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.'"

Comments

Hmm?

[JKConsult]

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?

Re:Hmm?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hmm?

[JKConsult]

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.

Re:Hmm?

[plover]

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.

Re:Hmm?

[Anonymous Coward]

But have things changed so much that it's common place for high-school kids to do this?

"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.

Re:Hmm?

[rronda]

"I met my wife on line 27 years ago" 27 years ago? Was the internet developed enough at that time? Pardon my ignorance.

Re:Hmm?

[symbolic]

After seeing several editions of 20/20 where they set up sting after sting, typically using an undercover female cop to pose as a much younger girl, I'm not so sure it's all that uncommon. Further, we have what seems to be an epidemic of female adults in trusted positions going after young males (13-17). I have to wonder how much of this is willing participation on the part of the "victim". It's definitely not my intent to suggest that adults should be going after kids, but kids need to wise up to the potential dangers, and parents especially need to get a damn clue about what their kids are really up to.

Re:Hmm?

[_merlin]

No, not the Internet as we know it. TCP/IP was built 26 years ago. But there was UUCP, BBS and other stuff, so it's possible that he's telling the truth. But if he is telling the truth, he and his wife must both be total nerds. Only nerds were online that long ago.

Re:Hmm?

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Yes, except they didn't have the problem of fibre-optics cables getting cut...

if only we stuck with that "series of tubes"...

Re:Hmm?

[plover]

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.

Re:Hmm?

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Would 20/20 show you a sting operation that, i don't know, wasn't a 45 yr old male? Ratings only. You have to wonder how many 16 yr old boys they have to set up before they get a "real predator"

Re:Hmm?

[Arterion]

You met your wife online in 1981? Uh...

Re:Hmm?

[bcrowell]

Yeah. As a parent, it also strikes me as pretty silly to lump together ages 9-18. Nine is way different from 18.

'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'd rather have my kids out on the sidewalk getting some exercise and fresh air than have them cowering in their bedrooms, being afraid of child molesters lurking behind bushes. I don't want my kids to be wary. I'd like to teach them to be adventurous, inquisitive, and independent. My 8-year-old fell off the bars at school a few weeks ago and broke her arm. It's just part of growing up.

Re:Hmm?

[cheater512]

A couple of years I met a guy who knew me.
It took a couple of days but he eventually realized that he had heard of me from the net.
I didnt know who he was.

That was a very weird moment. :)
We didnt consider it normal at all.

Re:Hmm?

[plover]

Exactly! It "seems" to be an epidemic because of the reporting. Do they report how many kids of the appropriate age are trying to make contact? In the context of all online meetings, though, what percent do predator-child contacts represent? 0.01% 1% 10%?

And I'm not suggesting recklessness, such as a parent letting an unknown 45 year old man drive off with their 13 year old daughter, or letting a 9 year old use IRC unsupervised. But even a small amount of parenting will teach most kids to avoid these sorts of situations, to meet people in a public place, or to have a bit of skepticism.

Re:Hmm?

[Skynyrd]

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.

I find it hard to believe that over a third of kids have met somebody online, and in real life. 36%????

Something is wrong with the study, the kids are lying, or it's being interpreted incorrectly. I'm just not buying it.

  - perhaps it's good that I don't have kids

Re:Hmm?

[loss angeles]

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.

Yes but... That was a different internet then. Or BBS boards or Compuserve or whatever you used in 1991.

Not that it can't be a great tool today, but back then you had to be pretty dedicated to be online, and probably shared similar (geeky) interests. It was also quite a civil place. You could have a real conversation with a stranger that could lead to real friendship.

Today it's a free for all, and it is not a friendly place. As wonderful as the anonymity these screen names provide us can be, it has also brought out the worst in us, where people feel pretty free to say horrible things to people they've never met. I would be somewhat wary of allowing my child to freely roam the internet, particularly when they're younger. I'm not saying bar them from all unpleasantness, but don't throw them to the wolves either.

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.

On the internet of 2008 I wouldn't worry so much about a pedophile abducting my child. I would worry that my child was exposing too much of her- or himself, from flashing naughty bits to admitting drug use or petty crimes to just making a general ass of themselves in a way that could be traced back to them ten years down the road. The kind of foresight (and common sense) to worry about what (say) a future employer might think is pretty rare among teens (if not the definition of "immaturity") and again, is a good reason to monitor exactly what they're up to online. Not to deprive them of privacy, but at the very least make them aware you're checking up on them (and if you can, so can anyone else.)

Re:Hmm?

[loss angeles]

Yes but... That was a different internet then. Or BBS boards or Compuserve or whatever you used in 1991.


Okay, I made a simple subtraction error on Slashdot. I'm sure I'll get stoned for this.

But... you met someone online 27 years ago? How the hell is that even possible?

Re:Hmm?

[Eivind]

It depends heavily on what you're doing.

If you pose as 17 year old female and frequent chatrooms with names like !!!!!!teens on a saturday late evening, yes you *will* receive a lot of indecent proposals in short order. Some of them from young sexually frustrated males, and quite possibly a few from older people posing as young.

You'd have to be severly braindead to not figure that one out though. Infact, unless online sex-fantasies was what you where looking for you'd be monumentally stupid to do this in the first place. (and a lot of young people -are- curious about sex, nothing wrong with that, nor with the fact that online they can discuss hidden behind a curtain of anonymity.)

