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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.'"
"When I was 14, my parents were the most ignorant people in the world. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much they had learned in the last 7 years."
-- Mark Twain
Clearly this shows we should be monitoring politicians and not the kids.
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The house, the phone line, the DSL service, and the computer are all in my name. I'm the one my kid puts at risk if he does something illegal. Can someone give me a good reason to *not* monitor what my kid does on the internet?
When kids shoot up schools, people ask "where were the parents? They should have known." When kids end up teenage parents, people ask "where were the parents? They should have taught them better." When kids get connected to the internet, people say "mind your own business! Privacy! Big Brother! OMG 1984!!!"
Pick one. Either kids have a right to privacy and the responsibilities that come with the lack of supervision, or they don't have that right, and the parents have to accept some responsibility if they don't know what their kids are doing.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Well, I do have kids .. two boys, 10 and 6 ...
:-). But they know mom & dad check up on them, and they accept that. Just like we make sure they aren't watching crap on TV, and we make sure their friends aren't morons, and we pack healthy snacks for school :-). It's all part of the same job... Granted, they may not like it, but sometimes you have to be "mean". My job is to bring them up in the way that I see as "right". I may be friend #1 now, becasue they are young, but that won't last long, and I can accept that. If they are happy, well-adjusted, productive members of society, I did my job...
... well, at least until they are teenagers :-) I may change my tune then! :-)
I try at every opportunity to let them know about the good and bad of technology. Yes, you have Wikipedia and Google, but you also have pedophiles too. Just like walking down the street. There are good folks and bad folks, and just like it is hard to tell the difference from faces, it is hard to tell the difference online. I try to explain and enforce good online safety and behavior rules. I try to talk to them, and make sure that I am involved in their lives.
However, their computers are facing out, in a public part of the house. I check their activities, and make sure they are doing the right things. I don't check obsessively, but I do check. Trust is a two-way street. They know that if they get bagged, I will crack down. Of course, I also do check logs, history, cookies, and my router
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Talk to your kids, make sure they know what is right and wrong first. Explain basic safety rules, behavior online, etc. But do make sure to check on them, and make sure they see you as involved. They need to know boundaries, and if they know you are checking and being involved, I think they'll try to live up to it
Yes, dad, the 54G can do logging. Actually that's probably better than the silly keylogger Judy and I have been using against you and mom for the past year. (BTW, having 'g0d' as your admin password is really lame - we didn't even need the keylogger to figure that out. :P I'll walk you through the firmware update after I get home from band practice.
Your loving son, Jack
P.S. Do not let Judy do the install - she's bound to get the interface names reversed and broadcast the log files to the universe. (If you don't believe me, ask her why that botnet attacked our computer last fall. I told her the target IP was the first param, not the second one, but did Little Miss 31337 listen to me? Of course not.)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Raise your kids like that and watch what happens when they finally move out from under your thumb.
It'll be a total disaster, and yes, it will be your fault.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Me Too!
Seriously, I had unrestricted Internet access (my own dial-up account) for the computer in my room from the age of about 14. I had a 2400 baud modem before that, but I didn't use it much because it was too slow for most things (and I had to pay the 'phone bill for modem calls, which added up really quickly).
My computer was completely set-up by me, and my parents didn't even have a login. Occasionally my mother would ask to borrow a web browser when she wanted to look something up (my father had his own laptop), but apart from that it was my machine. Because of this freedom, I learned a huge amount; I'm now coming to the end of a PhD in computer science. If the machine had been locked down, I would have done one of two things:
- Bypassed the security, as I did with school machines with silly lock-down rules that got in my way (wit authorisation from a teacher in all cases), or
- Got bored with the machine quickly and not learned anything from it.
To all those claiming that you have to protect your children; which of these do you think is better? My parents had a simple philosophy. They believed that by the age of about ten, a child had absorbed everything it would from a parent-child relationship. Everything after that must come from an attitude of mutual respect. They didn't spy on me, or try to enforce behaviours. They taught me to understand the consequences of my actions, and not do anything I wouldn't like the result of.Oh, and as a result of this, I missed out on the teenage rebellious phase, since I already had all of the freedoms I wanted. I do, however, have a very low tolerance for those who exercise power without earning the moral authority to do so. Perhaps if more people had had an upbringing like mine we would be further away from a 1984-like scenario...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm disinclined to agree with the idea that youth are that susceptible to harm from exposure to "inappropriate" content or behavior, especially when a physical seperation (such as the internet) is present. I see the merit behind the argument, and I empathize with the legitimate desire to protect kids, but it relies on the fallacies that children/teens do not have adequate coping mechanisms and/or are better off in ignorance.
The fact is that children are better able to adapt to new events and information than adults are, provided that they have a stable home environment. That's because everything is new to them. Of course they need guidance and assistance along the way, but the new experiences in and of themselves are not destructive. On the contrary, without exposure to these experiences, kids may have difficulty dealing with things later in life. In regard to alcohol and drugs, for example, most parents realize that their children will be exposed to these things no matter what they do, therefore they preemptively explain the effects, potential consequences, what choice they believe is best, and how to deal with pressure from other kids/peers (which is often significantly higher than any potential pressure that might be exerted online, I might add -- indeed most people have an easier time being confrontational in the pseudoanonymity of the internet than they do in real life).
Likewise with sexual misconduct, both online and in the real world. When I was in first grade, some kid brought a Polaroid to school and convinced some other kids to go in the coat room and take pictures of their privates. While I have no idea what sparked this behavior (although in retrospect it was possibly indicative of serious misconduct at home), I do recall that several children willingly complied in innocence (aka IGNORANCE), until one child finally told the teacher because her parents had told her that it was naughty to take off her clothes in front of strangers. The two key things, I believe, to learn from this experience are that most of the kids were woefully unprepared for the real world by their parents, and that regardless of their behavior, the kids were probably no worse off for the experience. Of course we all got a lecture afterwards, but it shouldn't have been an afterthought. Sexuality is an innate part of our existance, and shamefully pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't benefit our children in any way; rather it merely produces another generation of shameful adults.
The point is that regardless of your views on the morality of ANY issue, if children are ignorant of the basic facts, then that is the sole greatest danger. Protecting them 24/7 is neither possible nor healthy. Of course parents should be involved in their children's activities, and ask questions about what they're doing, who they're talking to, etc., but kids are people too, and they need some amount of privacy (based on age, demonstrated responsibility, past behavior, etc). Yes, people on the internet, as in real life, CAN be dangerous, but the internet has the added safety feature that it's fairly anonymous. Teach kids to maintain their anonymity, to tell you if someone is asking/telling/showing them something inappropriate, and they'll be better off. Of course, if you have no bond or trust with your child (and 24/7 monitoring isn't exactly a great way to generate trust), or if your child has repeatedly demonstrated willful disregard for instruction, then by all means -- monitor them day and night. But really, that should be a last resort, not a primary consideration.
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