be treated offline – the Golden Rule Tell a parent if something happens that makes them uncomfortable
Following these common sense tips will help teach your child that using social networking sites like Facebook comes with some responsibilities. Francis Duncan recently post “Social Networking Survey Results” on Safety Clicks. Francis shares some staggering information about what teens say they’re doing on social networking sites like Facebook. I strongly recommend that you check it out. You won’t believe some of the things kids are doing on these sites.
For more information on protecting your child online and on their mobile phone and to learn about exciting new parenting tools to be released in the coming months, visit www.kidsafe.me – smart tools to keep our kids safe.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Popular Children’s Web Site Under Attack by Identity Thieves
August 5, 2009
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Jonathan Dick, you won’t get your hands on my child!
July 31, 2009
Teacher indicted on new charges.
You’ll hear me say it again and again, you need to know who is sending text messages to your children and who they are interacting with on Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
A middle school teacher arrested for sending sexual text messages to a 15-year-old boy has been indicted on new charges
This middle school teacher and lacrosse coach identified his victims on Facebook and then put his professional experience interacting with children to use by developing relationships with the kids and “grooming” them. Grooming is the term authorities use to describe the how a predator will patiently and methodically work to warp the child’s mind. Their goal of course is to cloud the child’s sense of right and wrong and/or exploit their naivety so that the sicko can harm the child in the sickest, most demented ways. Once Jonathan Dick (the name of the indicted teacher) built the trust of a child, he would start to interact with the child by mobile phone and text messages. This is where he could work under the radar to try and “seal the deal” by pushing to meet with the child face to face. According to a June 2009 study by Nielsen How Teens Use Media, the average teen sends and receives more than 2,800 text messages a month. I know it is a huge task but parents need to know what is coming and going in their kids’ messages – assuming that protecting your child is more important to you than protecting their privacy.
Parents — you need to know who is interacting with your children on Social Networking sites and who is contacting your child on their mobile phone. There are hundreds of thousands of these sickos out there so please don’t think that your child can not become a victim or the prey of another “Jonathan Dick”. It can happen to anyone and the more a parent thinks it won’t happen to their family, the easier it is for the predators.
A reprint from the Washington Examiner…
Associated Press
07/30/09 11:50 PM EDTBEL AIR, MD. — Harford County prosecutors say a middle school teacher arrested for sending sexual text messages to a 15-year-old boy has been indicted on new charges.
Forty-three-year-old Jonathan Dick of Bel Air was indicted Tuesday on 18 counts, including third-degree sex offense and sodomy.
Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly says the indictment involves a 14-year-old boy and the alleged offenses occurred between March 2007 and April 2008.
Dick, a physical education teacher at Fallston Middle School, was charged in March with two counts of solicitation of a minor.
Cassilly says Dick remains held on bond.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
Technology Has Changed. Kids Haven’t.
July 13, 2009
At the end of my last post I suggested that parents take stock of the digital devices that their children have at their disposal. Now that you know just how “wired” your children are, let’s talk about how they are using technology.
As parents we often think of the use of technology as either going online or going offline. This doesn’t apply to our children who are growing up with technology weaved into every aspect of their lives. Our kids ARE online – constantly wired to the digital world. Nuance? Not really.
An Avatar
Kids are doing the things that kids have always done – they’re just doing them online. Kids have always passed notes, now they’re doing it through text messages from their mobile phones. Instead of buying albums or CDs, they’re downloading music from iTunes. Kids have replaced board games with a gaming console or a handheld gaming device like a Nintendo DS. When we were kids we kept a journal and today’s youth have blogs and websites like Facebook and MySpace. I used to dress up my G.I. Joe and my sister dressed up Barbie. Now kids are dressing up their online characters called avatars. So kids themselves haven’t really changed that much.
Another important similarity to previous generations – kids are just as naive about risks and just as reckless as they have always been. Let’s face it, even the mellowest of us lacked the same sense of self-preservation as kids that the adults in our lives had. Kids have always made poorer choices than responsible adults. Dr. David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family puts it this way, “The part of their brain that puts the brakes on things is under major construction”.
