Heather Cartwright is committed to making sure her three boys surf the Web safely. She is so vigilant that she bought a $1,500 Compaq laptop with a wireless Internet connection for them to use in her presence. “We bought the laptop in order to do this,” Cartwright says. “They do not have free access on the Net, even the older one. I have to be here” for them to log on. Her boys are specifically forbidden to take the computer into their bedrooms.    

Cartwright is not alone in worrying about her kids’ use of the Internet. Tech-savvy children and teens increasingly are leaving their parents in the dark about their computer use and Web surfing. “Sixty-four percent of teens surveyed think they’re doing something (online) their parents don’t know about,” says Jim Schmidt, a Qwest regional president. Qwest recently introduced an online safety guide, www.incredibleinternet.com, which joins a host of other tools aimed at helping supervise computer use. Short of pulling the plug on computer use, parents should talk with their kids about protecting their identities online and avoiding potentially risky behaviors such as swapping copyrighted music files. 

The Web site www.netsmartkidz.org, sponsored by several nonprofit agencies, offers detailed steps for monitoring a child’s computer use. Contracts in age-appropriate language are available to print, sign and post near the computer a child uses. Here are some NetSmartKidz suggestions. 

For grade-schoolers:  ~Explain the benefits and the dangers of the Web. For instance, play a game where a group of children sit in a circle and talk. Then have all the children rotate 180-degrees and face away from the group. Can they tell who has come or gone from their circle? Draw a parallel from this to chat rooms and message boards. 

~ Set time limits and etiquette guidelines, and determine safe physical parameters such as screen height. ~ Find fun, educational Web sites your child can enjoy, such as www.pbskids.org or www.whitehouse. gov/kids. Surf the Web with the child, never leaving him or her with unfiltered access. 

For middle-school students: ~ No downloads from strangers. The files may have offensive content, spam or junk e-mail and can harbor viruses that will harm the computer. 

~ No responses to offensive messages of any kind. Hurtful messages, known as cyberbullying, can spread instantly with one mouse click. 

~ No unsupervised meetings with people you know only via the Internet. Chat rooms are notorious for “lurkers” who may or may not be known to those online and who may have misrepresented themselves.

~ Respect copyrights online. Ignoring them robs musicians, authors and other people of their earnings. For teens, the FBI suggests: 

~ Parents should insist that teens not give out personal information, including name or address. Even subtle hints about identity, such as the name of a high school mascot, can make it easy for someone to find a teen. Do not send photos to strangers. 

~ Limit time online. Research shows that sexual predators prowl the Net at night. 

~ Parents should scan stored files and disks for inappropriate material on a regular basis. Teens who quickly switch off the computer or kill the screen when parents approach may be trying to hide inappropriate material. ~ Maintain access to the teen’s e-mail account and randomly check it.