A friend once forwarded me an e-mail featuring skillfully edited photographs of "blended animals", such as a cat with a beak, and a dog with wings. They looked amazingly real. I showed the photos to my kids, and as they ooohed and laughed over the images, I couldn't help but think how beautifully the pictures illustrated a very important lesson.
You cannot believe everything you see online, no matter how convincing or real it appears to be.
Kids can be taught to not give out personal information, but what happens when they start to believe that the online alias they're chatting with is real, and then let their guard down?
What if...
...I sat down at the computer with my kids, and I built my own online alias while they watched. Not as a Mom, but as another kid.
I could make up a nickname, create a web mail account with that nickname, and then build an online profile. I could google and surf for some pictures, and show them how easy it would be to "right click save as" to add them to my profile to make it more convincing. This is where we would discuss copyright, as well as: "see how careful you have to be with pictures? If you upload a picture of yourself, anyone can copy it and use it!!". (I wouldn't feel right about actually inserting the pictures into the profile, but hopefully my kids would see how easily someone could.)
I could then use this new profile and register for a chat room, and strike up a conversation with another kid. As a fellow kid. (For the sake of that child it would be an short and harmless chat, after which I'd simply log off). Then I'd delete the false profile.
"Wow, Mom! She totally thought you were ten years old."
That's right, she did. I was convincing, wasn't I? It was wrong to lie, and maybe even against the law to create a false identity, but at least she wasn't hurt, because it was just me.
...and not a bad stranger.
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