Attached to this story is a presentation on personal networking Web site safety by Det. Gustad in .pdf form. 

Facebook safety tips for parents

* Spend time with child on the computer.

* Teach child your boundaries

* Utilize filtering, keylogging, chat logs, parental controls with ISP, etc.

* Know your child’s screen names and e-mail accounts.

* Don’t allow child to share personal information or images.

* Don’t allow child to blindly download.

* Teach child how to respond to threats, solicitations, etc.

Source: Det. Mark Gustad presentation on Internet safety.

Facebook is just one of the latest in a long line of technological advances that parents have had to learn about.

By Karla Wennerstrom

Eden Prairie Det. Mark Gustad’s No. 1 piece of advice for parents regarding MySpace and Facebook use is:

“If they want to know what’s going on they have to ask. They have to sit down with their child and have their child show them. Then they have to be diligent parents and potentially, depending on what’s happening, monitor their child’s activity,” Gustad said.

“They need to maintain and cultivate that relationship [with their child] and this is another methodology in doing that. It’s slightly different, but just another facet of their child expressing themselves,” Gustad said.

And it’s a facet that parents will have to get used to.

“If they want to understand what their child’s doing, it’s their obligation to become educated in that,” Gustad said. “And this is just another facet. This is an eon-old question. Parents are out of step with what their kids are doing.”

“They don’t have to understand. But if they look back, their parents probably rolled their eyes at what they were doing. Before the computer it was the telephone. … There’s always something. It’s the parents’ obligation to understand that.”

One Facebook group

Carver resident Gary Willett said his son, Nicholas, a junior at Eden Prairie High School, told him about the Facebook group he started, titled “Eden Prairie High School has not gone too far.”

“I think it’s a good idea that he’s taking initiative and showing his opinion on something that happened in the school,” Willett said.

“He told me that he’s taking a stand that the students that were in the photographs were wrong, that underage drinking is still not right,” Willett said. “I back up my son.”

Nicholas said, “It was the school’s duty to investigate this and it’s not an invasion of privacy because the Internet, first of all, is a public source, which is obviously available to any person who wants to get in there. Putting pictures of doing an illegal act on the Internet is pretty much asking someone to either get them in trouble with the police or with the school they go to.”

He said when someone puts a photo like this online, “They’re probably not thinking about whether it’s illegal or how they might get in a situation they wish they’re not in.”

Nicholas said he was happy to see the coverage of the incident.

“Maybe parents actually will start seeing what their kids are putting on the Internet,” he said.

Willett said he likes to think that parents are aware of social networking sites like MySpace. “I usually know what they’re doing on the computer,” he said, adding, “I don’t look over their shoulder the whole time. He’s 17 years old. He is expressing his opinion.”

Willett said if his children had been among the students disciplined for underage drinking, “I believe they would be grounded for a while. There are going to be consequences. … They have to be held accountable,” he said.

He mentioned Chaska 19-year-old Sean Humphrey who died last year after collapsing in the snow walking home from a party.

“Sometimes kids at that age don’t think far enough ahead.”

Of online safety, Willett said that the family had discussed not giving out personal information and not giving specific information about where they live.

He said the recent Eden Prairie incident probably will have an immediate effect generating conversation in families.

“Will it be a long-lasting effect? I don’t know,” he said.

“I’m proud of him for stepping up and actually defending the teachers because you usually stick with your peers, you usually back your friends and your peers and your age group,” Willett said. “I applaud him for that.”

Safe surfing

Gustad said there are dangers online, and cited local cases involving harassment and identity theft.

“A naïve parent may not realize how their child truly interacts with other people,” he said.

But he said that a quick fix like denying a child Internet access or installing monitoring software is “probably a little bit late in the game. They need to develop that relationship with their child and have an open relationship where their child can show them what they were doing.”

He suggests that parents open a Facebook account or MySpace page to learn about social networking sites.

Of the incident at Eden Prairie High School, Gustad said it offers a reminder that parents should actively monitor their children’s Internet habits.

He said that photos obtained from Facebook and MySpace can be used as evidence. “If it’s public information obtained in a public methodology, yes,” he said.

When asked if students can be naïve about the consequences of what they’re posting, he said: “They’re naïve in the regard that they haven’t had the life experiences and potentially know that others may have some nefarious purpose behind communicating with them.”

He said, “If a person has information that they don’t want to be victimized with, they shouldn’t use it.” That information includes their name, location, affiliations, financial information and friendships, he said.

Gustad said this is how this generation communicates and will probably continue to communicate.

“Like it or not, that’s the way it is, and it’s only going to probably become more prevalent,” he said.

EPHS online

When you search for Eden Prairie High School on Facebook, groups range from the silly – “Eden Prairie High School – The only High School Visible from Space” – to the serious – “TEAM RYAN SHUMAN Relay for Life,” which encouraged people to walk in memory of Shuman at last year’s Relay for Life.

There’s even several pages dedicated to quotes from Eden Prairie High School teacher Steve Cwodzinski. After his voice cracked, he reportedly told students, “Oh, sorry, I’m becoming a man.”

Here’s the title of another group that recently started on Facebook:

“Man we’re glad Facebook didn’t exist when we were in high school!”