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MySpace Age Verification - for Parents
unlametheweak writes "North Carolina is thinking of the children by passing a law requiring parents to verify they are parents before letting their children onto social networking sites. Notwithstanding the whole concept of an Internet ID for people in general; children are now being tracked by cellular phones with GPS, spied upon with Parent Controls (MS Vista has built-in parental spyware), and also strategically placed Nanny Cams, keyboard loggers, etc. 'Few of the proposals we've seen so far seem like good ways to [protect children], but North Carolina's approach at least has the virtue of novelty--unlike most video game legislation, which relies on similar rhetoric but has been almost universally struck down by the courts, sometimes at great cost to the states.' Is the zoo-like Minority Report world in which children are growing up in today doing more harm than good? How will this affect a 14 year old, much less a 17 year old "child"?"
When will people learn that spying on your children is not a replacement for good parenting? The fact that there's actually a demand for this sort of thing is depressing.
Luke, I am your father.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
As soon as a kid shoots up a school, people ask "Where were the parents? Why didn't they see the problem?" We're very quick to point the finger at parents when something goes wrong. And then I see posts like this asserting that parents shouldn't be able to monitor their childrens' activities.
Fifty years ago, parents didn't have to watch so closely. There was far less media coming into the home, and what was available was far easier to monitor (and far more regulated, as it was all under the watchful eye of the FCC).
Now, we've got the internet. We've got a half-dozen game consoles. We've got cable and satellite television, dirt-cheap movies and music available for purchase, and a barrage of information everywhere we look. For parents to keep the same level of attention on what their kids are doing, they have to use tools like "spyware" (you know, software that lets them know what THEIR computers are being used for) to keep track of their kids and look for dangerous behavior.
I've got to say, though, that I object to nanny cams unless there is a very specific reason to have one. If you smell pot in your living room, maybe it's a good time to put in a camera to see if your kid is using illegal drugs. But putting up a camera *just in case* is paranoid.
Parents have to monitor their kids. Every generation has done so in some fashion. So long as kids know the rules, know they are being watched, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I wouldn't let my kids go certain places in the city without me being around because it's risky for them; the same goes for the internet.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
...parents have every right, responsibility even, to monitor their children's actions/behavior. That's not to say that it should be 24/7, but the summary's implicit suggestion that "spying" on children is inappropriate displays a vast ignorance of/indifference to responsible parenting.
As Ronald Reagan said, "trust, but verify". There is nothing wrong with knowing what your child is doing on a home computer. There is nothing wrong with knowing where your child is. A child doesn't have the right to conceal their activities/whereabouts from his/her parents.
Again, I think legislative efforts like this have it all wrong. I just object to the summary's use of "spying" as applied to what I call "responsible parenting."
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Once they are desensitized to the idea of not having privacy, it will get easier to get them to conform to whatever the people in power want.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I work at a school district. I see 17-year-olds all the time. Yes, they are children. They act without considering the consequences to themselves or others. They are irresponsible and generally stupid, with a few exceptions.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
then, in your opinion, at what age does this immaturity magically disappear?
Ban on name changes by sex offenders.
... Or maybe Hack our Kids' brains'... I got it... How about government sponsored Parenting Classes that teach parents how to get involved with their kids' lives...
Funny how politicians will throw anything into the political arena during crunch time (races...). Just how do they propose to keep track of "name changes" from a sex offender. For starters they can't even maintain their own equipment, can't secure the FBI infrastructure, a company for MySpace is already reporting false positives.... Should we wait for the FBI's new and improved Carnivore?
Infiltrated dot Net
That stupidity doesn't magically go away when they turn 18, but the "protection" they're afforded under the law does, so how do you reconcile those two things?
I think the point is since we expect people to be adults at 18, they'd better be pretty damn close to it by 17. Close enough that we shouldn't have to spend so much energy protecting them from themselves.
They act without considering the consequences to themselves or others. They are irresponsible and generally stupid, with a few exceptions.
They sound just like adults, to me...
The first night they spend in prison after doing something incredibly stupid while drunk.
Monstar L
and today is one of those days.
We have the most brain-dead General Assembly in the world. This lot couldn't pour
piss out of a boot if the instructions were stamped on the heel.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Vista has parental controls to control access to specific accounts at specific times, etc. This gets twisted in TFS to say that Vista has parental "spyware". Nice FUD.