Web 2.0 enables kids to create web content
While kids haven’t changed that much, technology is changing quickly. This makes it difficult for parents who see the world as either “going online” or “going offline” to keep up with our digital kids. Kids are not just using technology and consuming online content, they are now creating it. Posting pictures online at Photobucket, videos on YouTube, sharing opinions on Facebook. These are all examples of what’s called Web 2.0 – user generated content.
Web 2.0 gives kids more choices – greater opportunity for both good and bad choices. What should they post online? Who should they be interacting with? Let’s look at just some of the online decisions that are too common among kids.
- Sharing passwords with friends
- Posting personal information on chat boards or social networking sites
- Befriending unknown people simply because their online profile reflects similar interests (remember the lessons we all learned about talking to strangers?)
- Embarrassing or harassing other kids (kids used to get relief from a bully when they went home. Not anymore!)
- Talking about sex, sometimes with “Friends” they have never actually met or seen.
Right about now, you might be saying to yourself, “I’ve spoken to my child and they know they shouldn’t do these things. I’m pretty confident my child is making the right choices.” A few cyber safety studies suggest you might be only half correct.
John Walsh
A Cox Communication study conducted in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and “America’s Most Wanted” Host John Walsh illustrates the point well. 59% of the teens say that posting personal information or photos on public blogs or social networking sites is unsafe. That being said, 62% of the same kids say that they post photos of themselves, 50% share their age, 45% share the school they attend and 41% share the city they live in. And here’s the kicker…a whopping 14% (that’s 1 in 7) post their cell phone number on public blogs or social networking sites!
How about sexting (x-rated rated text messaging)? You might be saying, “I know my kids wouldn’t be involved with this insanity because I’ve talked to my child and she knows sexting is inappropriate!” The most widely quoted study on sexting is from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. According to the study, 1 in 5 teens say they have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves even though 75% of the offending kids said they knew sexting was “wrong”.
Most parents are talking to their kids about what choices to make online and kids are getting the message. Despite this fact, kids continue to do what kids have always done – they disregard the lessons from parents and make poor choices anyway. Talking to your kids and teaching them right from wrong is critical. Trying to keep an open dialogue with them never goes out of style. But parental oversight is more important than ever.
- Who is your child IMing, texting, emailing?
- What pictures/videos are they’re posting online or sending from their phone?
- Is their social networking profile marked Private or is it visible to literally anyone?
- What websites and chatrooms do they frequent?
- Who are your child’s social networking “Friends”?
This isn’t a question about privacy. This is a question of parental involvement. By definition parental oversight means that there are limits to the amount of privacy kids have. As parents we have an obligation to know the answers to these questions and to stay up-to-date as our children’s activities and sphere of influence evolves. Simply talking to our kids about right and wrong isn’t enough. Kids need oversight, especially in a Web 2.0 world. When we were kids we weren’t always thrilled with our parents’ desire to be involved or informed either. Remember all the questions they asked us when we went out on a Friday night? Remember how dad wanted to meet your friends? For most of us, our parents asked the questions and engaged whether we liked it or not. Technology has changed but kids haven’t and neither should parents.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
Are Your Kids Building An Army of Webkinz?
July 4, 2009
Are your kids building an army of Webkinz?
Being online doesn’t just refer to the computer located in your kitchen. Kids access the Internet from laptops, mobile phones, gaming consoles and handheld gaming devices. Are you worried your teen will have arthritic thumbs from texting so much? Are your little ones slowly building an army of Webkinz? If this sounds like your child, let’s talk.
