According to a recent survey, 29 percent of teens admit their parents wouldn't approve of their internet activities if they knew.
Another survey found one third of teens post personal information about themselves online, their address, their phone number. Why is this a problem?
It proved to be a traumatic problem for 15 year old Chelsea Abram. Her father Bob says "Chelsea was a very, very attractive young lady. She did not look her age."
Like many kids, Chelsea spent a lot of time chatting online.
That's where she met Sam Levitan.
He told her he was 16.
He asked for a photo and she emailed him one.
Detective Carol Doyle of the Madison County Sheriff's Dept. says "He's a predator is what he is and he knew what he was looking for and what he was trying to find, and what he was trying to find were girls."
Chelsea also gave him her phone number.
That's all Levitan needed to find her address. Late at night he drove to her house and called her from his car. \
"And he said, `Well I'm right outside your house' and so she snuck out and got into the car with him," says Chelsea's mother Terry.
Levitan promised he would drive her to her boyfriend's house. Instead, he drove her to his home an hour away.
"She kept saying I wanna go home!," says Doyle. " And finally after some arguments ensued, he basically grabbed her and drug her down the hall to what was his bedroom, and he raped her."
Surprisingly, he gave Chelsea his real name . The police later arrested him.
They also found evidence that Chelsea was not his only victim.
Detective David Vucich says "His computer in essence left a digital footprint of where he had been and who he had talked to."
That digital footprint contained the screen names of more than 300 girls.
Levitan is now in prison, but the anguish Chelsea suffered was too much .
On New Years Day she commited suicide.
Detective Doyle chokes back tears. "Chelsea is the reason he's in jail. And I wish with all my heart that that little girl could have made it through it." .
Every year, between 3 and 5 thousand children are abducted by non-family members, many of whom are online predators. Make it very clear to your child to never meet in person with anyone they first met online.
