During the summer break, children will be spending more time at home, having greater opportunity to go online and increase the risk from unsupervised "surfing or chatting." As with television, the internet is not a substitute babysitter. Ensuring children maintain a balanced, summer program, will promote a healthy lifestyle and reduce risks associated with unsupervised access to the internet.

Staying physically active, socializing with friends off-line and reviewing their school work over the summer break, along with supervised internet access, will help keep children healthy, safe and better prepared for their return to school in September.  

1. Communicate with your child and establish ground rules on their use of the Internet. (For sample rules go to www.peelpolice.on.ca and click on "Youth.")
2. Become more computer literate and Internet savvy yourself. Learn what your children like to do online and join in. i.e. set up an MSN/Facebook account for yourself.
3. Check out parental controls available on your online service. Block adult chat rooms. Block Instant/Personal Messages from people you don't know. Install filtering/blocking software, or use a "clean Internet provider" that filters at the server level.
4. Keep the computer in a "public" area in your house.NEVER allow a child to have a computer in their room that has Internet access.
5. Monitor the amount of time your child spends on the Internet, and at what times of day. Excessive time online, especially at night, may indicate a problem. Agree on a set time; use an egg timer; one hour means one hour. (Time on the Internet is time taken from other healthy activities.)
6. Tell your children to never agree to meet someone they've met online; or give out personal information, including name, address, school they attend or teachers' names, parents' names, etc.
7. Do not allow your child to use a Web Cam, digital camera, or video camera without your very close supervision.
8. Regularly search the Internet "history" on every computer with Internet access in your home, and don't be hesitant to question the parents of other children your child may visit. If your child erases the "history", they don't want you to see where they've been. This is a good time to have a talk.
9. Very closely monitor chat rooms your child may visit. Chat rooms and web sites that cater to children are where 90% of the initial contacts are made by Internet child sexual predators.
10. Remind your children to conduct themselves online the same as in the real world. Schools have been dealing with Cyberbullying on a regular basis. Kids need to treat each other with respect and look out for their friends and younger siblings.

Letting children use the Internet unsupervised, particularly talking in chat rooms, is the equivalent of dropping them off at a park, at 10:00 p.m., and saying, "Go make some new friends."

A message from the Internet Child Exploitation Unit and Crime Prevention Services.

For further information, please contact Cst. B. Pennington -Internet Child Exploitation Unit at (905) 453-3311, ext. 3489, Cst. C. Christidis -Crime Prevention Services at (905) 453-3311, ext. 4017 or visit our website at www.peelpolice.ca 

To report Child Pornography go to www.cybertip.ca