Who's minding the cyber-kids?

While working at CompUSA to pay his way through seminary, Buddy Knight learned of a grave danger that led him to his calling?equipping technologically-challenged parents to protect their techno-savvy kids from the dark side of the
World Wide Web.

Knight, a former naval intelligence officer and father of four, recalls selling filtering software to a broken-hearted couple whose 14-year-old son was downloading hard-core Internet pornography. Over the following two weeks, God continued to open Knight's eyes to that "home front" war, as he served numerous customers searching for protection against online pornography.

When the first couple he'd helped returned 10 days later, angry that the software they'd purchased hadn't worked, he stumbled on a secondary critical issue.

"Did you change the password?" he asked the clueless couple. He discovered that in their own lack of technological prowess, they had naively trusted the software installation to the teenage son they were trying to protect.

Upon earning his master of divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2001, Knight founded Knight's Quest Ministries, and developed the "Sex, Kids, and the Internet" seminar and workbook. His materials teach parents how to best protect their children from the torrent of innocence-robbing dangers in cyberspace.

Vicki Courtney, a popular Christian author and speaker on youth culture, calls parents to task on the same issue in her book "Logged On and Tuned Out: A Non-techie's Guide to Parenting a Tech-savvy Generation." Courtney, who writes from a parent's perspective, went from being "tuned out" to "logged-on" when her son, who was playing games on the computer, exclaimed, "I won!"

Courtney asked him if he had defeated the computer, and he responded, "No, I beat some guy in Canada!" Noting the distressed expression that came over his mother's face, he quickly added, "Don't worry, Mom. He's a Christian."

Courtney advocates tight parental supervision in the use of media. She has been interviewed on Fox News and CNN on how she monitors her children's activities. Courtney believes she is providing boundaries that her children need, and deep down, want. They have become so accustomed to her reviewing their posts that she occasionally runs across "Hi Mom!" shout-outs in their messages to their friends.

Knight agrees that kids find security in a parent's close watch, recalling the mom who told him that her 15-year-old asked that the Net Nanny filtering software subscription be renewed to help him resist temptation.

Both authors acknowledge the many benefits of technology for education, communication, and entertainment. But they also admonish parents to:
?learn everything they can about the capabilities of the media products their children use,
?set rules and monitor use,
?teach and train responsible usage,
?lead by example,
?teach and keep on teaching a lifestyle of purity.

If they don't, parents set their children up for harmful exploitation and risky cyber-behaviors.

Of primary concern to Knight is the overabundance of hard-core pornography and other sexually oriented sites that can flash on a monitor with little effort, or even by a misguided keystroke. Videos, photos, cartoons, and erotic audio books can find their way to a home computer by a simple word search. Slight errors in typing a web address site can take a child (or adult) somewhere they never intended to go. And before it can be stopped, the wall of innocence is breached.

"Kids are being exposed to concepts of 'fun' things to do before they are emotionally or spiritually able to handle them. And it doesn't take a Ph.D. to realize that 'monkey see, monkey do,'" Knight commented. Cybersex and "sexting" (distributing sexually explicit images of self or others by camera phone or Internet), is a trend among students as young as middle school?a behavior that can damage or destroy reputations.

Johnny Derouen, associate professor of student ministries at Southwestern Seminary, and a former youth pastor for 30 years, echoes Knight's observation. "When kids hit ages 12-13, there is a 600 percent increase in hormones. That hyper-drive combined with easy access to pornography is almost too much for them. By junior high, 80 percent of teens have looked at hard-core porn. It's just too easy."

Derouen added that studies show that it takes three-tenths of a second for an image to become fixed in the mind. "Once it's there, you can't delete it," he said. And pornographers are well aware that age 13 is a "branding age"?if a person starts using something by that time, they have that person for life.

The bad example set by some parents is often part of the problem in Derouen's experience. "Parents are so hooked themselves, even Christian parents," he said. He recounted how one teenage boy had been caught purchasing pornography, but his father refused to stop accessing porn himself. When it was discovered that the son had charged about $6,000 on a family account to purchase online pornography, it got the dad's attention.

"[W]e've got to teach kids at a young age to guard their hearts and minds," Derouen said.

A second cyber-area needing parental involvement is teaching children what they should and should not post on the web. Children do not naturally consider how their posts might damage their character or put them in harm's way.

In "Logged On" Courtney states, "Trust me when I say that students are ignorant to the fact that any parent, teacher, employer, college admissions office, or anyone for that matter who is not in their immedia