There is now a small, but growing movement within the psychological profession to abolish the concept of adolescence. All I can say is, IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME! Teenagers are not children. They are physically closer to adults both in terms of their physical/sexual maturity and the ability of their brains to function. In other words, a 14 year old is physically capable both in their brain and the rest of their body of assuming a position as a young, but real, adult in modern society. We just don't let them do it!
Our ancestors knew this. That is why even the advanced societies of the classical age regarded teenagers as adults, rather than as children. Even our own legal system on some level recognizes that teens are capable of functioning identically to adults because it allows them to be tried as such in violent crimes cases.
Well, according to the auto insurance companies, age 25 is statistically a good indicator that they better understand risks. I also believe that there is some sort of evidence that brain maturation isn't complete until around that age.
It's a good thing Luke's parents didn't let him have a MySpace page, otherwise his father might have found him with one Google search, and essentially ended the series right there.
I've raised three kids who now range in age from 24 to 31.
I'm not and never have been my child's peer or friend - I'm a parent and the relationship between me and my child is and always will be asymmetrical.
As a parent I reserved the right to investigate any aspect of my child's life when I had reason to believe that the child was at risk - and investigations into my child's sexual activity or drug or alcohol or internet use are IMO appropriate.
Minor children have an inherent right not to be physically, sexually or emotionally abused - every other right a child has is granted by that child's legal guardian. My responsibility as a parent is to protect that child until (s)he can fend for itself.
My house, my rules. Doesn't matter if the child is fifteen or thirty-five - as long as they're under my roof I will determine what does (and does not) go on in my house. For example my imaginary twenty-five year old kid is legally able to smoke cigarettes. He's still not gonna smoke them in my house. He can pretty much come and go as he pleases - with the caveat that if you're not gonna come home that night you give Mom and Dad a call so they don't stay up worrying about whether you've wrapped your car around a tree or something. Don't know about other parents but I can't go to sleep if I have a child unaccounted for.
I trust my children and always have - that doesn't mean I didn't verify where they are (and with whom) from time to time. The internet was really only an issue with my youngest but I can and have used tools to determine what he was doing on the net and wouldn't hesitate to do so again if I had a kid in the house.
The parent poster mentions spying on your children - monitoring is not spying. My kids knew their entire lives that I might call to verify their whereabouts from time to time, check their homework, call their teachers to see how they were doing in school, occasionally check the odometer in the car and yes, even monitor their internet use. As I said in the title, trust but verify.
My children also know how much I love them. They're not peers or friends and never will be - they are my children and that relationship brings both additional benefits and additional responsibilities. Doesn't mean I don't hoist a glass with my kids or seek their counsel sometimes - they're adults now and in charge of their own destiny and even though sometimes I don't agree with their decisions but I have learned to STFU and allow my kids to grow from their own choices - good or bad.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
The odds of your kids finding a sexual predator on MySpace are vastly less than them finding one in their own circle of family and friends...The younger the child, the higher the odds that any sex crime against them will be perpetrated by a family member or a close family friend, and at NO POINT do assaults by anonymous strangers become more common than assaults by acquaintances.
So saying, "ZOMG MySpace is rife with sex predators!" is essentially meaningless; they're no more prevalent there than anywhere else. People love to cling to the illusion that the bad people of the world are all faceless evil people lurking ion the shadows, and it's just not true. But the media is pushing the idea, and parents are eating it up.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The government is notoriously inept at stuff like this, and I can't help thinking any attempt that is made will end in failure...They just don't understand the system. They think making the parents sign in is going to change something, but the reality is that only a tiny percentage of parents will want to do this; after the 20th time they get dragged away from the TV to enter their password so their kid can blog about their new hairclip, they're going to click "Remember Password", and that'll be the end of it.
Or kids will sign up for accounts as 18 year olds and make the whole issue worse.
When it comes right down to it there is no substitute for knowing what your kids are doing. Sure, keep an eye on 'em, but don't pull some sneaky, underhanded crap, because then you turn it into a contest; your ability to spy vs their ability to evade, and they'll probably have more time and motivation than you do, which puts you at a serious disadvantage.
As long as you show an interest, and can keep your cool and not lose your fricking mind when they deviate from what you would wish that they would do, they'll keep you informed. But if you make them feel like they can't trust you to know about their lives without trying to completely control their lives, they'll lie to you, and they'll lie to you specifically about the stuff you'll most need to know about.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.