When Heidi Johnson arrived at the Philadelphia airport in August 1999, she was nervous. The Rockford teen was about to spend three weeks with a girl she considered a close–if not best–friend, a fellow 16-year-old with whom she had exchanged countless e-mails and frequent phone calls during the last year, sharing opinions about boys and music and clothes, trading jokes and secrets and private thoughts.
Yet Jamie Angstadt was also, in many ways, a stranger. The two girls had met over the Internet, never in person. Until now.
“I was wondering: `Will we have the same stuff in common when I meet her? Will we still be good friends?’ ” says Heidi, now 17, who flew alone to meet Jamie.
Jamie’s memory of that day is similar: “When we went to the airport to pick her up, I was nervous, but at the same time giddy. I was just thinking, `please don’t let her think I’m a dork … please!’
“But as soon as Heidi walked out of the tunnel, it felt like we had been real-life best friends for years. Since we had known each other and talked through e-mail and on the phone, we weren’t afraid to say anything and sound stupid-we were just ourselves. Even though we had never seen each other, we were like sisters and confidants to each other, so meeting just made us closer.”
The girls got along well during their three weeks together, met another time in Philadelphia for a Ricky Martin concert, and plan to see each other in Illinois later this year.
As the Internet becomes more and more a part of teens’ everyday lives, increasing numbers of youths like Heidi and Jamie are making close friendships online, then arranging real-life meetings. It’s a trend that worries child safety experts, often confuses computer-shy parents, and delights children who find joy in new relationships they otherwise would not have made.
“Kids are meeting daily with Net friends,” says Det. Mike Sullivan of the Naperville Police Department’s Internet Crime Unit, who takes a dim view of such encounters because of their potential danger. “I don’t know how many of these meetings are bad,” he says but points out that Internet child exploitation crimes are increasing 1,200 percent each year, based on statistics kept since 1997.
“The main thing to remember is just because you talked to someone on the computer more than once, they are not your friend,” he says. “Everything they said to you can be a lie.”
Nonetheless, Robert Billingham, a professor who teaches a class in adolescent development at Indiana University, estimates anywhere from a third to one-half of the students in his course have met people they first encountered on the Internet.
“There are two types of people who seem to be most comfortable on the Web,” Billingham says. “One type are those who are least self-assured . . . they get all the publicity.
“The other group are the very outgoing, gregarious extroverts, who just want to make as many friends as they possibly can.” It is this second group, says Billingham, who make up the majority of those who form online friendships.
Billingham believes most meetings with online friends are positive experiences, based on his conversations with his own teenage children–a son and daughter who both have met online friends–and with his students.
Some teens also say that their Internet friendships often grow more quickly and more deeply in the instant, “safe” intimacy that e-mail and chats can provide, in which correspondents can feel free to share deep thoughts without being inhibited by disapproving glances or betrayed by a tremulous voice.
“Many times I feel that I can’t talk to anyone face to face about some of my problems, so I’ll go to my close online friends for advice,” says Jamie. “Once in a while it’s hard to ask non-online friends for advice about very intimate things, and over the Internet, people can’t see you blush or get shy.”
Kristen Bartlett, a 17-year-old in North Carolina with many online friends within the ‘N Sync fan community, points out that “in person, people can be afraid. Online, you can be as open as you want to be, and you aren’t really judged. The good thing is, you know your relationship is based on non-superficial reasons,” since Internet friends do not see each others’ physical appearance.
On the other hand, she says, this lack of real, physical contact does present cause for concern.
“There’s always the chance that the person typing may be something completely different from what he or she says. I think you can meet phenomenal people, though. You go with your gut.”
Bartlett did just that earlier this year, when she drove eight hours to meet several longtime online girlfriends at an ‘N Sync concert–meetings that only served to deepen those friendships.
Heidi and Jamie met about two years ago, through an e-mail discussion list devoted to the teen band Hanson. The two girls quickly found that they shared more than just a liking for Hanson, and began exchanging private e-mails about a variety of topics.
Heidi’s mother, Kay Johnson, says she wasn’t worried about her daughter meeting Jamie because she trusted Heidi’s instincts and judgment. “Heidi’s always been pretty wise about who she chooses as friends,” says Johnson.
Heidi’s father, Curt Johnson, who runs his own marketing company, had no qualms about Heidi’s visit with Jamie.
“She had talked about Jamie for so long and had talked to her on the phone so many times that I really didn’t think of her as different from her other friends,” he says.
Curt Johnson called Jamie’s mother to iron out details before Heidi stayed with Jamie for the first time, but not out of any extra concern over her being an “Internet friend.”
“I would have done the same thing if she had been going to a friend’s house 60 miles away,” he says.
“Because of Heidi’s age and the longevity of the relationship, I never had concerns,” says Curt Johnson, who uses the Internet frequently and has many e-mail contacts due to his business.
Also, Heidi had met another friend of Jamie’s earlier in the year, giving the family reassurance that Jamie was a real girl and not the fictional concoction of a predator.
However, as Heidi was boarding her plane, Kay Johnson suddenly panicked. “I thought, `What kind of mother am I? Am I insane?”‘
Her feelings of alarm passed, though, and Heidi and Jamie had a good time, cementing their friendship even further–which does not always happen when Internet friends meet.