TV is also made to sell. Don't expect them to show all the normal activity that takes place. They'll focus on the attention-getting stuff, distorting the reality.

Re:Hmm?

[dmsuperman]

I met a girl online, through myspace. We talked, became friends, and eventually dated a couple times. This isn't uncommon.

Re:Hmm?

[bladesjester]

After seeing several editions of 20/20 where they set up sting after sting, typically using an undercover female cop to pose as a much younger girl, I'm not so sure it's all that uncommon.

It's a lot less common than they'd like you to believe. It's sort of like the razorblades and used needles in Halloween candy thing in the 80's. It's the press sensationalizing something and making it sound widespread and ominous in order to get viewers and, consequently, ad revenue.

Further, we have what seems to be an epidemic of female adults in trusted positions going after young males (13-17).

Same answer as above.

kids need to wise up to the potential dangers

Kids are like everyone else - some of them do stupid things and some don't. As a teenager, I met a lot of people in person that I first met online, but that was a while back (I'm 27 now). I was smart about it and I was also pretty much an abductor's worst nightmare considering that I was the size of the defensive linemen on my high school's football team and studied martial arts from about the time I was 6.

I met a lot of really good friends that way. Met a few jerks too, but you'll have that. Never got into anything that I would have had trouble getting out of though.

Re:Hmm?

[cheater512]

And this is Slashdot so it cant help his case. :)

Re:Hmm?

[FishWithAHammer]

UUCP. BBSes.

As he said in another post, he met her because they both had time-sharing on the same mainframe.

Re:Hmm?

[tsa]

She was in the next room in the building and also never came out for coffee.

Re:Hmm?

[igb]

I don't believe the numbers. I'm reminded of the `video nasty' hysteria of the seventies. A study showed that some huge percentage of kids had seen video nasties, a study at odds with the number of video recorders in houses. So some proper researchers, rather than people looking for a headline, repeated the experiment, but rather than naming real video nasties they made up a bunch of titles. The numbers stayed the same. Why? Because kids

• Knew what the adults wanted to hear, and were keen to please; and
• 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. ian

Re:Hmm?

[Joe Tie.]

That's pretty amazing. You guys must be one of the earliest people to ever meet in that way. Not too many decades in the future, I can't imagine how odd that's going to be in some respects. It'd be like someone today talking about being one of the first people to move their relationship along by using an automobile to go on a date.

Re:Hmm?

[Ignis Flatus]

and by "porn" you mean ascii art.

and speaking of ascii art, i remember (yes, actually remember) when i was about 4 years old (which would place this clear back in 1973 or so), my dad brought home a printout from work. it was a big long computer printout on fanfold paper of Christmas-y stuff like Santa's sleigh and his reindeer. if there were any pron, well he didn't bring those home, but the art has been out there for a long time.

sorry, offtopic, but this has got me reminiscing for some reason.

Re:Hmm?

[arivanov]

I would agree with it.

The Internet what for us used to be the local street. We used to go out, play in the street and meet people. Unsupervised. And we are pretty much alive.

Personally, I would prefer if we actually do it the Dutch and Danish way. In their residential districts they have wiped off the road markings, dropped the speed limit to 20 and put the vehicles on the lowest rung of the priority ladder. They also have suburbia. But they have kids playing out and about in it. The streets have been reclaimed and given back where they belong - to the children.

As there is no likelihood of USA or UK becoming civilised and accepting the Dutch way of thinking, the kids will use the Internet do we like it or not.

Re:Hmm?

[Ignis Flatus]

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.

Re:Hmm?

[TeknoHog]

I met a girl online, through myspace. We talked, became friends, and eventually dated a couple times. This isn't uncommon.

Actually, for a typical slashdotter, it is.

Re:Hmm?

[mqduck]

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. Me, I met all of my closest (real life) friends online.

Re:Hmm?

[matria]

And I find that Israeli parents are extremely lax with their children. It is not at all uncommon to see kindergarden aged children running around the neighborhood at 11 pm. Truancy and school dropout rates are very high since nobody really makes the kids go to school. Schools are by-and-large zoos with no classroom discipline at all. I know several teachers from the US who quit teaching in disgust because they couldn't teach anything under those conditions. Late at night, 1 or 2 am, there are gangs of teenagers of various ages roaming the streets making noise and throwing beer bottles around. I've seen younger children playing a game where they take turns running and throwing a bottle as far as they can up the sidewalk, to see who gets the farthest scattering of glass, and nobody bats an eyelash. A young child was riding his tricycle up and down the isles of the supermarket, and when one elderly lady complained, was herself scolded by the store manager "he's only a child". Neighbor kids ripped all the wire netting off my garden fence to make birdcages with, and their parents got mad at me when I went to recover the netting. So I don't find this surprising at all.

Re:Hmm?

[cp.tar]

After seeing several editions of 20/20 where they set up sting after sting, typically using an undercover female cop to pose as a much younger girl, I'm not so sure it's all that uncommon. Further, we have what seems to be an epidemic of female adults in trusted positions going after young males (13-17). I have to wonder how much of this is willing participation on the part of the "victim". It's definitely not my intent to suggest that adults should be going after kids, but kids need to wise up to the potential dangers, and parents especially need to get a damn clue about what their kids are really up to.