Obviously the digital world has a ton of benefits to our children but you may be concerned about what they’re doing in the world of bits and bytes and what decisions they’re making. If you’re not concerned, I hope that you are at least curious. Most of us don’t fully understand some aspect of the technology that our kids are using whether it is MMS, webcams, social networking, PictoChat, or IM/SMS lingo. The good news is that you can become more familiar with technology and you can learn about the issues that affect your kids online. These issues include cyberbullying, revealing too much and predators. Bullying existed long before the Internet. Kids have always been more naive and more reckless than adults and sick, demented child predators are not a new phenomenon. The difference is that while today’s digital world has many advantages, it also helps to cloak these treats in the shadows and the opportunity for them to go unchecked by a trusted adult is much greater.
Sexual predators use technology and websites that attract kids including chatrooms, social networking sites and gaming sites. If a website or technology attracts children, it also attracts sexual predators – period. Sexual predators are hunting which means they go where their prey is. They often camouflage themselves and they are cunning and dangerous. Predators make contact with children and work hard to develop friendship, emotional reliance, and eventually interest in sexual topics. He or she may initiate offline relations quickly or spend months “grooming” the child to counter the child’s good instincts and the safety lessons you’re teaching your kids. Needless to say, they’re experts at fly under the radar. They use tactics such as moving the dialogue to websites parents wouldn’t instinctively find threatening such as a gaming website or to a mobile phone and text messaging. The ultimate goal in many cases is to convince the child to meet face-to-face.
So there’s a lot here and I’m not going to try and tackle it all in one post but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll dive deep into all of the things we trusted adults can and should be doing to make our kid’s digital world as fun and safe as possible. Subscribe to this blog for some practical tips or follow me on Twitter.
A good place to start until my next post however is to take an inventory of your home’s technology. What technology do your kids use or have access to that is wired to the rest of the world via the Internet or telephone network? Not sure? Well assume that if it is electronic that it can probably connect to some sort of network and then use Google or ask your kids about it. You may learn more than you think from them and your kids will probably revel in the opportunity to show you how much they know.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
Welcome
July 1, 2009
I’m a dad. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m an Internet & Child Safety Advocate.
Based upon a bad online shopping experience my brother Steve had on eBay, he founded an Internet trust and safety company called buySAFE in 2003. I joined the buySAFE team when the business launched and today I serve as the company’s Vice President of Business Development & Sales. My most important role however is as a dad to my three children.
As a father, nothing is more important to me than protecting my kids from harm, and teaching them to be smart and safe when a difficult situation arises. But when a child in our family was victimized by an Internet child predator, it was a wake up call. As parents we often don’t know enough about our kids’ “digital lives”. Predators can exploit this in the darkest possible ways. Like many of you, I’ve heard too many stories of the world’s most detestable people using technology to gain access to and to cause harm to children.
Today I work to educate parents on how they can keep their children safe in our digital world. Communication and education are powerful weapons to fight the war being waged against our kids. All of us want our children to be empowered to make the right choices at the right times, to know how to get out of a
situation that feels uncomfortable and to come to us with their concerns. This is a cause I’m passionate about. I hope this blog will help you open up or expand the dialogue you’re having with the children in your life.
I also think parents need better, easy to use technology tools that can help us know what our kids are being exposed to, who they are communicating with and who is trying to communicate with them. That is why my brother and I and a talented team of technologists and entrepreneurs are working to develop new and intelligent technology to help protect kids and empower parents. I believe it’s the most important thing that I’ve ever done. Children have the right to use and enjoy technology safely and parents have a right to peace of mind. Please take a moment to see what we are working on: http://www.kidsafe.me
If this is important to you as well and you’d like to learn more about how to protect children in our digital world, please subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.
Thank you.
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Inspired by his own child’s encounter with an online predator, Tim Woda is a passionate advocate for protecting children from today’s scariest digital dangers – predators, sexting and cyberbullying. Co-founder of KidSafe.me, developer of the world’s only Parental Intelligence System which helps parents keep their social and mobile kids safe, he raises awareness of these issues and shares his experience with parents through Internet & Mobile Safety Workshops hosted by schools, churches and other organizations.
Copyright © 2009 Tim Woda