Last May, Mallory Squeo, a 16-year-old from Elgin, traveled with an 18-year-old girlfriend to New York City to meet a longtime Internet buddy for a three-day visit. When Squeo, then 15, met her friend and her parents at the hotel where they were all staying, she was surprised to find that the girl did not seem the same in person. The trip soon deteriorated into arguments over finances and meals. When Squeo returned to Elgin, she found that her Internet friend had deleted her screen name and was refusing to take her calls.
“When I met her in person, she didn’t look a thing like her pictures,” says Squeo, who had considered the girl one of her best friends. “Her attitude was very immature and she walked around acting like she was a lot better than me. She was just very weird about a lot of things–totally different offline than on.”
To have a friendship ruined is one risk online pals take when meeting in person. Yet even greater risks potentially exist in such meetings, warn police and safety experts.
Sullivan often poses as a child on the Internet, in an attempt to draw out predators. In a recent sting operation in Illinois and Alabama, men who had set up meetings with a police officer they believed to be a 12- or 13-year-old child were apprehended; in their cars were handcuffs, duct tape and weapons.
“More than likely [if these had been real kids and it had not been a sting], they would not have come back alive,” says Sullivan.
Although 99 percent of offenders are male, women have been found to commit these crimes too, says Sullivan, who does not believe parents should ever allow their children to meet Internet friends. If they do, he says, such meetings need to be closely supervised.
Steve Savitsky, a Menlo Park, Calif., computer science researcher who has written an online guide to Internet safety, agrees that precautions need to be taken but also thinks the potential dangers have been overhyped.
“There’s a lot of political grandstanding about the dangers of the online world, and it’s really as far as I can tell much safer than walking to school,” Savitsky says. “My daughters have a lot more trouble with kids they meet on the street than people they meet online.”
Savitsky’s daughters, ages 14 and 8, have online friendsbut haven’t chosen to meet any in person yet, he says. Instead, they have confined their contact to chatting and e-mail.
“It’s a way of being sociable,” he says. “I’d much rather have my kids spend an hour chatting online than spending an hour chatting long distance on the phone. Also, of course, it helps them learn to write well. The Internet has really brought back letter-writing as an art form.”
However, Dan Rees, an associate professor of social work at Western Maryland College who has counseled children with Internet addictions, warns that too much online time can signal a problem.
“Only limited social development occurs when children are spending their time with technology of any kind, including the Internet,” says Rees.
He also worries that children can’t properly screen their Internet friends, making in-person meetings potentially disastrous.
“The person on the other end may be a pathological adult or a young person who is needy and problematic,” he says. “That other person could form a problematic attachment to your child and exaggerate, in their own mind, the significance of the relationship. The key is that parents are aware and supervise these types of interactions.”
Jamie Angstadt’s mother, Debbie Kroutch, also believes that parents need to be involvedbut says that her daughter’s online friendships have been a positive experience. Besides Heidi, Jamie has met several other online girlfriends, with no bad encounters to date.
“I truly think the relationships Jamie has online do run deeper for her than most of her friendships with girls from school, with the exception of one or two,” says Kroutch, a manufacturing associate at Lucent Technologies. “We have had four different girls stay overnight that she met online, and each one has been a treat.”
Kroutch says she trusts Jamie’s choices in friends but also pays “pretty close attention to the goings-on in her life,” and thinks parents need to monitor “who their kids hang with.”
“As parents we have to know that our child is responsible and sensible and that the choices they make in life are good ones,” she says. “Plus we need to check up on the kids–I don’t think that’s an infringement, but a responsibility as a parent.”
TIPS TO KEEP KIDS SAFE ONLINE
If parents decide to allow their children to meet an online friend in person, here are what safety experts and police say parents need to do:
– Be there.
Ideally, both sets of parents should accompany children to their first “real life” meeting, says Det. Mike Sullivan of the Naperville Police Department’s Internet Crimes Unit. If parents can’t be there, the child should at least have friends stay with them, because predators are less likely to make a move if the child is not alone.
– Meet in a public place.
– Do not let your child give out any identifying information, including your phone number, without your permission, because predators can look up your phone number in reverse directories to find out where you live.
– Teach your child what types of behavior should arouse suspicion. Dan Rees, an associate professor at Western Maryland College, says alarm bells should go off if online friends try to pick up the pace of the relationship too quickly, make inappropriate and excessive compliments, press for personal information, try to create conflict between the child and parents or other friends, and are caught in lies or inconsistencies.
Sullivan also says predators will often begin an encounter by asking the child where their computer is, if they are alone and who else has access to their computer. “This is a predator’s way of assessing his threat to being discovered,” says Sullivan. “If the computer is in the family room, no predator is going to talk to that child.”
– Keep computers out of bedrooms and in open areas that parents can access.
– Monitor your child’s online activity through the use of software, such as Cyber Sentinel, that lets you keep track of instant messages (which predators prefer over chats or e-mails, according to Sullivan). Report suspicious contacts to police.
Numerous Web sites exist with further safety tips, including the following:
– www.cyberangels.org
– www.safekids.com
– www.safeteens.com
– http://Interesting.Places.to/Browse/forKids/warn-kids.html
