MONSTERS ON THE INTERNET

There’s a ton of stuff out there on the internet about Pokémon, Digimon, Dragonball, Monster Rancher and just about anything else you can think of plugging into a search engine. Some of these sites are put up by fans and some of them by the company or companies that sell the products.

The Internet is a great thing when it comes to video games and anime. It can help you learn about the game or the show and even about Japanese culture. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have to be careful when you are surfing the Net.

Now I kid around and get goofy about a lot of stuff in these video game books. I think they should be fun to read. But Internet safety is something I never joke about. Ever. Kids should be as safe as possible and that means when they are out there on the Internet, too. I never joke around about it. So this is a serious chapter.

If you read the last book, this chapter will look very familiar. The rules of safety haven’t changed. Read it again, just to make sure you have all the basic rules down. Your parents, of course, might have additional rules that you should follow, but these are the very basics.

Good safety on the Internet is the same as good safety anywhere. You would not accept candy from strangers, so why accept computer downloads from strangers. Of course, sometimes on the Internet you do “talk” to strangers, so that’s why you have to be really, really careful. People who seem “nice” online can turn out to be really bad. So you have to be extra careful.