How to Keep Adults Safe Online

Brochures are handed out in school like candy thrown from Smokey Bear at a parade. Public officials offer tables riddled with brochures and informational pages in office foyers just overflowing with them. The titles aren't foreign to us. "Keeping Your Kids Safe Online", "Safe Practices for Online Chatting", "Keeping Kids Safe from Online Predators"; the titles are endless. The message resonates everywhere, and as long as the idea is getting through, we feel a sense of comfort about it. Strategies for optimal online safety are entwined in television commercials and magazines, programs are offered as part of a classroom's lesson plan and in after school programs. No matter the method, kids are being taught some of the most basic and vital elements for optimal online safety and security. So many messages, so many lesson plans. The programs are functional. All the literature we see is proving to be productive. The kids are getting the idea. But it is here I have to ask you, what about their parents? What about adults?

The tables are turning and it is becoming the adults who are the new 'lamb in the lion's den'. Adults are just as vulnerable as children to falling victim to online deviance, identity theft and predatory behavior. Adults are falling short in absorbing the lessons that we know are vital to our children's safety. As parents we employ parental controls, chat loggers and site blockers to do our part, but it is not customary to initiate these safeguards for ourselves. And so, adults stumble too.