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Online Parent-Child Gap Widens
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids writes "A new study by Dafna Lemish from the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University has found that there is an enormous gap between what parents think their children are doing online and what is really happening. 'The data tell us that parents don't know what their kids are doing,' says Lemish. The study found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents, that 73% of the children reported giving out personal information online while the parents of the same children believed that only 4% of their children did so, and that 36% of the children admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online while fewer than 9% of the parents knew that their children had been engaging in such risky behavior. Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users and most importantly, to talk to their children. 'The child needs similar tools that teach them to be [wary] of dangers in the park, the mall or wherever. The same rules in the real world apply online as well.'"
The study found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers because of pr0n
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
Only 4% of parents think their child has given out personal information online, but 8+% (the only thing I can think from the way the summary puts it) believe their child has physically met a stranger they had met online? Is it just me, or is this backwards at best?
36% admitted to meeting strangers?? Risky Business? I call bull
When they say stranger, they mean...ANYONE THE KID HASNT MET BEFORE.
Damn media blows the whole "online predator" shit way out of proportion. The same kids that meet 45 yr old men are the same ones that would get into a van because the guy offered them candy.
Protect the children my ass. Just makes politicians look good
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Parents think they can sit their kids down in front of "the box" and let it do their parenting for them.
Then they want to "blame society" when their kids turn out to be basically "white trash" or whatever.
Here's a clue folks, if you don't actively "parent your kids", your kids will end up being hopeless lowlife clueless losers.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Not really. You could meet up with someone you met online without giving them any personal info. Use an alias, don't tell them your address or anything. Just say where to meet and what you'll be wearing. But it's kinda weird that parents think that their kids will be prudent enough to play the game carefully like that. If a kid was meeting a stranger that they got acquainted with online, I expect they probably would've given out personal info at some time. But what do I know? I'm just an out-of-touch adult and Slashdot reader.
I was mostly hoping he was learning to hack, but afraid that he was probably just surfing for pr0n and MP3s... I did warn him a couple times about file sharing, and I did maintain control of the router. But for the most part, he was responsible, so I let him be.
I was richly rewarded. He's 20 and turning out to be a hacker, much to my relief. :-)
John
"Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users and most importantly, to talk to their children. 'The child needs similar tools that teach them to be [wary] of dangers in the park, the mall or wherever. The same rules in the real world apply online as well.'""
I feel a serious game coming on.
According to a recent study, parents are becoming increasingly negligent when it comes to raising their children. The study found that over one-third (38%) of children had been allowed to meet with a stranger they met on the internet. Parental standards have been falling for years, but this recent study gives insight as to the increasing threat of a lack of parental oversight.
In an unrelated study, scientists found that approximately 40% of people aged 9-18 years old should be "destroyed for the good of mankind."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
"Lemish advises that children should give their parents the tools to be literate Internet users"
Seriously, the idea that the only people who meet new friends online are cruising for illegal sex reminds me of Victorians refusing to answer the telephone because that wasn't how suitable people became acquainted.
Remember that case of the girl who killed herself because her former best friend and their parents, people she knew from real life, were tormenting her online? I was just reading about how when the dead girl's parents finally allowed her to get a myspace account for her birthday, after much begging and pleading, it was on the condition that her mother literally be looking over her shoulder the entire time she was logged on. If anything contributed to her death, it wasn't insufficient paranoia, it was the superstitious awe this entire family apparently had for the internet.
Let's RTFA for a change. It says: "Thirty-six percent from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online" (empasis mine). That is, these "children" are between 16 and 18. Also, I strongly suspect that those strangers are mostly other kids just like them. Talk about spin.
"Meeting a stranger online" could also refer to answering a Craigslist personals ad, for instance. I'm not saying kids are/should be doing that, but I think that the phrase might be broader than you might think.
