Girls Teaching Girls About Cyber Security

The Girl Scouts of America have created a cool new team (female teenagers) to help teach young people how to stay safe on the Internet. “Good Morning America,” ran a segment about this new initiative:

Girl Scouts of America and Microsoft Corporation teamed up to create a new Web site that empowers girls to take control of their own online safety and help them educate their parents.”

Diane Sawyer relayed some staggering statistics at the beginning of the piece:

Forty percent of teens hide what they do online.”

Wow. That means your teenager might not be telling you everything. Even more staggering is this:

Twenty percent of kids 13 and under say they have met face to face with people they only met online.”

Parents: This is Your WAKE-UP CALL

Kids are meeting people they don’t know. They are talking to people they don’t know. These kids are young. Very, very young. And starting on computers at younger and younger ages. Communicating with a medium their parents don’t understand. This is where the Girl Scout initiative is going to come in handy. These girls are going to speak to other girls, on their terms. In their language.

The girls will be talking to parents too, teaching things like how to set up a Facebook page. They are also offering a free monthly Online Safety Newsletter, written by the teens for parents. Each month, the all-girl editorial board explores a different Internet safety topic online and then shares what it learned in the newsletter, which is distributed to adults the following month.

Being online is a part of every teenage girl’s life,” says Shannon, a member of the LMK editorial team. “Now we have a chance to teach our parents a thing or two about the real issues we face every day.”

This is a win-win folks.

Related:

• Visit the Girl Scout/Microsoft Web site for girls: LMK: Life Online (LMK means, let me know)
• Visit the Girl Scout/Microsoft Web site for parents: https://letmeknow.girlscouts.org/Home.aspx
• Sign up for the girl’s monthly Online Safety Newsletter for parents.
• Watch the GMA segment.
• 5 Tips for Keeping Your Kids Safe Online from ABCNews.com.