In my country, the age of consent is 14, excluding sexual intercourse with a person in a superior position (i.e. with a teacher, priest, policeman etc.). I find it a much more reasonable approach than all the "statutory rape before 18th birthday" crap.

Puberty is when people start to want to have sex and when they should begin to experiment.

And BTW: there was a case a year or two back, when a 14-year-old boy and his teacher had sex. Quite a lot, by some accounts.
Then he bragged about that to his friends, which started gossip and rumour. When the relationship got into newspapers and, perforce, court, he suddenly started claiming he had been used.
He hadn't inded it a bit until then, but when everybody started telling him how he should feel, he started saying it.

When he whole thing hit the forums, every single guy considered him a lucky bastard for screwing his teacher.

Re:Hmm?

[Gideon Fubar]

Traditionally, they call that 'fame'.

Re:Hmm?

[pipatron]

I find it hard to believe that it wasn't much more. Meeting people online is the ultimate way to get new friends. Some of those will be idiots and morons, but they will also appear in the classroom without any chance for you to stop seeing them daily.

Re:Hmm?

[linest]

Then it's kind of misleading to say you met your wife "on line",

Only true if he's talking to someone who thinks "online" means "we were using web browsers to access our myspace accounts." But he can't be held responsible for the confusion of someone THAT clueless.

Re:Hmm?

[TapeCutter]

According to a study done at my HS in 1971 I had the drinking habits of a middle aged alcoholic. Most of my friends claimed similarly fancifull drinking habits simply because the study was annonomous and ..well.. we were 12. Also some of my friends claimed to have read Mao's "little red book" which was banned at the time, funny thing was they all claimed it was some sort of sex manual!

As for peodophiles, it's the same now as it ever was. The overwhelming majority are known and trusted by the family and are often only discovered after one or more of their victims has reached adulthood.

Re:Hmm?

[u38cg]

Yes. I work with young kids - 10-18 - quite a lot and I have no doubt that there are very few kids indeed who are actually dim enough to do something like this. Most of them treat it (and the warnings they receive) as a standing joke.

Re:Hmm?

[RMH101]

Best post this week, thanks!

Re:Hmm?

[Hognoxious]

If I heard someone say he'd met his wife online, I'd assume he'd got her by mail order from Thailand. Or Russia.

Re:Hmm?

[Posthumous Howard]

I've got three young daughters,

I feel for you, bro.

Re:Hmm?

[xSauronx]

Ive done the same, granted its a short list. Im from a small, conservative religious area but im not religious and im not conservative. I dont really get along well with most people around here.

Re:Hmm?

[plover]

the fact that you were using the technology back then puts you both in a small and exclusive group with similar interests. You may as well have been pen pals or classmates, and that has nothing to do with the ways people meet on the internet today.

She actually wasn't a computer nerd, she was hanging around after school killing time waiting for a friend when she started playing with the teletype in her high school classroom. Someone showed her the email and chat programs, and she then discovered there were large numbers of people constantly hanging out on the talk programs. You raise an interesting point, though: *she* is actually the groundbreaker -- she was one of the very first people ever to use computers for purely social purposes, and who had no technical interest in the equipment. (On the other hand, yes, I was a huge nerd. But you get no points for guessing that.)

If you still think that has nothing to do with the ways people meet on the internet today, then perhaps it isn't my interpretation of "on line" that's in question.

Re:Hmm?

[zx75]

Hmm, please clarify... You met your wife on-line, in 1981? What form of the term 'on-line' are you referring to? Somehow "my youth... friends I met online" and "met my wife online 27 years ago" don't resolve in my head.

Re:Hmm?

[EMeta]

You met your wife online in 1981??? On a bbs or something? You're that one guy who's given the rest of us false hope all these years???

Re:Hmm?

[spikedvodka]

You sound like a friend of mine... when his daughter was born... he bought a crossbow, and he knows how to use it

Seeing a bolt go "THWAK" is rather intimidating

Re:Hmm?

[swillden]

Then it's kind of misleading to say you met your wife "on line", isn't it? Not that the rest of your point isn't valid but the fact that you were using the technology back then puts you both in a small and exclusive group with similar interests.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

In the early 80's there were lots of people using BBSs and university systems to talk to each other, and very few of them had much interest in technology. I played a lot on a bunch of local BBSs in the early 80s and while I was a geek, and the guys who ran the BBSs were geeks, a fair percentage of the people were kids using their dad's computer and had no computer knowledge beyond knowing how to run a program.

I met my wife on-line 21 years ago, and she had (and has) no interest in computer technology. We were both attending the same university and we met via a VMS chat program (called "PHONE", IIRC). My wife had taken an intro to computers course with some friends and they'd learned how to use PHONE to chat with each other. The program had a "directory" feature that showed who else was on-line. My wife had picked a funny (and obviously feminine) username and when I saw her name on-line, I decided to "phone" her to see what the person who'd pick that name was like. After chatting for a while, we arranged a face-to-face meeting and things proceeded from there.

20-30 years ago, the percentage of the population that had access to on-line communications wasn't large, but it was larger than you might think and it was very diverse. In my experience, only 10-20% were interested in technology.

Re:Hmm?