Surprise, 80 years ago parents didn't know what their children were up to. Unless you're willing to chain your kids in the basement until they turn 18, realize that you will NEVER know what your children are really up to. Unless you manage to come across as the coolest parent who will literally not outwardly judge your kid for *anything* (the "I do it out of love and to protect them/knock some sense into them" reasoning doesn't cut it, either), your kid is going to keep secrets from you. You're absolutely naive and swimming in wishful thinking if you believe you know what your kid is up to.
Parents need to teach their children some basic real-world sensibility, and then let them find their own way. Step in with some guidance once in a while, but realize that this is their life and not yours. And when your kid makes a mistake, let them learn from it. No matter how much you try to prepare them for everything life will throw at them, there are still going to be bumps.
And for the love of someone, when those bumps hit, don't start blaming the teachers, doctors, community, and technology (including the internet) for not shielding your child from the inevitable. If anybody other than your child is to blame, it's you. If your child was missing some piece of knowledge that could have helped them avoid a situation, it is your fault you didn't impart that wisdom on your child. And if your child *did* have the knowledge and still screwed up, then they either weren't prepared for it this time around (in which case they'll learn and use it next time), or they made an intentional decision to go against what they were taught, in which case it is up to them whether they'll adapt their behaviour for future situations.
This is Earth. We live under a constantly changing blanket of an infinite number of variables, most of which we have zero or next-to-zero control over. For the few variables we CAN influence, allow yourself and others to experiment with them and see which "settings" and "preferences" work best for that individual. There's no such thing as a "perfect upbringing", where someone's entire life has been a smooth ride from day one. Life would be boring as hell if we didn't have free will over how we interact with the world.
There's a pretty big difference between a 9 year old and an 18 year old, especially when it comes to what they should/should not be doing online.
For example, deleting your search history? The nine year old hasn't really got anything to be doing that for; the 18 year old may be googling about any number of things he/she doesn't want her parent to be aware of: sex education (protection, diseases, etc), boyfriends/girlfriends, etc.. Teenagers are especially protective of their privacy.
Giving out personal information online, i.e, signing up for things, is something 18 year olds may do every day, while a 9 year old shouldn't be doing it at all. Myspace, anyone? (Although the 4% response by parents make me think they don't know what's required to sign up for a lot of these things, or the type of information you post to facebook.)
Meeting with someone you met online is risky business no matter what age you are; a 9-year-old certainly shouldn't be doing at all, but hopefully the 18-year-olds aren't dumb enough to meet a stranger at his/her house, or in a dark alley somewhere. But (take Craigslist for example) there are some reasons why you'd legitimately be meeting someone you only came into contact with on the internet, and it's perfectly safe as long as you do it smart (public place, daylight, etc). 18 year olds are smart enough to do this (hopefully); 9 year olds are not.
So yes, while they are doing a survey of minors (who are the responsibilities of their parents/guardians), the age ranging from 9 prepubescent to 18 (ready to go off to college) is too wide for the figures to be of any real meaning.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
Well if the Internet's like television? What does that make Slashdot? PBS?
FTA: She suggests that common filtering software may not be effective, since children will access what they are looking for elsewhere -- at a friend's house, an Internet café, or school. And if the child accesses dangerous material outside of the home, they will be unprepared and uninformed when it happens, she says. (Emphasis mine)
What is this "it"? "It" is a word that must refer to something previously stated. Unprepared and uninformed when what happens? And what is this "dangerous material" that everyone is so afraid of? Porn? The Anarchist Cookbook?
People are so terrified of the dangers lurking on the internet. It's just a method of information exchange. Sure, okay, "it" can refer to meeting some 47 year old guy pretending to be a 10 year old girl, but for the overwhelming majority of things that a kid is doing online, "it" is undefined.
Oh - and, if it is porn... why the heck are you blocking/getting up set at your teenage kid from watching porn? And if it's "how to blow stuff up 101" then you should be teaching them better (so they don't have to go online to find out. It's safer this way!).
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
... and children never lie on surveys.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Hang on a minute, you mean to tell me that if you give a child an internet connection with no supervision, then they will do stuff you are not aware of? What a world.
