December 2002 — News/In Brief
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Campaign Promotes Safe, Responsible Internet Use for Students
As part of Schr'eder’s past job — an upper-management CEO strategy officer and content provider for America Online — she sat in on around 50 online chats every week with lawyers, police officers and other officials. Children using AOL discovered these weekly chats and began seeking help from the officials on how to protect themselves from pornography and online predators.
Schr'eder began investigating and witnessed children being taken into private chat rooms — which have no way of being monitored — and then lured or seduced into meeting someone in person. “We found that many kids weren’t talking to their parents about what was happening to them, because they were afraid their computer privileges would be taken away; so they found a safe haven in us,” Schr'eder says.
She developed online content on AOL that proactively addressed Internet safety for children; from there, i-Safe was born. The foundation is now dedicated to preventing crimes like the murder of Christina Long. The victim’s friends later said they knew she spent a lot of time online with who she thought were teen-age boys. Schr'eder says that’s just the problem. “Kids don’t understand that pedophiles don’t contact them in a chat room and say, ‘Hi, I’m a pedophile.’ Pedophiles create a trust relationship and then lure the kids into dangerous situations.”
Another main danger is that most children are far more computer literate than their parents or teachers, Schr'eder says. “Many parents don’t realize that when they set up the Internet in their home, they are inviting the whole world in.”
For more information on i-Safe America, contact (760)754-5600 or visit www.isafe.org.
— Shay K. McKinley
