[Vision2020] Kids, Safety, and the Internet

[Saundra Lund]

Paul wrote:
"8) If you have children, get a program like NetNanny to help you keep them
from visiting sites you don't want them to visit."

To which Chas responded:
"Here Paul and I part ways.  If you have children of an age that NetNanny
might be tempting, keep the computer in the living room.
Peruse their browser history occasionally and talk to them about anything
that you find which is objectionable.  I have two children whom I safely
navigated to adulthood as they navigated the Internet hundreds of hours a
year, all without mishap.  Yes, the wife and I both worked full-time.  Nanny
software is no replacement for good parenting.  Besides, any moderately
intelligent teen can easily subvert NetNanny-type products."

I agree . . . and disagree with Chas.

I *absolutely* agree with keeping the computer kids/teens use to access the
Internet in busy areas of the house, which is a common recommendation.  And,
parents, don't be afraid to glance at the screen every once in awhile!  A
few years back, a Web site address was being passed around at school.  My dd
wrote it down to check it out & see what all the fuss was about.  In her
case, her shriek when she pulled up the site was enough to get our immediate
attention <g>, but the page would have been a dead give away & visible to us
because the computer is in a main part of the house rather than shut away in
a bedroom.  Great learning experience for us.

As for periodically checking the browser history, that might be helpful, but
the kids I know past the age of about fifth or sixth grade *all* know how to
clear that.  Whether they'd actually do it to hide something is a different
question, but based on the conversations I've heard, I don't doubt some
would.

Where I part ways with Chas is in the use of monitoring software.  While
we've always run a pretty tight Internet safety ship at home, not all
families or locations do, and we had a pretty scary incident when my dd was
in seventh grade.  To make a long story short, while visiting a friend who
was chatting/IMing with a much older guy, she got hooked up with a friend of
the older guy.  Since the chat room wasn't one we allowed access to at our
house, they exchanged email addys  and started an email correspondence.

Now, my seventh grader knew -- and HAD known for a couple of years at that
point -- all the safety stuff like not using her real name and not to give
out personal info.  We had already had many Internet safety talks & role
played scenarios  And, she actually pretty much followed the rules (although
both girls had inflated their ages to 16).  But, as is common, some kids
think they know it all and are smart enough to handle anything . . .

While I had a fair amount of trust in my dd, I don't think any seventh
grader is a match for ANY adult (in this case male) up to no good.  For me,
my child's safety trumps EVERYTHING else.  And, of course, I'd seen the
tragic stories on the news of bad things that had happened to good teens
from "friendships" that started on the Internet.

So, I started learning more.  For parents who've not already done so, I
can't strongly enough encourage you to learn and be aware.  IMHO, too many
parents haven't taken the time -- or don't know how -- to learn about
Internet safety and kids.

I felt pretty confident that my dd was, more or less, following our safety
rules.  And, I wasn't so much worried about the content of Web sites, but
rather about the people she might come across online who would be far more
sophisticated than she.

In our case, I made the difficult decision to go with good monitoring
software (http://www.spectorsoft.com/).  It was difficult because it didn't
"feel" right -- it felt like an invasion of her privacy.  But, I take safety
very seriously.  Just as I don't let my dd go out wandering around town with
no idea of where she is, who she's with, and what she's doing, I'm not going
to let her wander the Internet completely unsupervised.

Initially, she wasn't happy about it *at all.*  We explained why we were
doing it and exactly what the software could do.  We also very clearly
spelled out what our "rules" for using the software would be.  For instance,
if she turned up missing, all bets were off and we'd look at EVERYTHING
she'd done -- every keystroke she'd made -- on the computer.  We wouldn't
read her emails or chat logs for content "without cause" . . . but she had
the responsibility to tell us who she's emailing/chatting with, and if we
saw an email addy or screen name we didn't recognize, we'd ask & she tell us
or we'd read for content.  We would scan the listing of Internet sites she
visited and discuss anything we were curious about with her.  Just as we had
rules for her, we had rules for *us.*

This post has gone on longer than I intended, but here we are four years
later, and the monitoring software is still working.  My dd brings up the
topic of the monitoring software rarely now, and when she does, we remind
her of the rules -- for her *and* for us.  She's never disappeared, so we've
never invaded her privacy.  We know who her friends are and what their email
addresses and/or screen names are . . . but we don't know what they talk
about via the computer.  For good or bad, we know the Internet sites she's
visited, and while as a parent there are some I wish she'd not gone to,
that's a part of growing up, I think.

And, IMHO, there have been some real plusses.  I think she trusts us more
because we've lived up to what we said we'd do . . . and NOT do.  We've had
lots of good discussions.  She's shown us things she's been sent and has
found online that have prompted good discussions -- whether she showed them
to us "just because" or because she knew about the monitoring software I
don't know, but they've prompted some really good discussions.

And, thank God it didn't, but if something really bad would have happened,
we would have more info to work with.

For those who may not have any idea where to start learning, there's lots of
good info out there.  Some starting places might include:
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm
http://www.netsmartz.org/
http://www.staysafe.org/

And, while it's a commercial site, I found the free downloads helpful:
http://www.kdcop.com/


JMHO,
Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
- Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2006, Saundra Lund.
Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum
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