i am worried about my children,since advent of mobile phone in nigeria thing has changed you can not be sure of what they are doing.how can i protect my children ? especially the girls.

be close enuf to them that they will be able to trust you.
Find time to do stuff with them and dont let them replace you with internet.

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the only way you can make sure that they are not expose to these is by going to live in the middle of the jungle.

call me paranoid but i believe that we only get one chance(maybe two) with kids and therefore extra care is needed with our littles ones.
what you should focus on is to educate your kids very early about rights and wrong and be part of their upbringing. every kid will be expose to some form of negativity growing up, the deal is to make sure that they know how to react/deal with it when that time come and to make the right choices.
its a known fact that even with all your advises, a child could still go out there and fail.  after all, he spends more time at school with his/her mates than with you. hanging out with the wrong influencial kid could be your undoing.
trying to protect them against the internet will only make them more curious about it (for some). advise them properly then discretely monitor in the background what they watch and what exactly they do online.
you should definitely have your children's password to every profile he/she has (hotmail, yahoo,twitter, facebook, myspace, etc ) and snoop around to see what they are up to, and also read their emails. again this is a breach of their privacy but in my world, its called"looking out for their best interest as a parent". having an idea of what they view when they are online is advisable. if you are not computer savvy then it will be more difficult for you but viewing everything they do while you are not home is very simple to achieve, better be safe than sorry.
beware you might discover some chilling truth about your kid if opting that way, the deal is to advise them accordingly without letting them know that : you know that they browse porn website, that they visit websites dealing with something illegal, play some games that you might feel are unfit or watch movies that are not fit for children etc
its a known fact that kids would prefer to tell their friends about their worries than their "boring parent who dont really understand them" so reading their chat complete history on MSN is a must!!!
your child discovering that you have been snooping around his/her profiles could be  a complete loss of trust so you have to be very careful of what you are doing.
ps: this is just my humble opinion

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chaircover:

You are absolutely right. When we first got the internet for my son, I used to log into his accounts and snoop without him knowing of course. He has a sky box in his room and I also used to use various tactics to find out what he was watching. Now that he is older, I don’t really do that much snooping because I know I can trust him not to do anything stupid.

Parents need to very early on invest time in their children and teach them right from wrong and be there for their children.

Children spend a lot of time with their peers but if the home training foundation is solid, they will be able to say NO to drugs, sex, drink, smoking etc and walk away.

My sons friends are like minded people and believe it or not I vet my sons friends parents before I let my son near any friends. If the parents are no good, then its unlikely they can instil goodness in their offspring.

In our case I made sure that I paid for the extra tuition and support to take the entrance exams to get my son into a good grammar school rather than the local not so good comprehensive. He gets home at 5:30pm and with 3-4 hours homework every evening he doesn’t stand a chance of having fun during the week

All boils down to making them your friends, create an environment where they can easily come to you with anything and at anytime and tell you anything.
Trust them and they will trust you.
Snooping on them will only scare them off

Children do not need cellphones and the internet. That is your answer

Outstrip:

Children do not need cellphones and the internet. That is your answer

maybe you need to define what age you regard to as children here oh.
Cos i see no reason why a kid can have internet and a cell phone to keep in touch with the dada and mama.

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m learning
Chair cover what of musicals and ''some'' films/ home videos? do u watch them at home what is your opinion on those crazy musicals and allowing kids watch some sort of films. i ask cos though m not married yet i enjoy those musicals but i wont want my kids say 2-8 watching almost naked women but even if one is not watching those things are constantly on your tv. (m talking more from the nigerian point of view)

touchmeder:

m learning
Chair cover what of musicals and ''some'' films/ home videos? do u watch them at home what is your opinion on those crazy musicals and allowing kids watch some sort of films. i ask cos though m not married yet i enjoy those musicals but i wont want my kids say 2-8 watching almost naked women but even if one is not watching those things are constantly on your tv. (m talking more from the nigerian point of view)

What has all these got to do with internet and the cell phone?
Like she said earlier, it is about trusting your kids and knowing what they are capable of doing while online.

