How to keep your child safe while surfing the web

HATTIESBURG, MS (WDAM) - Now a days, everyone is on social media. Your grandmother has a Instagram account, Mom created a Facebook and dad is starting to average three tweets a week.

Even though social media is continuing to grow in users, the Internet is becoming even more dangerous every day for children.

According to Perry County Sheriff Mitch Nobles, kids put way too much information online that can tell a sex offender who and where they are.

“These sexual predators, they do lurk these types of websites and social media apps,” said Nobles. "A lot of it is being careful of what you post and what you put out there, especially the location of where they’re at.”

Officials say these tips will help keep your children safe:

Check your child’s messages
Be careful of what you post
Change settings from public to private to prevent strangers from accessing your child’s account
Don’t allow your child to share their address or location

Nobles said changing your child’s settings on all social media accounts will help keep them out of harms way.

“If they’re not friends, its to have all that information blocked. That way, a sexual predator won’t have the opportunity to go look at those types of things,” said Nobles. “Its definitely a dangerous world, and the younger folks are all on social media, its like two different worlds. You have the real world and then you have the social media world.”

According to the Mississippi Sex Offender Registry and officials, there are 203 registered sex offenders living in Forrest County. Perry County has 39 and Lamar has 100.

To access the information of sex offenders who live, work or attend school within a one to three mile radius of a specific address or within a specific zip code or county, visit http://state.sor.dps.ms.gov/GeographicalSearch.aspx.