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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.'"
How many 'strangers online' did kids meet that were their own age?
Yeah, I wondered this, too. But are a decent percentage of kids (even those over 14 or so, which I don't think of as "kids" in the generally accepted sense) really out there finding people who live right near them and meeting them? I even say this as someone who technically meets this criterion. I started college at 17 in 1996, and I randomly ran into some girl online who also went to my ( very large) school and lived two blocks away. We went out a few times, nothing much happened. But have things changed so much that it's common place for high-school kids to do this? I considered it an extremely weird coincidence at the time.
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.
"Like, ohmygawd, you are soooooo Becky's type! What's your phone number?"
Is that considered "meeting online" now? How about if Becky and her beau text each other instead of calling? What if s/he finally digs up the courage to write someone they know of but don't know a short note^H^H^H^Hemail to say "Hi" and get things going? Is all of that considered "meeting online"?
Because if it is, I'm 100% for it. I've got three young daughters, and frankly, I don't have any problem at all with my girls keeping suitors at arm's length. Any technology that makes it possible for them to get to know somebody first before they meet is A-OK in my book.
It wasn't "The Internet." We were both using the same time-sharing computer system via modems and dumb terminals. When it turned out we were only 60 miles away from each other, we decided to meet.
John
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Knew what the adults wanted to hear, and were keen to please; and
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Knew that video nasties were cool, so wanted to appear cool to their peers and the adults.
The claim that 36% of children are meeting strangers they met online is prone to the same distortion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the number runs so counter to general experience that it must relate to a specific population, or have confounding factors. I'd be surprised if there were many communities in the UK, at least, where much more 36% of children simultaneously had access to computers and were allowed out unsupervised, which makes the number perhaps sixty percent of those with motive and opportunity. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that. ianhidden directories are fun. way back when, like early 90s in college, i had this cushy evening shift job where i filed and did computer backups. lots of 'down' time. so when i wasn't using the gym equipment, i was playing games on the phone receptionist's PC. so i'd create a hidden directory to store them in, and use non-printing extended ascii codes for the directory names. and back then, that was plenty sufficient to get away with running a few unauthorized programs. i guess today, if a kid wanted to be really sneaky, he'd just make another partition and dual-boot into linux or somthing. then, even if his folks were to somehow get wise, they'd have a whole 'nother layer of obscurity (and even security) to deal with. i don't think it's even possible to narrow the gap. unless your parents are geeks themselves, they just don't have the same amount of free time plus hormonal motivation to stay one step ahead of you.