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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME Stop pretending that computers are too hard to learn. Of course they're hard. But your children need adult guidance. The Internet can be a dangerous place. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 What kind of message is your kid really sending on the Net?Sept. 11, 2002 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard Kids learn fast. They're much better at computers than we are. They're not afraid to try something new. If you're a parent, you already know how fast your kids catch on. I'll bet you've sometimes wondered how they can do all the stuff they do -- e-mail, chat, instant messaging -- especially when you barely understand these things yourself. I know you're proud of your kids. But you should be worried instead. Nobody handed you a manual for the Internet. Nobody gave one to your kids, either. But you probably have a big advantage, even if you think your kids are ahead of you: You were already grown up when the good and the bad arrived packaged together. You had a sense of balance when you had to confront this stuff. You were grown up. You could make out the signposts. Your kids don't have that chance. You should be very worried. I'm a parent. A grandparent, too. I know how easy it is to mistake these things. Being bright isn't the same thing as being wise. Kids are smart, but they're not mature. Kids don't know what you know. They might know how to track their friends in their chat program, and they probably know how to send their entire MP3 collection to everyone else in the known universe with three mouse clicks. But they don't know how to tell a pen pal from a pervert in their online chat program. They don't know how to make the kind of decisions that will get them safely from here to there on the dangerous superhighway we call the Internet. If you think I'm exaggerating, step back and consider something else. Suppose your 13-year-old daughter wants to go to the mall, alone. She wants to be there all day, wandering from store to store or hanging out in the food court. Is that OK? Maybe. A lot of parents don't care or don't seem to care. (I don't think there's much of a difference when you're the kid.) So maybe you'd say yes. Then you notice the t-shirt your 13-year-old daughter intends to wear to the mall. On the front it says "Born to be wild." On the back it says "Curves ahead." Cute? Not on your life. Do you still let her go, wearing that shirt, sticking those two messages in the face of everybody who passes by? Not if you care. Now go back to the question of responsible behavior on the Internet. Kids who use e-mail and chat (or instant messaging) nearly always have their own e-mail addresses and their own "screen names," the AOL term for the name that represents someone in both e-mail and chat. Do you know what screen names your kids use? Do you know what e-mail names they have? Find out. "Gone2Far" might seem nothing more than playful, but adults know better, and the junior-high kid who wrote to me under that name to ask a homework question needed a parent who cared. And the kid who wrote earlier this year under the name "ChargeMeUp" needed a parent, not a battery. Names your kids show the world need to reflect who they are and who you are. Start out by paying attention to this one small thing. Parents who care cannot let their kids attract the wrong kind of attention. Too much is at stake. |