Each year, thousands of children fall prey to predators lurking online. These criminals masquerade as fellow teens and lure children to places away from home to kidnap them or worse. Savvy parents teach their children about online safety, but you can give your kids an additional layer of protection: a bundle of lies.
While many children spend time on social media sites interacting with their friends, they often join forums and chat groups with hundreds of strangers, some of whom could be there for criminal purposes. The best defense you can give your child in this situation is to prepare her beforehand.
Sit down with your child when she is old enough to understand, but before she has established an online presence in any chat rooms or forums. Create a character that she will play every time she is online. Have fun with this process and treat it as if you were writing a story about another girl. Come up with her name, the way she looks, where she lives, stories about her family members and fun anecdotes about her school and family life. Make lists of her likes and dislikes as well as hobbies and passionate interests. Allow your child to make as many decisions as possible so that the character gets the flavor of a real child, but make the character as different from your child as possible.
Every time your child goes online, insist that she do so while playing in character. Make it a fun game to keep her interested in the charade. Let her practice as much as possible, at home as well as online. If the time comes when an internet predator develops an interest in her, he’ll have no luck finding her because the character doesn’t exist.