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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.'"
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
Possibly backwards. What I want to know, and what the study doesn't provide, is an answer to this question:
How many 'strangers online' did kids meet that were their own age?
I'm sorry, but yes there are sicko pedophiles out there that will use the 'Net as a chance to meet your kid to molest it. But there are far MORE kids that want to meet the kids they hang out with online. It's part of that whole 'I have friends online' thing that some people think is hogwash.
Yes. I have friends online. Friends that I have never met. Why are they my friends? Because I've known them for 1+ year and we hear each others troubles and joys. It's like a Pub/Bar buddy. But with less drinking usually.
And considering how much computers are now a part of the newest generations lives, it wouldn't surprise me if more and more people hang out with the people they met online in real life.
My youth was spent hanging out with friends I met online, and we're still friends. As a matter of fact I met my wife on line 27 years ago. There's nothing wrong with meeting new friends who share your interests, and on-line is a great way for those friendships to happen.
The whole 'pedophile' thing makes the nightly news because it's shocking and sells advertisements, not because it's commonplace. Even a tiny bit of common sense exercised by a parent is usually enough to keep their kids safe.
John
Well, in 1900, you didn't have adults having sex with 16 year old kids. Why? Because in 1900, a 16 year old wasn't a kid. It is sometimes amazing how bad the epidemic has become that has reduced an entire nation to the point that it takes ~30% longer to reach adulthood than it did just 100 years ago.
I would agree with the '70s though. There is no way that a parent with only partial custody of their child is going to be able to keep track of what their child is doing. At this point most most parents share custody, often having minority time, with the state through our 'public education' system.
you make a good point. for some reason, even in our "enlightened" equal-rights-for-the-sexes age, we still treat the girls like half-retarded children. case in point, that boy in Georgia that was prosecuted for getting a blowjob from a teenage girl. iirc, she was about 15, old enough to know what she was doing. if underage sex is illegal, then she should have been prosecuted, too. but yet, girls never get prosecuted. if they get pregnant, we reward them.
now, i'm not saying we should treat sex between young people as a criminal act, but... we can't keep treating females as feeble-minded victims. if anything, their social intelligence is much higher than the boys, and we have every reason to expect them to be accountable for their actions.