[rucs_hack]

You will generally find that smart kids can be safe in places where a dumb kid would get screwed over really fast. This is independent of the scenario itself

When I was a kid, as in less than 11, during the holidays I'd leave after breakfast, taking a packed lunch, and spend the entire day alone in the countryside (in England, so we're not talking wilderness here).

I was fine, and constantly aware to look out for anyone approaching, so I had a good idea what was going on around me all the time, and I was extremely good at hiding if I decided not to be seen. Some of my friends got scared even going out of site of the houses in our village, and would never have been safe themselves.

My son uses the Internet a lot and doesn't have my childhood habit of day long walks in the country. But he still faces hazards online, and avoids them quite neatly by knowing, for instance, basic paedo safety, and when not to open an email attachment or install 'free' junk. Interestingly, some of his friends appear to be completely useless on the web, with machines full of malware and so many IE toolbars from dumb downloads that their machines are all but unusable. I also saw the friends list in MSN of one of his friends who came round a while back. It was stuffed with friends who had just randomly asked to be added to his list, and he talked to them all the time. My son doesn't do this, I know because I am far more adept at computer monitoring then he, but I only checked after seeing his friends 'infected' list.

The last time I mentioned this I got all these knowing responses along the lines of 'your boy is lying to you' and other uninformed shit. Wonderfully naive, and in almost all cases probably not from people who were parents themselves.

I never used to tell my mum exactly where I was going either, but she knew I was going. Anyone who assumes a child can be completely controlled is a fool, a child without freedom to explore is a child who will lie and do it anyway. I prefer to go with education and a little leaving him to get on with his own thing.

Re:Hmm?

[mdwh2]

I also wonder why in those cases it's not _them_ who are committing the crime - in that you've got an older woman pretending to be underage in order to meet young people...

Re:Hmm?

[Bob-taro]

How many 'strangers online' did kids meet that were their own age?

They probably left that out of the study because they consider it irrelevant, as do I. Even if 99% of such meetings are harmless, it's NOT a good idea for a child to try to hook up with someone they've only known online. Children are told not to talk to strangers for the same reason. I'm sure most strangers are perfectly safe to talk to, but there is a risk, and children in general aren't very good at risk assessment.

Re:Hmm?

[TheSpoom]

True story: My ex's parents had a broadsword on the wall behind the TV.

Not that I ever thought they'd use it, but still.

Re:Hmm?

[smurgy]

No, not at all. It's a different 4 and 8 percent respectively.

Re:Hmm?

[Jurily]

Yeah, what's this "myspace" thing?

Re:Hmm?

[symbolic]

Lack of evidence? How so? They've got the online encounter, they got clear intent expressed within the online communication, and they have video to prove that the perpetrator was both capable and willing to act. The only thing that didn't happen was the act itself.

Re:Hmm?

[Kadin2048]

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 have no idea about any hard numbers, but I suspect it's really not that hard to do with Facebook and other online applications similar to it. You'd just search within the social network of your own school or region, and everyone would be close enough to meet. Even run-of-the-mill UBB forums and discussion sites have places in the 'user profile' for a location or zip code, usually, and some will even print out your closest fellow users.

I think people who've been on the Internet from the beginning (or even more than a few years) find this odd, because it's only recently that there have been a high enough density of users to make geographic searching a desirable feature. People who got on the network as adults, IMO, see it as a way of finding people that they wouldn't meet through regular physical-world interaction. I suspect kids see it as just the opposite.

Re:Hmm?

[bladesjester]

My son uses the Internet a lot and doesn't have my childhood habit of day long walks in the country

I think a lot of us would benefit from taking more day long walks. We, as a society, need to be more active and be outdoors more often in my opinion. That includes me of late as I've been cooped up and otherwise preoccupied with things.

When I was a kid, as in less than 11, during the holidays I'd leave after breakfast, taking a packed lunch, and spend the entire day alone in the countryside (in England, so we're not talking wilderness here).

I did much the same thing. My family has a farm that's about 350 acres split between fields and woods. I spent a lot of time roaming it and the neighboring farms as a kid. I'd grab my pack, a little food, and disappear for a couple of days at a time during the summer as a kid.

Re:Hmm?

[Peter Mork]

Children are told not to talk to strangers

As the parent of a 7 year old daughter, I categorically reject this truism. In fact, we named her after a folk song in which a girl is willing to talk to a stranger (the singer) and the girl shows the stranger around her farm. The song is based on a true story (we've met both the singer and the girl (now a woman)). If you never talk to strangers, you never meet anyone new. So, my advice is for children to talk to strangers.

Risky Behavior

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

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

Re:Risky Behavior

[plover]

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.

Well, you know what they say: "Strangers have the best candy!"

Re:Risky Behavior

[trytoguess]

Eh, I agree. I've met a fair amount of strangers as a kid via online contacts. Course, it was always in a public space, usually with friends, and occasionally said person would be approved by someone else I knew. I mean I wasn't a smart kid or anything, but I've been drilled on the whole don't trust strangers thing to have a decent idea of how to meet one. This isn't to say that everyone will act like I did, but imo the simple act of meeting a new person isn't going to necessarily hurt a child/teen. Most people are decent enough for that.

