Whether you think teen online dating is safe or not, it is virtually impossible to forbid your teenagers from doing it. All you can really do is supervise and stay involved in whom they are talking to. Be aware of the threats, but also keep an open mind.
Teens are exposed to so many exploitive images on television that intimate relationships are becoming a regular part of teenage life. As a parent, you may be concerned that your teen may seek out emotional or sexual intimacy at an early age. While you can't be with your teen at all hours, don't be afraid to monitor the situation. SurveilStar -- Parental Control Software can help you monitor teen's online activity.
The activity of online dating or online dating service is meant to provide Internet as a dating medium for people. The personal computer is a commonly used hardware in providing dating service over the Internet. However, cell phones are also used. One has to provide his personal information to the given dating service before searching for a partner. One can search for people on the basis of criteria they set. There is provision of uploading photos, online chat, webcasts, message boards, telephone chat, etc. for customers of the service provider. Online dating statistics are provided in the article below.
No matter how beautiful and attracting it seems to be in love and to be with someone, these teenage online dating statistics have revealed that not all are lucky to have a fairy tale story. Abusive relationship statistics clearly state that some times, dating the wrong person can lead to some fatal consequences.
The Internet though, appears to be an easy way to find love, dangers associated with it exceed the benefits. Giving personal information to a complete stranger is very dangerous. There are people who search for naive and innocent teenagers in order to take advantage of them. Apart from teenagers, women are targeted by these online 'predators'. Lying is one of the common things that one resorts to, in deceiving naive Internet users. One can lie about anything like his/her age, height, etc. Dangers of virtual dating have materialized in the form of murders, abductions and rapes.
The different statistics of online dating reveal that the number of people who try to find love online are rising in number. However, these online dating statistics also warn us about the dangers of careless use of the Internet. Here the following are online dating safety lessons for parents and teens.
With the expansion of social networking sites, an increasing number of teenagers have turned to online dating to find a match. There are benefits to online dating for teens that may make it well worth the effort. However, there are several safety issues, especially for young people. It is of utmost importance to consider these issues to ensure you avoid dangerous situations that may come about through meeting a person online.
1. Do not give anyone personal information about you like your address, phone number, school you attend, places you frequent or a social security number.
2. Do not divulge any information that will lead to revealing personal information. For example, if you mention a specific teacher at your school by name, a person may be able to figure out what school you attend. Also if you play for a sports team, a person may be able to track down a practice field where you frequent.
3. Talk on the phone; you are less likely to be fooled by a person's age or even gender. Just be sure to be careful about giving out your phone number. Insist on calling the other person, and be sure to block your number ahead of time.
4. Be open about the people you meet online. Talk to friends and family about someone you are interested in on the Internet. Sometimes it is easier for someone you know well to tell if something suspicious is going on than it is for you if you are in the midst of a situation.
5. If you do decide to meet the person you have been dating online, be sure to meet in a public place. You should also take someone along with you. For example, you could agree to meet at a baseball game and each of you could bring some friends along.
Parental control software is far from perfect and your kids are smarter than you may think, they can sometimes find a way around them. Companies developing this monitoring software make millions out of parents neglecting their responsibility as a parent. You cannot use a computer monitoring program to prevent them from watching indecent TV shows and movies, you cannot use a computer program to prevent them from reading indecent magazines and books, you cannot use a computer monitoring program to help them choose their friends or prevent them from using drugs, you can however, use a computer monitoring program to protect them from Internet predators and indecent material available on the Internet.
If you are really concerned about your children's online safety you can install computer monitoring software like SurveilStar this is a parental control software solution and will help you track emails, IM’s, chats, social networking, websites visited, images viewed, etc.
With this Parental control software, you can monitor your teen's online activity for protecting your kids from online dangers, while still letting them safely enjoy the games and resources that are available on the Internet, SurveilStar is the perfect solution that can be used for monitoring your teen's online dating.
SurveilStar comes with an advanced content monitoring module which allows you to monitor your teen's online activity on-the-fly. SurveilStar Parental Control Software will help you know what your teens are doing using IM applications, what they are chatting about and how often do they chat. This parental control software support monitoring over ten popular IM applications which are MSN Messenger, Skype, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Lotus Sametime, Tecent QQ, etc. It also can record conversation histories.
Trust goes both ways and the trust showed by the one party will help win the trust of the other party. You should make it clear what the consequences will be if they disobey and misbehave, be consequent with your actions and make no exceptions to your own rules. They should also be able to trust you, knowing that you will not invade their privacy. Breaking into their e-mail accounts and reading their e-mails, or installing parental control software to monitor their online activities is not only your right, but your responsibility. Both parties should be open and honest towards each other with everything they do. Tell them they are being monitored. Your child should have enough confidence in you, to turn to you when he or she is unsure of something or did something wrong.
The online safety of your children is not only about maintaining high moral values, it is also about keeping them away from Internet predators. These people are active on IRC channels (chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook), forums and may even contact your child via e-mail. So many teenagers have walked into the trap of deception. There is no way of verifying the identity of the person on the other side of your computer screen. An adult online predator, pretending to be a teenager, can easily mislead your teenager into believing that he/she has found a good online friend. This is why online dating is so dangerous, not only for children but adults as well. Ao as a parent, you need to make sure your kids online safety.
SurveilStar Parental Control will take screenshots of your system every few seconds, and then lets you view it in a video-like display whenever you want to check up on your kid's computer activities. Besides, it will logs all computer activities including startup/shutdown, logon/logoff, hardware changes, software changes, application usages, website, document, printing, shared file logs, email send/receive, instant messages, application statistics, web statistics, traffic statistics, and more! With this parental control software, you can learn the one your teen are dating online with, so you can make sure whether your teen's online dating is safe or not for protecting him.