There are phones made specifically for kids. They have like three buttons and an emergency number. You can program mom, dad and grandma unto the phone. No need for a phone that they can dial any number they want. As far as the internet goes there are ways of protecting your teenager from accessing the entire web and also the computer should be put in a part of the house that has a lot of traffc not in their bedroom. The internet and cellphones in my opinion is definitely a luxury. It should not be given to children to use as they please. My little nephew in Lagos requested me as a friend on facebook a few months ago. He has a friend in houston that he communicates with. His friend showed him how to sign on and of course he had to lie that he was 18 (he is only 10). So even though he knows all the right things to do he joined facebook without letting his mother know. Who knows what else his friend has already showed him. I was not in Nigeria but we gave him 1 day to remove his profile or face his mother's wrath. If I was in Nigeria I would look at the history to see if he has also been on pornographic websites. I know that my cousin would never think to look because she does not even know how to turn on her computer but all three kids have laptops as it is required for school.

How to protect them:

Instill protection software on your computer

Get a GPS traking phone.  Sign up for parental controls on you childs phone.

I can track my son anywhere in the world to the street address and he does not even know.  I also can block numbers from my computer that I dont want him to recieve and filter content that he gets via text message also the time of day that calls are allowed.

sistawoman:

How to protect them:

Instill protection software on your computer

Get a GPS traking phone.  Sign up for parental controls on you childs phone.

I can track my son anywhere in the world to the street address and he does not even know.  I also can block numbers from my computer that I dont want him to recieve and filter content that he gets via text message also the time of day that calls are allowed.

Take your son to some remote village in Nigeria and the GPS will return "error"

Fhemmmy:

Take your son to some remote village in Nigeria and the GPS will return "error"

Verizon is the most reliable network here

AT&T is the most reliable in other countries.

As long as there is a sat. in the sky i can get his location.

sistawoman:

Verizon is the most reliable network here

AT&T is the most reliable in other countries.

As long as there is a sat. in the sky i can get his location.

I hear, try Nigerian village now

then i guess they wont have internet or phone service at all and that means no harmful effects thus making the point of this thread useless.

We are basing our thoughts and comments on the assumption that there is cell and internet access.

next to our health, children are our biggest asset in this world and therefore everyone has the right to use whatever"legal" mean to educate and protect them.
in this day and age, a child that is about 12yrs old, should have a phone and having a social networking profile(facebook etc) at this age is the "norm" (depending on where you live)
its either they communicate via the internet with their friends everyday or they physically go to join them wherever they may be.
in some schools, if you aint got internet, you cant get test scores etc.
there is now a chip that can be implanted in a childs arms and that would tell you exactly wherever he is located, also could be used to identify you and pay your bills at the grocery (cant be lost like a cel phone). it sound crazy but i can see it being the norm in a few years. mark this space.

True dat

His friend showed him how to sign on and of course he had to lie that he was 18 (he is only 10)

kids have to be monitored for real!!!

I want to thank you all for your Contributions to this topic,but the problem is that you may have the time to mornitor them properly,i still need more infomation.Thanks and God bless you all.

Mamajane,I really understand the situation, we are living in a changed world today, you can agree with me that it’s challenging  to bring up a child these days, I mean i remebered when my father will tell me talk to strengers and it’s done but today my kids will ask you for reasons not to talk to that person, am only saying it require a kind of knowledge to convince these little adults. This information may helpful  :

1)Monitor your children’s use of the internet.

2)Fortify your computer with strong security software.)when using p2p file-sharing programs, kids should not download files from users they don’t know.

3)Teach your kids to ignore emails and istant messages from people they don't know

4)don’t allow them to fill out forms online or surveys. let your kids find appropriate and helpful wed sites using lists of put together by expert in the field.

Good contributions you have all made here. But i want we all to agree on this fact

Parents are only there the to teach there children the good and the bad, its left on the child to choose which he/she wants. cos life itself it about choices. You can only guilde one in making the right choice but taking them are still based on the individual.
A saying goes "you can force a horse to the stream but u can never force it to drink"

what am saying is that a child that will be good will definitly be.
The outcome of a child is not totally based on the parental asset , if am wrong how about orfans who are left on making there outcomes, some come good while some bad.
An egg that is bad is from the inside they say!!!