CALGARY - Is the YouTube phenomenon a mystery? Are Nexopia and FaceBook part of a different universe?
A new program is giving busy parents a chance to pick up cyber-safety tools at the office to better understand what their kids are doing online and how to protect them from potential dangers.
Leanne Whyte was shocked by what she learned.
"It's been a big education," said the property manager at Telus, who is also the mother of three teenagers. "Just the volume of sites that are out there marketing to kids -- I hadn't made that connection. My daughter lives on Nexopia and she sees no harm in it. I wasn't aware that anything on there is ownership of Nexopia and can be published forever at their discretion."
Telecommunications giant Telus has partnered with Alberta Children's Services in a pilot project to present the 90-minute session to its employees in five cities over the next week.
The province hopes more companies will take part in the information presented by Cathy Wing of the Media Awareness Network,a non-profit group that promotes media literacy.
"Reaching parents is really really hard," said Wing, whose group conducts the largest survey of Canadian children's Internet use and focuses much of its attention on educating young people through schools.
Despite years of warnings about cyber predators and other dangers lurking on the Internet, the lack of awareness among parents is staggering, Wing said.
Most remain "very unaware" of where their children are going and how they are using the technology.
"They need a bit of a wakeup call," said Wing.
"It's interesting how we have a very highly supervised generation of young people, more so than ever before, who are overprotected, overscheduled. Yet when they go online, it's the complete opposite. Because they are in their own home, they are completely unsupervised. We're trying to get parents more involved."
The session discusses privacy, marketing and evaluating online information. But Wing stresses that online predators are not the greatest threat to young people.
"A lot of peer-on-peer harassment is going on. Cyber bullying is a huge issue. We like to put stranger danger in context. It's only a very small risk in proportion to what's going on between peers."
Parents also need to stress the need for discretion because pictures of youthful pranks can come back to haunt a young person in the future, such as underage drinking, smoking drugs or something more extreme.
"Kids are putting things online that are there forever," said Wing. "It's a permanent record that you can't get back. Increasingly, employers and administrators are searching these sites when people apply for jobs, scholarships."
Most parents are stunned to learn about the most common sites that teens frequent.
"We call it an online culture of cruelty," said Wing. "Particularly boys like sites where there is a lot of cruel, violent humor. We're trying to sensitize kids that a lot of these sites cross over into racist and hateful content. We want parents to be aware of it so they can be talking about it."
A study released earlier this year found that one-third of 13-year-old Alberta boys were heavy viewers of Internet porn and that few of their parents checked their surfing habits or imposed restrictions.
Parents have been eager to take part in the cyber-safety sessions and spaces have been snapped up quickly, said David Miles, Telus general manager for southern Alberta.
Miles noted that with parents shuffling their kids to everything from piano to karate there is often little time to squeeze in a course on Internet safety. And most are uncomfortably aware that they know little about the world which has become the social norm for many techno-savvy young people.
"I think this is one of those things where parents don't know what they don't know," said Miles. "This gives them a clue."