If you give a child (under 16) access to the internet and don't supervise them, you deserve what ever you get.
Child molestation is mostly by friends and family, plus the occasional priest. 80% friends and family, 20% strangers. So, kids, get out of the house, stay away from churches, and head for the mall.
No. I'm sure that almost every parent talks to their children already, and if this study is to be believed, it doesn't do any good. What's needed is for parents to talk with their children, and that includes both listening to what they say and discussing things with them instead of just lecturing them.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I'm one of those "older" people on the internet. I work in the field, and still, it's a struggle for me to keep up with even the guys that work for me, mostly 20- and 30-something people. My daughter met her husband on the internet in a teen chat room about 12 years ago. Things worked out well, as I suspect most meetings on the internet do. People are out to meet people, and the internet is breaking the boundaries. 'Eastern Standard Tribe' is just a convenience, if you really connect with someone across the globe, time really isn't an issue. The bigger fear for me is 'Childhood's End', the kids are out-pacing their parents to the extend the singularity will come from people, with the aid computers.
the parent-technology gap? I mean who's going to educate the kids about the dangers of the Internet when the kids know more about the Internet than their parents? I know a lot of parents that click on those "warning your computer is infected with viruses" banners. Can you imagine if they told their kids, "Click on that! We must have a virus!"
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
The article doesn't go into detail about what "meeting strangers" actually means. Is this one-on-one? In a group? I've met plenty of "strangers" that I knew online because they were friends of friends.
Visit the
I could be wrong her, but it seems that people fear what they don't know. Are there reasons to fear some things on the internet? Yes, there certainly are... and there are tons of wastes of time on the internet, tons of bad things, etc. But when a parent decides the whole thing is incredibly dangerous - because the don't know any better - then there's a problem.
I'd imagine it's like parks. What if the only thing you heard about public parks was drugs, for example. Well, that's quite possibly true at 3am. This is probably not news to most parents - and if it is, they shouldn't be parents - letting your 13 year old daughter walk around the park at 3am is probably not a good idea. Now, if parents knew nothing about parks and figured that the whole thing was a bad place, that's totally different... whether or not your kid can ever go alone or not (during the day) is a personal decision, and I'm sure there are parks that probably are bad, period, but in general, ignorance of the park contributes to paranoia, if anything.
Applying that to the internet then, ignorance of it seems to be a huge problem. Giving a 9 year old complete access of the computer, not talking to him about anything, giving him a 1.5Mbit connection... uh, well, that seems pretty silly. Giving him nothing because you're afraid of the whole thing, that's also bad. Why is this so hard to figure out? Do you just give your kid a car when he turns 16 and hope he can end up driving safely? (sorry, had to use a car analogy). Nooo, seems like one of the points of parenting is to impart your wisdom from experience, and if you don't have experience in it, get experience in it and exercise wisdom, not paranoid behavior as if everything not around in 1975 is bad.
Oh, last comment. I find it interesting that parents think public schools are great places to send their kid and have no clue what goes on and get paranoid about the internet. I dunno. Maybe it's just that society is stupid now (parents included in that social generalization).
36% of 'children' met with strangers that they met on-line
.... probably not.
Not in the USA. Maybe in Israel, but still,
And the category of children being between the ages of 9 to 18? 18-year-olds are not children in any sense except in certain legal categories. 'met strangers'? Yeah, maybe, 18 year olds in neighboring high-schools meeting each other for coffee or just hanging out after looking at each other's picture and trading instant messages about common interests. Not the same thing as 9-year-olds meeting 'strangers with candy' on the big bad internet!
Totally meaningless study. Just easy grant money for half-wit psychology grad students.
Garbage in: Garbage out.
In Israel, if a girl working at a check-out counter thinks you are hot, then she'll write her phone number on the cash register slip. So does a check-out line count as an on-line encounter?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Hey, the suggestion those guys give is actually a good one! Teach your kids to use the net sensibly. Protect your privacy, be wary of strangers that offer you deals that are "too good to be true", don't just trust people because they appear nice online...
