Austin, TX - Mon, May 22nd 2006, 00:00

San Antonio Express News

Parents should become very familiar with kids' hip tech toys

L.A. Lorek, Express-News Staff Writer

Twelve-year-old Tommy may think he's playing his Xbox video game against another kid who lives in Los Angeles. But in reality his opponent may be a 67-year-old child predator in Kerrville.

Online gaming is one of the fastest growing entertainment segments today and kids love it. But parents need to be aware that online dangers extend beyond the computer, into high-tech products such as video games and iPods that are light years removed from the days of Pong and Ms. Pac-Man.

With the latest Xbox Live system, for example, kids can talk online to other players, opening up the possibility that the person your child is talking to may, in fact, be a child predator.

To help prevent that, Xbox Live has built-in parental controls that can block voice chat, said David George, director of business development for Family Safe Computing at Microsoft. Unfortunately, too many parents are unaware of that feature, or that Microsoft can be notified should someone say something offensive online.

"In interactive games, the kids are busy doing something else," says Parry Aftab, with WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit child safety site and author of "The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace" (McGraw-Hill). "Child predators are more likely to arise in role-playing games on the Internet."

Grooming, the term for the time it takes a predator to gain a target's trust, is a slow process and the online gaming environment is too fast paced and the kids don't have any patience for things that get in the way of their game, she explains.

"While predators are still rare in the intense activity of a challenging game, as more inexperienced gamers and younger gamers begin to use the voice chats it is expected that predators will become a bigger problem," according to a statement on WiredSafety's Web site.

With video games, parents also need to watch out for violence, gambling, sexism and other potentially harmful content, said Craig Anderson, Iowa State University psychology professor and author of a soon-to-be-published book "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents." Any game that involves hunting down other creatures and killing them is teaching something that is likely to be harmful in the long run, he said. For a site that provides ratings on video games visit the National Institute on the Media and Family at www.mediafamily.org.

"The parenting job gets harder as electronic capabilities expand," Anderson said.

Parents need to fully understand all the hip new tech toys that kids use these days. Even video iPods can be downloaded with pornography and shared with friends. Cell phones with chat and instant message capabilities pose threats because they allow child predators to communicate with kids remotely. Whatever the latest technology, child predators already know about it and are using it, said Michelle Collins, director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"We are actually seeing an increase in Web cams and sexually graphic video," she said.

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Friendster can pose threats to children because sexual predators also post on them, said Jacalyn Leavitt, chair of the Internet Keep Safe Coalition at IkeepSafe.org.

"Predators troll the sites looking for potential victims," Leavitt said.

These sites appeal to kids because it lets them network with each other and swap information about their interests in friends, sports, music and other activities. Children younger than 14 are not allowed to register on MySpace.com, one of the most popular social networking sites with 78 million users worldwide, but many do simply by making up fake profiles since the site doesn't have any way to verify age.