Re:Risky Behavior

[Skynyrd]

Sorry I can't post an image, but here's my van. Want some candy?
http://hunch.se/stuff/free_candy.jpg

Re:Risky Behavior

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

Ah, buy I happen to know at least one 45 yr old man that myspaces (is that a verb yet?) people as a 16 yr old. So my question is, how hard would it be to convince a young kid you are a young kid?

I'm not against kids meeting people online, I am against them then meeting those people in real life with out parental knowledge/consent. Then again, I'm not so cool with kids friending anyone their parents have not met. How hard is it to set up a meet and greet with both kids/sets of parents?

Re:Risky Behavior

[JasterBobaMereel]

...and Children never met stangers before the internet .. and peadophiles did not exist ...

Re:Risky Behavior

[digitalsolo]

One of my best friends in the world, who I've known for 11 years now, I met in an AOL chatroom when I was 14 years old. We talked a few hours a day (AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC and telephone) for 4 years, before she eventually took a Greyhound up to visit me, and, a few years after that, moved here.

I certainly took a chance (though, really, she took a larger one, since she came to see me) but I wouldn't trade that friendship for anything in the world. It helps that she's one of the precious few cute females that is actually a competent geek as well. ;)

There are online predators, without a doubt, but the ratio of pyscho:"normal" people is not nearly as high as our shock based media would have people believe.

The Internet is Like Television

[Crypto Gnome]

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.

Re:The Internet is Like Television

[cromar]

I agree with you... don't call people trash though.

You don't have to give out your info to hook up

[_merlin]

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 grew up on line

[plover]

So I figured I knew what my teenager was up to. Nothing he'd find particularly worried me, as long as he didn't start espousing Nazi rhetoric or join some freaky cult.

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. :-)

Re:I grew up on line

[plover]

and I did maintain control of the router...

dad, sorry.. I...

I figured as much. Not that you ever spotted it, but I do have the syslogs captured. ;-)

Re:I grew up on line

[A Pancake]

And here this whole time I was hoping my boy would discover women...

Re:I grew up on line

[calebt3]

You were modded funny because you claimed to have a child, which is logically impossible for a /.er

Alternate Summary

[Amorymeltzer]

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."

Re:Alternate Summary

[Lord Nerevar]

My question would be...

Why is it that surveys will always spout some crap-filled statistic that probably would be true if it was specified further, just to sensationalise it further. Like the "fact" that 38% of children have met strangers they met online in real-life. Is it just me or is there something horribly wrong with that "fact".

Re:Alternate Summary

[Tikkun]

Was that done by the same scientists who discovered that ~40% of parents had not yet been beaten with a clue bat?

Fixed

[trickster721]

"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.

Re:Fixed

[vux984]

i don't want my kids on myspace. not because I'm 'paranoid and afraid of the internets' but because I think myspace is a stupid waste of time; an internet trailor park.

Of course I won't forbid it. Then they'll just create one and access it from the school library or their friends house or something. Or try and get sneaky and hide their tracks on one of the systems here.

But I'm going to do everything in my power to convince them that myspace and facebook and crap like that is beneath them.

Of course, this all coming from a guy on slashdot... but still I'd rather have them wasting their time here than on myspace. ;)

Re:Fixed

[igb]

i don't want my kids on myspace. not because I'm 'paranoid and afraid of the internets' but because I think myspace is a stupid waste of time

Precisely. I don't even bother preventing it, although I make my general contempt for all social networking known. I just steer the kids towards other things they could be doing online, and then to real-world activities (music, sport --- there's the ferrying to Saturday morning orchestras, we swim together, cycle together, etc). If it became an issue I'd split the kids' machines onto a distinct VLAN and application gateway that the outside world, and if it became a more serious issue I'd put a squid transparent proxy machine with authentication in at the border and only NAT the protocols we need to the remote destinations we need. But it doesn't arise, because the kids have plenty of better things to do.

Unfortunately, some parents use computers like they use TV, as mind-rotting babysitters, and some have this idea that myspace is teaching people `computer skills' or `the way the world is today' or somesuch nonsense. This is like claiming hanging around in shopping centres is teaching economics.

We will also presumably have teenagers on this thread telling us that their lives are, like, so over? if they couldn't, like, hang on myspace. But teens acting out pathetic dramas about the concerns of the day are hardly new, and it's the responsibility of parents to know better, not to acquiesce to everything their children want.

Lots of friends on myspace: worthless. Lots of friends in real life and decent A Levels: worthwhile. Parents are responsible for protecting their children, including from things their children don't want to be protected from.

ian

Re:Fixed

[zenkonami]

I wouldn't let my kids on MySpace just because I wouldn't want them to learn poor web design.

If I had kids.

Completely misleading

[unbug]

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.

Re:Completely misleading

[StargateSteve]

16 is old enough to drink in several countries, it is old enough to meet with other people. I have with people I meet online, but mostly because I find we go to the same school, or are in the same major.

Re:Completely misleading

[Kenoli]

Meeting people I've met online can be pretty tricky. A lot of the people I know don't live in the same state, or even in the same country as me.
I can't imagine how a high schooler meets up with anyone that isn't already in their same community.

Re:Completely misleading

[matria]

Well, this may be of particular concern to Israeli parents due to the case a few years ago of the 16-year old boy lured out by a 24-year old Palestinian woman then dragged out of the car and machine-gunned by her partners.

