Take Charge! - Smart Choices for Your Cox Digital Home

One of my major goals as Miss America 2007 is to raise awareness about Internet safety. That’s why I’m so excited to partner with Cox Communications. Leveraging Cox’s resources and my platform will be a great way to educate parents and kids about the importance of making smart decisions online.

When I was 13, my friends and I made the bad decision to share personal information on the Internet with someone we later learned was a sexual predator. We told him our names, ages and where we lived. My friend later received inappropriate photographs from this person. We told our parents about what we had done, and the situation was defused without incident. Unfortunately, not all kids are as lucky as we were, and not all stories dealing with the potential dangers of the Internet end without serious incident.

The Internet is a great tool for getting news, conducting research and communicating with others, but it is also a haven for online predators. By teaching kids early and often what the dangers of the Internet are and how to avoid them, and working with government officials to pass legislation that is tough on online predators, we can help make the Internet a safe, kid-friendly place for our children.

As a spokesperson for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Cox Communications, I hope to use my voice to help these organizations empower families to take charge of the Internet. I am helping support NCMEC’s mission of preventing child abduction and sexual exploitation; helping find missing children; and assisting victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them. I have also teamed with Cox to film Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that are targeted towards parents to help safeguard our nation’s children, and I will take my message on the road by speaking at several Cox-sponsored events this year. I’m also happy to lend my name to Cox’s Take Charge website, where parents and kids alike can find resources to help them surf more safely.

I believe strongly that protecting our children takes a group effort among parents, government, corporations and nonprofit organizations, as well as from children themselves. In my year as Miss America, I will do everything in my power to deliver that message everywhere I can!