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Kids Online: Where Are The Parents?

Unfortunately, too many of us parents have no real idea what our kids are doing online. Many adults are afraid of or freaked out by the technology, and they stay removed from the entire subject. On the other side of the coin are those of us who spend our lives with or around computers and just assume our kids are savvy because they've grown up around the technology. We make our living off, or with, computers--what could be bad?

Both scenarios can do a grave disservice to the children involved.

The experts I talked to, including psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators, understand that parents can't be over their kids' shoulders around-the-clock. But often we leave too much to chance or force the kids to figure out too much on their own. Sometimes it's difficult for parents to remember that, as sophisticated as today's generation is with and around anything electronic, they're still children. They don't have the maturity or the skills to know everything they need to in order to keep themselves safe. They need adult help and guidance even if they say they don't want to hear it. But too often we don't talk to them until after they've run into problems.

Ideally, we would talk to our kids before they become victims of cyberbullying, or post an inappropriate page on MySpace (one with personally identifying information or explicit photos, that is), or spend five hours each day online to the exclusion of almost any other activity.

The advice is to start talking to the kids while they're very young to set up parental expectations and rules--and to keep talking as they get older. I've heard from some folks who say they've banned their kids from having an instant messenger or a MySpace account, which I think is a great idea for most children under, say, 14. But I'm not sure that's the way to go for older teens. Kids being kids, I'm betting anyone who's been "banned" at home is just going to go over to a friend's house and do who-knows-what. Point is, if you're not talking, you'll never know until after there's a problem.

And just maybe, they'll listen. And believe me, I know how difficult this stuff is. My husband and I have been nagging our girls, ages 16 and 17, to get their names and our city's name off their MySpace pages for the better part of a year. After about the sixth "conversation" and the third Dateline TV show about online sexual predators that we all watched together, they finally heeded that advice. I can't say I'm thrilled with the younger one's chosen online moniker, but at least she's no longer using her given name. I've decided to let that issue go because, essentially, she did what we asked.

Even better, our girls are now nagging their own friends and talking to them about the dangers of meeting people in the "real" world that they've only known online, which, shudder, some of them have actually done--or are doing. (I've made some calls to parents about that one, but that's another story.)

Parry Aftab, a privacy lawyer and founder of WiredSafety, says she's amazed by how much time she spends counseling adults about how to parent on cybermatters. "Parents contact me to complain that their kids are doing something online that the parents don't want them to. I actually have to say, 'You may want to consider withholding privileges; ground them.' "

Dr. Anita Gurian, a psychologist involved with New York University's About Our Kids E-magazine, says, "We are responsible for our kids' safety and well-being. This issue isn't going to suddenly come up in adolescence...this starts from day one in terms of establishing trust and adherence to rules."

You may think, as many adults do, that children just are fundamentally "wired" to push the limits. That pushing is, in fact, their job, and they're quite good at it--and it has ever been so. Some kids will just always find a way to get into trouble, as did generations before them and, hey, (insert good-humored chuckle here) we all lived to tell the tale. It's just part of growing up, right?

Well, sure. But the big difference now is that, unlike sneaking off to smoke a filched cigarette or look through an "adult magazine" with the guys, kids online can get into very deep trouble, and they can do so very quickly. It can then escalate to the point of having "real-world" ramifications--kids who are threatened by schoolmates online may not want to go to school. Or they may become depressed, school grades start to suffer, and so on. Self-cutting, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, attempting suicide--all have been reported side effects of problems that started online.

Unlike the kids who used to sneak off to the tree house to do something against the rules, there's no Jiminy Cricket in this crowd--no voice, however small, reminding them that what they've set off to do could get them into big trouble. And there's no support network for those who do get into a jam; they're pretty much out there in cyberspace all alone.

Doug Fodeman, IT director at the Brookwood elementary school in Manchester, Mass., does workshops about online safety for both parents and kids. He recalls one fourth grader he met during one of those meetings. "We asked if the kids had ever felt uncomfortable while online, and one kid said that someone he was talking to in a public chat room had asked to meet him at a gas station. I had to wonder what the hell a fourth-grader was doing in a public chat room" to begin with, he says.

Just as we wouldn't allow our kids to go into a physical situation where we don't know the players, or what we do know isn't good, we need to follow that same advice and exercise a wallop of good old-fashioned common sense when it comes to online matters, too.

No matter how old your kid, it’s never too late to start talking. (For some tips, go here.) The life you save may be your child's.

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