Re:Completely misleading

[Loibisch]

Yeah, does anyone really find his surprising with social networks like myspace, facebook and co on the rise? At that age I suppose they're looking for company, most likely company of the opposite sex. Perfectly normal behavior in my book.

Also not everyone you meet online classifies automatically as a "stranger". People you meet in a club or at a bar are actually far more of a stranger than someone you have talked to online for a while (and decided to meet) could ever be.

As long as you're doing the first meeting in public (like a bar) and not at a private place there's nothing really dangerous about it.

Re:Corrected

[renegadesx]

The study found that 90% of parents dont know what hidden folders are.

Meeting strangers online

[Middle - Adopter]

Regarding the 36% of kids who apparently meet strangers online - I know that sounds scary at first blush but does it not make sense that this would happen, given the rise of social networking sites in the last 5 - 8 years? I mean, "meeting strangers online" use to mean kids were meeting up with weirdos from shady IRC chat rooms in McDonald's parking lots. Nowadays so many more kids are active on these sites, would you think that they would naturally want to meet up with each other?

"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.

Re:Meeting strangers online

[lucas teh geek]

the wording "meeting a stranger online" is weighted to sound like something much worse than it is. if it was just "meeting new people" all of a sudden it doesnt have that creepy ring to it, even though it's essentially the same thing

Re:Meeting strangers online

[Eivind]

Sure. If you never "meet strangers" you will never have new friends at all, will you ?

Age range is too wide?

[Nemilar]

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.

Re:Age range is too wide?

[Eivind]

The questions seem designed to evoke alarm more than enligthen. I give out personal information freely every day, dozen of times. Look, I'm named "Eivind", and can be reached at a certain email-adress. Both are true. Both are personal information. Both put me in no risk I can think of.

Besides, the entire "17 year old = kid" thing is stupid.

I've had a 17 year old girl "give out personal details" to an adult online, namely me. Infact she even took an airplane to come visit me where I lived at the time, and the expectation was, from both sides, that we'd probably sleep together, if we liked eachothers as well in real life as online. I was 20, we where a couple and lived together for the next 2 years or something. There's a word for these things, and it's not "online predator" it's "normal".

Re:Age range is too wide?

[Eivind]

She'd be out of your league anyway. There are such things as girls with looks -AND- brains. This particular one is currently working on her Doctorate in Computer Science at the university of Helsinki, she'd out-nerd you by a mile.

Re:Age range is too wide?

[Hognoxious]

I find that request rather gauling.

What is this "it" everybody is so afraid of?

[Nemilar]

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!).

Re:What is this "it" everybody is so afraid of?

[unbug]

What is this "it"? I think it's pretty clear that "it" refers to accessing dangerous material. Whatever that may be.

Re:What is this "it" everybody is so afraid of?

[ThomasMc1337]

And what is this "dangerous material" that everyone is so afraid of? Porn? The Anarchist Cookbook?

Slashdot. A single visit to this site can ruin a teenagers life forever! This is true! I can personally attest to this. I first visited /. when I was... 15 or so? I've been even geekier (and anti-social) ever since

Re:What is this "it" everybody is so afraid of?

[Mr. Roadkill]

Oh - and, if it is porn... why the heck are you blocking/getting up set at your teenage kid from watching porn?

In my case, it'd be because I don't trust them to steer clear of adware/spyware-laden sites and I don't want to be forever clearing up their computers. Also, while there is some porn out there that could be considered "tasteful" and "non-demeaning" (to either the participants or the viewers), there's a lot that is pretty offensive - I don't want them learning about human relationships from bangbros or teenagedykeswhoeatshit.com

Plus, there's the fact that I'm scared of their mother.

Yeah

[barakn]

... and children never lie on surveys.

Re:The forum's Like Fox News.

[emilper]

that makes Slashdot the equivalent of "Lost": it's a series with mostly unconnected episodes that lead to no conclusion, and still most of the viewers-posters get some strange satisfaction from being part of the crowd watching it. Parents having no idea what their kids are doing or thinking ? Is that different from what happened to the kids born in the '70s, or to the kids born in 1900 ?

Molesting begins at home

[Animats]

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.

Wrong advice

[techno-vampire]

Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users and most importantly, to talk to their children.

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.

Re:The forum's Like Fox News.

[Belial6]

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.

Childhood's End

[oblivious]

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.

Re:Childhood's End

[bladesjester]

Agreed on basically everything.

Most meetings that I know of which happened because of the internet worked out quite well. In fact, I've known several people like your daughter who met people online that they later married (and I'm glad things worked out for her. It's always nice when that happens).

I think I had my first face to face encounter with someone I initially met online when I was 15 or 16. Most of the people I met that way have been well worth knowing.

I got to know some people that I became very good friends with that way. Heck, some of them are more like family than certain members of my biological family. There have been instances when one or more of us have traveled halfway across the country because one of us has needed help (which is something that, in my experience, quite a few biological family members don't do).

Then again, because of the experiences I've had, I've become of the opinion that, as you grow older, your real friends basically *become* your family and end up being more tight-knit than the one you were born into ever was.