And that teaching should come from the same people that fill out every damn form on a "click the monkey to win" spin, answer "easy money fast" spam and hand out their banking details to widows of Nigerian presidents?
Sorry, but first of all we'd have to teach the parents, the adults, how to be safe online. But that is so much work, and we don't want to deal with that internet thingamajig stuff that our kids are so much into, ain't there some program that could do it? Or wait, what do we have a government for, anyway, they should handle that!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm much more worried about a mine-shaft gap.
There is a contradiction in this article. It encourages parents to "educate" their kids about the Internet while stating the kids know more about the Internet than they do: "Prof. Lemish believes that one problem is that parents are not as media-literate as they could be. They don't have a handle on using popular online software and chat programs, and tend to have no clue about what is really happening online" Having been a moderator in large teen forum, I know its a kid's friends and close peers that will do them more harm than the bogeymen trying to talk dirty. A bigger problem is girls getting drunk and then being taken advantage of by people they thought were friends. That was a weekly issue. Meanwhile the parents might have home tweaking the Internet filters. Fact is many parents are lazy these days and like to seem engaged more than they are. They dont like to be upset and will ignore a kids school environment and friends (the "friends" do more damage than anybody) while feeling "super vigilant" about phantoms they will likely never encounter - its a compensation. A lot of these parents have pretty lame friends and relationships themselves and kids know it. Another problem is an effort to redefine what pervy is. Schools and groups on Internet will teach kids S&M is ok if and they shouldn't be narrow minded about it. Parents coast right along with this sort of thing. But tell them someone "older" thinks their kid is attractive (and keep in mind a lot of the "older" people being busted with MySpace kids are like 19yr olds with 16 yr old high school juniors) even if their is no intention to follow through and the parents often want to freak out.
I came of age almost exactly at the crossroads time - the very earliest stages of AOL on a Mac when they still charged some $7/hr and "it was all brand new".
After a discussion with my parents, we figured out a truism that's still useful: make acquaintances online all you want, but shield your personal info. Only when someone was close enough for a real visit did I share real info for purposes such as meeting in an activity club like an RPG group.
Nowadays, shielding info at least slows down bored "Google Trolls" who want to look up anyone they stumble onto. As other threads pointed out, this now includes employers. A good boss will eventually get to know you, but you don't want to be the star of a passe Meme.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
and is anyone shocked kids are meeting people from online? big fucking deal i did it back in my day when BBS's were the go, and i never got kiddy fiddled, probably because my parents instilled this thing called common sense in me which today's parents desperately protect their kids from.
And why is everyone dismayed that kids go on the internet looking for porn? fuck if i had a teenager who didn't look for porn THEN i'd be concerned. when i was a teenager i'd give myself a healthy bat morning and noon to some top of the line interweb porn, and i didn't go blind or anything.
seriously kids, play with your cock/vagina, you'll like it and it's perfectly healthy. fuck all these prudes and their rules.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Ok, so there are baddies and pr0n on line. That's reality.
What they are not reporting is how to deal with this as a parent. Two kinds of parents. Geek ones and non-geek ones. From there, you get two more sub-types. Parents who take the time and parents that don't.
Just pulling numbers outta my ass, I think it's safe to day only 1 in 4 parents actually share the Internet with their kids and...
THAT IS THE WHOLE PROBLEM.
So fix that and suddenly we don't have this "but think of the kiddies" scare.
(From that 1 in 4 parents, who has taken the time)
1. Surf with your kids.
2. Build a trust relationship. They need to know you are there to help them and you both are there to learn stuff.
If you hear about them doing something bad, before they tell you about it, they get hammered really hard. On the other hand, if they run into a situation and bring it to you, they get help with it, not harsh judgement.
Kids who are looking at pr0n online have needs that are not being met otherwise. It's ugly, for some parents, but they need to deal with that and the pr0n issue will go away. This is true for most online behaviors. Deal with it.
