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Rethinking IM Privacy For Kids
mackles writes, "Now that the world has read the despicable instant messages from Rep. Foley, should parents take a second look at monitoring their kids' IMs? After all, it was IM logging that exposed the scandal; would we have found out otherwise? Cost is not an issue, there are free monitoring tools. Should parents tell their kids before they monitor? Parents and their tech-savvy kids are at odds on the topic. From the article: 'As many as 94 percent of parents polled this summer by the research firm Harris Interactive said they've turned to Web content filters, monitoring software, or advice from an adult friend to keep electronic tabs on their children.' The article quotes one 18-year-old as saying, 'A lot of kids are smarter than adults think.'"
It's not always so simple. About a year ago we found that our then 12 year old son was using his Mum's account on her study computer to admire all kinds of porn. Now the kids machine is forced to go through Dan's Guardian, but Jo's isn't, as this would get in the way of her study. But Jo has her windoze screen saver password turned off, so she can walk aay from a papper she's writing, and come back, shake the mouse and restart writing.
Teen Curiosity you think. The trouble was (from my wife and my perspective) that some of the content he was looking at was from the pretty extreme end of human sexual behaviour. We'd talked to the boy pretty frankly about his body, about sex, responsibility, hygiene and health, but there were people inserting things into each other's bodies that I'd never have thought to have mentioned in some of the things he was looking at.
Now I personally don't think that women inserting baseball bats in men's rectums is "normal" sexual behaviour. Call me a prude. But we realised that there are so many things out there that are just sooooo outside anything we could think of talking about (and to be frank, I don't really want to discuss the joys of prostate stimulation with foreign objects to my 13 year old son).
It all came back to school - there was an older boy (18!!!) who was taking great delight in "advising" younger boys to go to certain websites. That kid has been expelled, and has a court order to stay away from schools and p[laygrounds, as a bit of investigation showed that the lad has a history as a 17 year old of gettting heavily involved with 12 year old boys and girls. I accept that kids will have sex, but not with people that are almost adults who have a fetish for objects and 'toys'. But an older kid will alwys be "more informed" and "cooler" than parents.
As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing too extreme when it come to me finding out what my kids are doing on the Internet. I log, monitor, re-direct and block my kids use of the Internet. They can move out at 18 if they don't like it.
Prude!
What? You told me to.
Okay, stupid joke.
I can't see any value in your kid seeing these pictures, or taking cues about his sex life from a seventeen year old. But I do see some value in having clear lines of communication, and I don't know if the value of protecting your son from weird pictures is worth the loss there. I'd much rather have a kid who finds weird stuff on the 'Net and thinks, "maybe the parents can tell me what's up with that," instead of, "how do I get my hands on more without the parents finding out?" But maybe it's overly optimistic to think that most kids could ever see their parents as reliable sources for information about sex.
I'm curious: did you have a good talk with the kid about why he was interested in these pictures, and why you didn't feel that they were appropriate for someone of his age? Probably you did. Maybe he understood your reasoning. Maybe he agreed with it. Maybe he's following the rules. But it seems to me that, so long as the interest is there, that the situation isn't fully resolved. And if he doesn't even feel safe in telling you that he's still interested, I think it has a snowballing effect on your relationship, multiplying the number of things that he doesn't feel comfortable discussing with you.
All I'm really saying is that even twelve year olds have some concept of sexuality, and a desire to figure it out. If you can make him comfortable telling you what's going on in his mind, without getting judged or humiliated, then you've got a better shot at protecting him from the really dangerous things.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!