As for kids out-pacing their parents, I have to say that my parents didn't know probably 90% of what I did, tech or not. It wasn't because they weren't involved parents (in fact, at times, they were downright overbearing), but rather because I'm fairly private and had/have an independent streak several miles wide.

And yes, I'm one of those pesky 20-somethings (though I feel a lot older than that half the time) =]

Re:supervision

[sanso999]

And when said "child" is sent to school where social networking sites are blocked, they simply find a mirror site. Nexopia....oh, the horrors of that one! You can't supervise them all the time once they are older teens. Then again, if my parents had heard the sort of conversations I had on the phone.....

What about

[kylehase]

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!"

Re:What about

[ThomasMc1337]

When my dad does that, I thwap his fingers, shoo him off his 'puter and update his content blocker.

I took control of the router when I was 16 and dad's never had a snowball's chance of getting it back. I did the same when I was 14-ish - except that was the day we got high-speed internet. So really they never had control of the router.

Re:What about

[genericpoweruser]

I took over the router when I was 15-or-so too, though I only did so as a guise to keep the DNS logs to myself... I was quite embarrassed when I found out about those... I thought he was bluffing. Whoops.

Meeting strangers

[AdamHaun]

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.

Parents

[CannonballHead]

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).

Re:Parents

[genericpoweruser]

I'm curious as to what this "bad stuff" is on the internet. Barring the "come get some candy" situations, I can't think of anything. Sure there are extremest sites (I've never found any but I've never looked.. but is it so bad to hear what the other side has to say?), pr0n (oh noes! the things you see in the shower!) and what? Information about things the kid is afraid to ask? I think information is good. I used the internet to find information about a lot of things I was afraid to ask about when I was younger. I would have been extremely indignant if I had been monitored. I would have probably screwed up the computer in creative ways trying to disable the monitoring. I feel that they are an invasion of privacy. I had a 3Mbit connection. I think I turned out fine.

Re:supervision

[Myrcutio]

At work, they blocked myspace and redirected to google. it took about 30 seconds for the 18 year old new guy to find a proxy and get to myspace anyways. Please, half the parents i've met don't even know what browsing history is, much less how to look at it or delete it. It's more important what your kids are doing, not what they're watching. Honestly who grew up without watching pr0n? Well, maybe Bush, but that only helps my case...

Re:Corrected

[Ignis Flatus]

hidden 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.

Results are hard to believe..

[Simonetta]

36% of 'children' met with strangers that they met on-line

    Not in the USA. Maybe in Israel, but still, .... probably not.

    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.

Re:Results are hard to believe..

[linuxrocks123]

18-year-olds are not children in any sense. They can enter into non-voidable contracts, vote, and be drafted. Just because they can't drink alcohol or run for President doesn't mean they're in any sense minors.

Cugals...

[flyingfsck]

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?

Re:Cugals...

[Torvaun]

That might lead to an on-counter encounter.

Actually a sound suggestion

[Opportunist]

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!

Gap?

[certsoft]

I'm much more worried about a mine-shaft gap.

It's the "friends" who do the most harm

[chromozone]

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.

Re:It's the "friends" who do the most harm

[chudnall]

Fact is many parents are lazy these days and like to seem engaged more than they are. Exactly. Logging firewall/router. Logging passive proxies. Auto-recording VOIP. GPS phone/car. No cable TV. My kids are going to hate having a geek dad. :)

Re:Corrected

[Anonymous Coward]

TrueCrypt drives hidden inside windows folder and called something like "systemdll.chm".

TrueCrypt installation on a stick or inside Windows/System32/Encryption.

Easy as pie.

Mmm, pie.

Re: Always useful to consider shielding info.

[TaoPhoenix]

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.

60% of all statistic's are made up, kent

[timmarhy]

kids have more of a grasp of technology then their parents. new factor zero.

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.

Re:Corrected

[Big Nothing]

Don't underestimate the "hormonal motivation" of a parent wanting to protect his/her kid.

Re:Corrected

[Darfeld]

1) move ubuntu (or whatever OS you want) on a flash drive

2) boot the flash drive

3) enjoy without fear...

With a 4Go flash drive for less than $30, the secret isn't so expensive...

Good God I hate these kinds of articles.

[PotatoHead]

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.

Re:Good God I hate these kinds of articles.

[flajann]

In other words, if a parent is actually being a parent in the first place, then there is no cause for concern. Articles like this never cease to amaze me because they are rendered moot if the parent is doing his job.

Re:Good God I hate these kinds of articles.

[PotatoHead]

Totally.

That's the annoyance.

Re:100% PURE AFRICAN NIGGER

[Posthumous Howard]

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.

What's a "kid" and what's not a "kid"?

[flajann]

Aside from all the stuff already said about kids being online, one amusement that I often have is in the notion of what a "kid" or "minor" is. Yes, there's the one-size-fits-all legal definition, but that definition is largely meaningless.

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!

Re:Corrected

[Oktober Sunset]

But if the kid want to play the latest brain splatterer game which his parents have forbidden he's gunna need windows, a nice stripped down release of XP would be his best choice.

Re:Corrected

[SQLGuru]

As a parent:

Password protect the BIOS. Remove booting from anything but the hard drive and lock the case away. All you get is a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

And www.safeeyes.com for a Windows based monitoring package.

Layne

Pesky 20-somethings...