3. It's ok to lie on the net. Sort all that out with them and establish good behaviors with them. This is why you surf with them --to provide context.
Lots more, but just doing those will bring the kid - parent online relationship to a level that is safe.
We need to see more articles like this, and far fewer scary ones. Nothing worse than scared and ignorant people trying to parent kids.
Blogging because I can...
Hi, BDJ. Given your penchant for racist sentiment (and seeing how you attend a third rate tech school in, predictably, a Southern state), you might want to delink your edu-hosted webpage from your Slashdot profile. Your faculty (both non-white and white) probably wouldn't think too well of your backwater ways.
Parents are the best ones to be able to gauge the maturity level of their own individual "kids". No law can determine that. No bureaucrat can define that.
Personally, I have no problem with a 19-year-old going out with a 16-year-old, unless the 16-year-old (or the 19-year-old, for that matter) had some sort of mental deficiency or a problem with making mature decisions.
As for the stranger question, the article did not clarify what type of "strangers" the kids were meeting, nor what venue these meeting were taking place in, nor did it state anything about the distribution of age ranges of kids that were actively engaging in meeting "strangers." Personally, I don't see a problem with 16-, 17-, or 18-year-olds meeting people in person they met online as long as they use their commonsense -- the same commensense one uses whenever you meet someone new for the first time. On the other hand, I would be somewhat concerned about the 9-year-old doing the same, but if the venue is her own school where she is meeting a fellow classmate she found out about on MySpace or Facebook, I would not have a problem with that either.
This article seems to be more about spreading FUD than to impart understanding. It immediately assigns "danger" to an activity that it makes no attempt to explain or clairfy the important details to. Nor does it mention anything about the actual rates that the strangers were actually innapropriate for the kids. If in 10,000 encounters there's just one that turned out to be mildly innappropriate, I would not see a huge level of concern. It all comes down to using your commonsense, after all.
So I would completely discount the article on those reasons alone. And by the way, I do have 3 kids of my own, including 2 daughters who have grown up around the Internet. Indeed, I introduced them to the Internet long before it became a household word that your average "socker mom" would recognize!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Now, I'm a pesky 40-something, and work in an environment with a wide age range demographic. I find it amusing that I've been in the computer field for almost as many years as my boss is old! :-)
But you know what? Being a pesky 40-something gives me a huge advantage: I know how to make things happen, how to get shit done. You 20-somethings may know all the ins and outs about the latest technologies and what not, but do you know how to put it all togeher to produce something? Can you navigate around the myriad problems and issues with integration, for instance? And I just don't mean integrating the technology itself, but integrating your firm's goals with what vendors wish to give you? Or integrating the expectations of many departments and keeping them all on the same page? Or even members of your team?
Oh, and in some areas, I can still run circles around most 20-somethings tech-wise. Being 20-something is not what it's all cracked up to be. Youth is wasted on the young. That is to say, by the time you understand how to actually take avantage of being a 20-something, you're now a 40-something!!!!
Sorry, fresh out of time machines.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
The study found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents, that 73% of the children reported giving out personal information online
Okay, so 30% of kids understand the implications of their online presence enough to clear the cache to protect their privacy - But then (at least) 10% (((73+30)-100)/30) of those same kids give out personal info online?
Does not compute - Unless this "survey" had extremely biased questions in a sad attempt to prove how dangerous we should all consider the spooooooooky intarweb. For example, what constitutes "personal info"? Using a real name to register for a website? Buying something through Amazon? Clicking "I am not over 18" to get redirected to disney.com?
36% of the children admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online
Same problem - What constitutes "meeting with a stranger"? At the younger end of the surveyed age range, they have no ability to really go anywhere without parental assistance; this suggests "stranger" means "classmate I don't really know very well". And at the higher end of the age range, we have people who don't really draw a line between "online" and "real" friends, and who quite likely have attended at least one online-community-specific gathering (such as a Fark Party or the like).
