Pandora’s Blog

Our friend Stacie at stopinternetpredators.org posted a new blog update on Thursday. She brings up very interesting and valid points. Of course, parents don’t have to wait for the states to act; they can take some responsibility and measures into their own hands by simply monitoring and being aware of what your kids are doing online. Hint, hint: PC Pandora can help in a big way.

Check out Stacie’s post…

March 19th, 2009
States Are SPRINGING Into Action
By Stacie Rumenap, Executive Director, Stop Child Predators

It’s only March, but it’s great to see so many states SPRINGING into action with online child safety legislation. This week alone, lawmakers in Alabama, Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina took important steps to help make sure their laws are keeping up with the pace of technology and the threat kids face online.

Consider New Jersey, for example, where the State Assembly passed eight Internet child safety bills addressing issues like reducing the online anonymity of Megan’s Law registrants, criminalizing the communication of sexual suggestive materials when sent from an adult to a child, stalking, identity theft and more. Congrats to Attorney General Anne Milgram and the State Assembly for their leadership on these issues. The measures still need to be considered by the Senate and signed by Gov. Corzine to become law.

These achievements are laudable for sure, but there’s more work to be accomplished. New Jersey lawmakers failed, for instance, to enact a bill that would have provided penalties for inappropriate communication sent through social networking sites. They also defeated a cyberbullying bill. Bullying is a sad fact of life for many children, and unfortunately, bullies have gone high-tech and are now online. Cyberbullies, as they’re called, hide behind the relative anonymity of the Internet to intimidate, insult and harass others online, without much fear of consequence. Lawmakers missed out on the opportunity to address these issues, at a time when kids are inflicting such harm on one another in record numbers in chat rooms, social networking sites, virtual worlds and text messages.

We’ll continue to monitor these states, and more, and work to ensure safeguards are put in place to protect our children from online predators—which can sometimes mean from kids themselves.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 8:00 AM and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.