Marian Merritt, Internet Safety Advocate, Norton said, “As a woman with a family and a full time career in the high tech industry, I have a front row seat to the positive changes the Internet has brought to our lives. I can order groceries from a website and have them delivered to my home, search for a new job online and connect with friends and family from across the globe. The economic impact of having the Internet at home, on my mobile devices and at work is significant.”
There is still room for improvement; Internet access is not widely available in some of the developing countries, especially in rural areas, but all signs point to the inevitability and the economic benefit of pressuring governments and communities to embrace getting online. A new report from Intel and World Pulse describes both the current sad state of Internet access for women around the world (on average nearly 25 percent fewer women than men have access to the Internet) and an exciting proposed initiative to address it. We know getting women Internet access is a game changer.
With the anticipated increase in these new Internet users, Internet safety education must be a key component. We know that the more time you spend online, the more varied the sites you visit, the higher at risk you are for online victimization. Women are at risk of being targets for dating scams, online stalking, and other serious online threats like credit card fraud during online shopping, malware and other cybercrimes.
Women as the backbone of the family unit are in a terrific position to help guide their children on proper and safe computer use and Internet access. Too often, mothers may feel their children know more about the Internet than they do, so they don’t get involved in setting limits or teaching their children the principles of Internet safety. As new threats such as cyberbullying emerge, women are looking for ways to teach their children that the same offline rules apply in the online world such as respect for others, to treat people with kindness and to refrain from doing something you wouldn’t want others to do to you. They also need to be on the lookout for signs of cyberbullying to make sure their child is neither the victim nor the bully.
