Internet Safety Reflection!

The article I chose to read was "Provident Living Guidelines Regarding Internet Safety"
The person I chose to teach and interview was my younger sister. Because we have been raised in the same house with the same parents we agreed about the necessity of internet safety. She basically knew everything that I was teaching, I just expanded on it by giving her specific prophetic counsel. We had a great discussion.

It is so important to be educated on internet safety. Like I've said a million times: Technology is amazing but just like everything else it can be used for good and bad. We need to make sure as parents, teachers, siblings, etc. that we educate and monitor our children and the technologies being used. Here are a few examples:
-I think the most important thing you can do is teach the importance of internet safety and explain why it is necessary.
-My home ward bishop gave a ward fireside a few years back counseling us on "internet safety." He took two full hours teaching the adults as well as the children how to prevent the evils of the world that can come from technology, as well as guidance on what to do if it comes up unintentionally. "Unplug it and RUN AWAY!"
-We have installed a filtering program to my computer so that any unauthorized sites will be blocked.
-In my house, we put our computer in a "high-traffic" area, or in a place where there are people constantly going in and out of. This helps to avoid many bad situations because there are other people around all the time.
-Another big issue is "online chatting." It's important to counsel young children who fool around on MSN Messenger as well as older children and young adults who have facebook, myspace, etc. that giving out personal information to random strangers is NOT OKAY. This has caused many dangerous situations that eventually end in heartbreak.

In my family, we have talked about this many times because we feel that it is a major issue in the world. Because we have talked about it, we feel more comfortable and know exactly what to do in the given situation. I think it is the educates responsibility to teach those who are ignorant in the matter. Lucky for us, there is plenty of prophetic counsel that we can listen to and follow to keep ourselves and our future children safe. Yes, technology has played a huge part in developing and perfecting some of the most fascinating and beneficial inventions of this day and age, but we know that no matter what- we must live in the world not of the world.