Nothing but FUD for parents.
I recall my mother getting all antzy about me reading a book on witchcraft when I was a kid. I had no intentions on getting into Wicca, and big deal if I did. I was just curious, that's all.
Such paranoia that permeates our culture today. Everyone needs to calm down, take a chill pill, and honestly ask the question of is there any real reason to be concerned? What do the reliable stats show? What's all the screaming about, and is there a real problem?
Oh, but people love fear and paranoia. Life gets too boring if there's nothing to worry about.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Well I thought it was funny; but I have absolutely no sentiment towards racists, nor am I one myself.
"Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users"
Is this a non-sequitor?
It's more likely that the parent needs to learn literate Internet use from their children.
I'm not saying the Stevie Wonder one is old, but it lost a bit in the translation from Latin.
P.S. Have you seen his wife?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My kid (he's seven) is only online when we let him, using my iBook. In the living room.
He's not going to have a computer in his room until he's old enough to move out. We will see what he's doing.
Parenting involves actually paying attention to your children, not dumping them as soon as possible.
- chrish
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Oh Yeah? I met MY wife on the Arpanet! Beat that!
There were also more than a few Lolitas and lechers in my hometown. Unfortunately, I always seemed to get the Lolitas as my babysitters (all I wanted to do was play my Atari 2600 and be left alone, and instead I had to listen to some 16-year-old drone on about all the married men she had seduced, sad).
So the only thing that's new today is the fact that this is sensationally reported on and the fact that it's considered much more harmful than it once was (back when a male student/female teacher relationship was considered pretty harmless to the student).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I try to talk to my friends about what the hell their kids are doing online, but you get the "I don't know nothin' 'bout them thar fancy doohickies" discussion.
I follow the same thing as the PP said, and my oldest has had her own PC from the time she was 5. She can only use it in the same room with the screen visible from where I am. And when the laptop leaves my sight? I take her right off the network.
You talk to parents whose kids have PCs in their room or unlimited net access and they rely on a NetNanny software package as protection. And those are the same parents who end up weeping on the news because Johnny or Suzie ran off with some 45-year-old pedophile they met on MySpace. The problem isn't the sites; it's the keep-the-kids-happy style of parenting. I'm a hard@ss and proud of it.
Alternate Data Streams are easy to use and are good for hiding things in.
that you can't tell if the study was deliberately slanted to be alarming or if the numbers are just being interpreted that way by a headline-grubbing article author. So I want to commit slash-heresy.
Does anybody have a link to the actual study so I can read it?
The Internet may be the best tool for Darwinism to come along since toys with swallowable parts and backyard pools. Why not just let evolution run its course?
Is anyone really shocked by pedos anymore? I mean shit we hear about them every single day in the news and via various infotainments. Shocking? Maybe they were ten years ago but these days it just seems like an old hat... We've heard it all before way too many times now.
The only really shocking thing to me these days is how abnormal such a seemingly common thing is.
Posted anonymously for obvious reasons....(Ohhhhh look, someone is questioning the latest witch-hunt, they must be a witch too! Burn her!!! Burn her!!!)
You'd have to have sex in order to have kids anyways. We all know that's not happening.
I met My wife on a system of towers that relayed messages through semaphore.
Play Command HQ online
Where I work we deal with exactly this kind of thing and I can only say it's absolutely no surprise at all. We offer many tools to both families and law enforcement agencies to help with recovery and prevention but ultimately the best thing any of these parents can do is take a serious interest in their kid(s)' lives. Even from personal and not just professional experience there's just not enough people that actually want to be bothered with what their kids do online.
Not to sound like, "when I was your age candy bars cost a nickel," but when I was younger my parents, while far from perfect, at least made an attempt to be informed as to what games I was playing, where I was going on the computer, and so forth. It's really not that hard.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
Kids doing things and not telling their parents? Shocking! This never happened before the internet. Damn technology...