FAMILY TIME
KIDS ONLINE
There was something magical about looking up obscure pieces of information when
I was a child. We had to heft down a volume of a row of beautifully-bound encyclopedias
and carefully turn the thin pages, looking for the entry. The smell of the pages,
the leather binding with its the gold decoration and the tiny neat print made
it a special ritual. I remember an edition of the Oxford english dictionary which
was printed so small you had to read the entries with a magnifying glass.
But our children are growing up in a different world. What used to be leatherbound
is now online, bookbinding art is now Javascript and XML. It's a world in which
many parents are less at home than their children. The sheer amount of the available
information on the Internet is almost unimaginable. No-one seriously doubts the
usefulness of the Internet nowaday: e-mail, online banking, finding a job, booking
a flight and hotel, researching for a paper - all these and many other activities
are now ordinary Internet activities. Kids are encouraged to research for term
papers online and grow up with this vast universe of shared knowledge.
This is great, of course. But with this vast shared knowledge comes a vast amount
of nonsense, wrong information, misinformed waffling and - worse - unpleasant
and undesirable content. Such content includes really unpleasant pornography,
racist content, violent imagery and so on. Until a few years ago, parents' main
concern was to complete the delicate balancing act between allowing their kids
access to the information they needed online while protecting them from the potentially
traumatising "nasty stuff". An array of software packages evolved to
help here. Windows Vista, for instance, has integrated "Parental Control" functionality
to help filter out unwanted content.
A few years ago, the Internet began to evolve
radically. Whereas it used to be primarily a repository of information, it is
moving towards being more a meeting place, where people can exchange ideas, services
or just meet and "hang out". This new development is immensely popular
with kids and teens. It's ironic: once upon a time parents worried about their
kids spending too much time in front of the computer and encouraged them to switch
it off and go out and play with their friends. 
Now, kids meet their friends by
going online. Times change. One popular place for kids and teens to meet is "Habbo" (look
it up on Wikipedia: there's a pretty good overview of what it is and how it works
to get a rough idea). I like the idea of kids meeting up and I also like the
idea of kids meeting other kids across the world from different cultural backgrounds.
There is an element of anonymity which can help shy kids join a discussion more
easily. So in general I find this a "good thing". Unfortunately, there
is a new "dark side" here, too. Something like Habbo has to be anonymous
to protect the users' identities. But this also allows unpleasant users - such
as pedophiles, for instance - to sneak in unnoticed, pretend to be kids and then
involve real kids (who think they are talking to other kids) in discussions and
exchanges of images I don't want to describe in closer detail here.
The question is what are parents supposed to do to support their kids here? Forbidding
access to the web or to platforms like Habbo is not going to work. Kids will
simply access them from their friends' homes and be out of reach of their parents'
help. We need to find a new balancing act. The exact nature of the balancing
act is individual but here are some ideas which may help:
- Talk to your kids clearly about the risks. Explain that there are grown-ups
out there who are not nice. It's the old "never accept sweets and rides
from strangers" discussion. Informed kids are less susceptible to manipulation.
- Don't set up your kids' internet-access computer in their bedroom. Set it up
in a frequented place like the living room. Not so that you can spy on your kids
behaviour online, but so that you are more likely to notice anything unusual
or be nearby if your kids encounter anything disturbing. You can support your
kids better if they aren't online in isolation.
- Explain how important it is to NEVER EVER give any personal information to
anyone online (not even mobile phone numbers SMS messaging). Help your kids use
the anonymity of the internet to protect themselves.
- Explain that they must NEVER EVER arrange to meet someone they met
online without
telling you or a grown-up they trust. I don't think it makes sense to forbid
such a meeting out of hand (it might be a bona fide kid, after all), but caution
and an accompanying adult is probably a good idea. Paedophiles often try and
lure kids in chat rooms to meetings in the real world. Don't let that happen.
- Agree with your kids that they should come to you if a discussion starts to
get wierd or very personal (eg. asking about sexual habits, etc.). Explain that
it may be a grown-up pretending to be a kid. If they do come to you, be very
careful how you react. If you over-react, that may be the last time your child
comes to you for support in a situation like that. Instead, be supportive, look
at the discussion on screen with your kid. Tell them that a reaction like "Sorry,
I'm not going to discuss that with you. Leave me alone. Bye!" is a sign
of strength on their part. Help empower your child to cut off a discussion
if they start to feel uncomfortable and to have the confidence to come to you
if
something "freaks them out".
There are a whole row of further tips and ideas, but we have to start somewhere,
and I believe the above is a good starting point. The internet has become so
much a part of our kids' lives that outright panic on the part of us parents
and a complete lockdown on internet access would be counter-productive and harmful
to our kids' social network, their access to information they need for school
and their knowledge in general.
Forbidding our kids access to the internet would be similar to forbidding children
to leave the house because traffic is so dangerous. We don't do that. Instead,
we teach them to behave responsibly in traffic. I think that's the right approach
with the Internet, too.
| DANIEL SCHWARZ
CARIGIET Born: 1966 in Lugano, Switzerland - Mother American, father German Family: married to Astrid, father of Oliver |
 |
| Occupation: Freelance photographer / commmunications consultant |
|
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