One source estimates that 20% of children who use the Internet are propositioned by an adult while online. Many of these children didn’t realize that the person they were interacting with was a whole lot older than them.

Is the solution keeping your teen age children off the Internet?

Well, let’s not panic.

The truth is that online communities are here to stay and have a lot to offer. And social networking is such an important part of many kids’ lives that any attempt to eliminate it will likely drive it underground where you’ll be unable to influence it.

So a better course is to teach and re-teach all the personal safety stuff you teach your four-year-old. “Don’t talk to strangers” is still a good idea, but older kids online need to know how to identify a dangerous stranger pretending to be just another kid. Older kids need to know what information is safe to share in a public space like an online forum. And kids need to know how to move safely from online conversation to in-person conversation over a Pepsi at the mall.

Pay attention not only to “regular” social media sites like Facebook but also to video gaming sites and other forums. The expansion of social media in the past few years means that your child may be connected to others through media you know nothing about. Realize too that some new sites permit anonymous postings, which is an open invitation to cyber bullying.

Keep in mind that social media sites have age limits for a reason. Don’t enable a child’s participation in social media by helping her lie about her age to get an account. At the same time, keep on top of social media use by children who are old enough to have their own accounts legally. This includes their email accounts. You may have learned how to identify and remove spam messages and you may be aware of the danger of clicking on unsolicited links, but your children may not.

Keep  up with the tech world yourself. If you use social media you’ll have a better idea of the hazards your child may face and you’ll be more credible to your kid when you offer advice.  A great site from the Washington State Attorney General provides helpful information for teens online – information that will help you realize just how much kids might not know about online interactions.

The worry we have about children’s social media use is a worry that they will get into situations they are unprepared to handle. Talk with your kids about using caution online and keep the lines of communication open at your house.

You want to know what’s going on. You want to be the first to know if the Internet turns into a monster.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

A popular talk show host recently featured a story about mothers who used social media to punish a child. One mother posted a photo of her daughter holding a sign that explained the bad thing the child had done. Another posted a child’s punishment to her own and to the child’s Facebook pages. When others commented, the child was made to respond, saying what she had done to earn the punishment.

One of the mothers justified shaming her child by saying that this is no different than her own parents, back in the day, telling the neighbors about a dumb thing she’d done. Is it the same? And whether it’s the same or not, is it a good thing to do?

Raising teens is as frustrating today as it ever was and it’s still difficult to get a teen’s attention. One of the mothers the talk show host interviewed said that publicly embarrassing her daughter on Facebook was the only way to get a response from the child. So what do you think: is public embarrassment and shaming a terrible idea or an ideal technique for managing your teen?

Let’s start with the job of a parent of teenagers. It’s our job to help a kid make the transition from being 10 to being 20. The ten-year-old is dependent on his parents, he can’t make many decisions on his own, and he definitely needs someone to keep him on track in a lot of ways. The 20-year-old person is nearly an adult. He’s making most of his own decisions and may even be living on his own. He still needs the guidance of Mom and Dad, of course, but only for major decisions and only along with the guidance of his friends and other adults. A lot happens in the decade between childhood and adulthood. If you want your 10-year-old to grow into a capable and responsible adult, then you have to work on that every day until he turns 20.

So every interaction you have with your teenager is an instructional moment. And in every instructional moment, two things are taught: what to do and how to do it. When your child makes a mistake or disappoints you, you want to teach her a different thing to do. And you also want to teach her how to confront someone who has made a mistake, how to guide someone in choosing a better path, and how to not let her anger and frustration take over.

This is where public embarrassment of your child fails as a technique. It may indeed be effective in stopping whatever it was that you didn’t like. But it does nothing at all in teaching your child how to react to another person’s failings. Adults do not go out of their way to purposely embarrass or shame someone else. A friend who did this to you would quickly become your enemy. Embarrassment and shame may stop a behavior but they also destroy trust and create hard feelings. This is not what you want for your child or for the relationship you have together.

The years between 10 and 20 are important in shaping the sort of adult your child will become. But these years are also important in shaping the bond between you and your child for the future. If it is important to you that your child trust you, that she think kindly of you, that she respect your opinions, and that she come to you for advice, then the teen years are the time to build these feelings. These years are too precious to waste on childish displays for all the world to see of her missteps and of your frustration.

Ultimately, resorting to embarrassment and shame reveal the parent as the one who is immature and petty. Be above that. Show your child and show your friends what real grownups look like.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved.