Chapter 14. Enjoying Safe Family Fun and Games

Is cyberspace a family place? If you have kids , you might be wondering. One day the media touts the Net as the greatest thing since Gutenberg, and the next it's the harbinger of the Apocalypse, an instrument of pornographers, pedophiles, and disgruntled loners.

Actually, it's neither . It's a tool, and like any tool, it can be put to good uses or bad. A hammer can build shelter or bash a finger. I think an adult has a right to use the Internet any way he or she wants to ”within the law and without bothering anybody. But if you have kids who will use the Net (and they should!), you need to know how to insulate them from the Net's racier regions .

More importantly, there have been cases of pedophiles and other such creeps starting online relationships with kids (and gullible grownups!) that eventually lead to face-to-face meetings, and then to tragedy. In this chapter, you learn commonsense rules for creep-proofing your kids.