Being a predator is just too easy!

Do you think that your teenage kids are safe online?

I play an online multiplayer game by Disney. Disney has done everything they can to make the game safe for the 10-14 year old age group. They don't discourage adults from playing but they do restrict the flow of personal information such as age and location. So basically, it's a fun game and you never really know who you are talking to.

But as with anything, the more you talk to someone the more you learn about them. I've made friends in the game and I can pretty much tell who the adults are and who the kids are. But do the kids recognize the same cues that I do?

A popular past-time among the younger kids is "Taken." This is a sort of pretend online dating were kids ask each other if they are "taken" and if not they get to know each other in hopes of becoming virtual online boyfriends and girlfriends. For the most part it's cute but I abstain for obvious reasons. I've been asked plenty of times and I always answer that I don't play the taken game.

A couple of times girls have been a little more persistent in their pursuit and I have tell them in no uncertain terms that I cannot and will not have and an online girlfriend. I've even been offered a chat in "real life" so that we could get to know each other better. Parents, are you listening? That could be your young daughter inviting a grown man into a private online conversation.

When I was a chat host on AOL we had very strict rules about giving out personal information as well. A young girl was determined to be mine and she tricked one of the other hosts into giving her my personal account name. From there she was able to determine my age (early twenties at the time) and that we lived on a couple of hours apart. She insisted that we had to meet. She said I was the only person that had ever been nice to her. She said the age difference didn't bother her (she was in her mid-teens). I told her I could not meet her. She said she would be so depressed if I did not that she might commit suicide. I did not want to give her any information about my family but I finally told her that we could never be together because I was already married.

I never heard from her again. I'm sure she's alright because being overly dramatic is in a teenage girl's genes. But I often think about what could have happened to that girl if it wasn't me that she got so attached to. What if it had been a child predator instead?