The following article is (like much of my writing) pure editorial. Consider the points that I am raising in the context of your own beliefs and use what makes sense to you. Please understand that some of the following subject matter is potentially disturbing. However, we need to be informed in order to make the right decisions on behalf of our children.

Let me start by saying that one can define PROTECT as, “to keep from being harmed.” One way to keep our children from harm is to empower them. Another is to keep an eye on them and intervene when necessary. At certain ages, we need to let the kids fall and scrape their knees. They’ll cry, but they’ll learn. Being a parent requires that we maintain the balance between isolating our children from certain experiences while allowing them to be exposed to others. To clarify, I do not believe that we should lock our children away from the world. Instead we need to gauge their maturity and introduce certain experiences and concepts when we think that they are ready.

Having said that, I’ve had a couple of wake-up calls so far this year. One was when I first heard about sexting. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, read more HERE. The fact that this is becoming popular in middle schools concerns me as a parent. I got the second wake-up call last month when I read THIS ARTICLE about a 24-year-old male from Kentucky who was using his PlayStation Network account to get an 11-year-old girl to send him nude pictures of herself. Though I was horrified at the thought, I should have expected it.

The game console is not the villain here. The child-predator is. A tool can be used for something other than its intended purpose. I have a dozen or so knives in our kitchen that we use for cutting vegetables, cheese, meat, etc. Does that mean I blame the manufacturer of my Ginsu knife if some psycho comes into my home and comes after me with it? No. At least that’s not where I would put the blame. Up to that point, the tool served its intended purpose.

As technology advances it provides us different opportunities. Many of the most popular and pervasive technologies facilitate communication. In the 80s when Cell phones were too big to carry in your pocket, we never thought of taking pictures or video with them and sending those to people. The most “adult” content for the Atari 2600 of my childhood was so pixelated that calling it “graphic” would be gross misrepresentation. But our children have a different world.

When I was a young teen we had a friend who’s father had a few “magazines” that we would use to pique our curiosity. Today, the curious teen can query Google with a few choice words and see things that we never dreamed of in our youth (and some things that I would prefer never to think of again). An enterprising youth could take those images and/or videos and convert them fairly easily to formats compatible with iPods, cell phones, and PSPs in order to take that content on the go and share it with his or her friends.

As frightening as this is, it isn’t as personal as sexting. It’s one thing to have content from some nameless stranger (who, in many cases, understood that his/her image would be shared with the world). It is something completely different to have images or videos of yourself or someone you know.

Think about it for a second…the teen years can be frightening and high school breeds emotional vulnerability in an almost cult-like cloistered environment. I know that when I was dating then (sooooooo many years ago) that I trusted my girlfriends with very personal information. I can think of a couple of break-ups that weren’t mutually instigated and in at least one of those, things took place that were motivated by the compulsion to hurt the other out of revenge or contempt. Telling secrets is one thing. That plays upon the open wound of emotional vulnerability previously mentioned. But if this same need to inflict pain could be fulfilled with a different weapon – like certain digital photographs or video clips – well, this would be a much more damaging experience.

You see, if someone told their entire class that their ex still sleeps with a teddy bear, it would lead to endless torment for that individual. But that damage would be very much localized. Nobody would care outside of those people who knew the person in question. Even by the time said person made it to college, it would be old news. But if an ex distributed potentially suggestive pictures, those could end up in the hands of strangers and on computer monitors all over the world. Those could be of interest to individuals who wouldn’t give two shakes about the teen with stuffed animals. What’s worse, imagine a recent college graduate walking into a job interview and having someone recognize him/her from pictures that had been circulated previously. This redefines emotional vulnerability. For those of you who think that I might be paranoid, point your browser to THIS ARTICLE on MSNBC.

Let me wrap up before I have our blog’s word-count starts flashing red. (Somewhere in the distance I can hear Chris and Jackie discussing orange juice-drinking Irish dancers or something.) The fact is that there will always be dangers from which we must protect our children. Some of the mistakes that they can make these days can have long-term impact. As parents, we need to know what the pitfalls are and help our sons and daughters to navigate them effectively. Though I have no magic bullet for any of us, awareness helps. I don’t believe that, “knowing is half the battle.” But I believe that staying informed is the first step to being able to address these issues effectively.

I wish you all the best…for the sake of our children.