[flajann]

Yes, we were all pesky 20-somethings at some point in our lives (unless you're still a teen), so been there and done that.

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.

Re:Pesky 20-somethings...

[bladesjester]

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?

Frighteningly enough, I've actually had experience in the above, so the general answer tends to be yes =]

Biased or wrong or both

[pla]

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.

How to blow stuff up 101...

[flajann]

Just because a kid might be reading something about blowing stuff up is no cause for concern.

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.

Re:100% PURE AFRICAN NIGGER

[bdjacobson]

Well I thought it was funny; but I have absolutely no sentiment towards racists, nor am I one myself.

Re:100% PURE AFRICAN NIGGER

[Hognoxious]

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?

parents are stupid

[chrish]

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.

Re:parents are stupid

[neminem]

So they go to a friend's house, or the local library, or an internet cafe. I know that's what I would have done, if I had had parents like you. I never did anything "bad", either (unless you count downloading NES roms, perhaps, but I have a feeling that's not what they're talking about) - I just wouldn't have wanted to be forced to be in a public space if I wanted to use the internet.

Re:Corrected

[Lumpy]

Actually that IS the problem.. 95% of all parents think of the computer as the playstation or Xbox. It's not, it's like letting your child go play in the seedy part of town with all the porn shops and sickos in trenchcoats offering candy. Parents if they allow a child online WITHOUT them sitting right there watching everything they do needs to install 3 things.

1 - a real router that allows access rules that are timed and specific.
2 - a transparent proxy in the home between the computers and the cable modem.
3 - install a keylogger with a timed screen capture that throws the file to the server.

A keylogger can be built in 20 minutes by a C++ newbie and no the current virus scanners dont see them.

Currently parents know far less about the computer and internet than their kids do. IF you allow this condition then the kids own you and are in complete control.

Parents, if you are NOT home, disable the internet. if your kids are savvy, take the cablemodem with you to work. IF your kid has a laptop (are you insane? no child needs a laptop) you cant stop them as they will use the neighbors or mcdonalds instead.

Re:100% PURE AFRICAN NIGGER

[LanMan04]

Well I thought it was funny; but I have absolutely no sentiment towards racists, nor am I one myself. Smooth move, ex lax! Next time post anon!

One Up

[kellyb9]

Oh Yeah? I met MY wife on the Arpanet! Beat that!

Re:Corrected

[machine of god]

How much would you have learned about computers if this was done to you?

Nothing new, just more widely reported

[elrous0]

It's only an "epidemic" of reporting. This sort of thing has always went on in any high school (probably more than a few middle schools too), it was just never reported on and never considered worthy of note. Occasionally a teacher would get caught at it, be fired, and that would be that. In my high school (in the 80's) I can think of at least three female teachers who were known to be, to put it politely, "of loose moral values" when it came to their more handsome male students. And my father said the same thing went on when he was in high school (in the 50's/60's).

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).

Re:Nothing new, just more widely reported

[MBGMorden]

Heck, the people of my parent's generation (late 40's) pretty much EXPECTED young boys to have sex with much older women. I can't count the number of times I've heard reference to which woman "trained" a particular boy. Meaning which older woman he lost his virginity to. Most of these guys were 15-16 at time with the women being in their 30's. Doesn't seem as common these days, and it didn't really conform to a teacher-student thing so much as just "promiscuous" women in the community, but to them they seem to have pretty much expected the situation. On the flip side if roles were reversed and it was a 30 year old man and a 15 year old girl, then it'd be time for nooses and shotguns. Gotta love consistency . . .

Re:Corrected

[LWATCDR]

"IF your kid has a laptop (are you insane? no child needs a laptop) you cant stop them as they will use the neighbors or mcdonalds instead."
I guess you don't like the OLPC project then?
Well I have an old PIII doing nothing so I guess installing smoothwall on it would be a good plan when I have kids :)
The problem is really one of parental involvement more than technology.
But the other issue is that there are real problems with kids on the internet. On day I was in a chat room talking with some friends when a new person shows up. I greeted them and they asked me my stats. Well this chat room isn't a pick up or porn room so I gave my age, state, gender and mentioned that I was married just so I wouldn't have to deal with any pick up flirt stuff.
The "person" claims to be a 12 year old girl and wants to know if I would be her boyfriend!
Good grief but at that time what does a responsible adult do? I could kick her out of the channel but there are channels with predators. I told her no and how dangerous it was to do that and that she shouldn't do that.
I asked if her parents knew what she was doing? I tried to be nice and ask her about school, what her favorite subjects where and other things like that. All the time thinking was this a cop try to find pedophiles or a real little girl that was heading for trouble?

It's Laziness

[pippadaisy]

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.

Re:Corrected

[SQLGuru]

SafeWatch provides the transparent proxy and keylogger. It also implements the timing rules. And it's reasonably priced. I can monitor everything they do from work including chat logs. I can give each kid their own "password" for logging on to the Internet, so I can control each one by age appropriateness.

Layne

Re:Corrected

[SQLGuru]

Different times. I learned about computers before all of this; I had a computer long before I ever had a modem. You couldn't be corrupted if you didn't have a connection. With as many computers as I have in my house, if they want to learn about the guts of a computer, they can use one that isn't on the network, just like I did. But if you aren't able to click the mouse for them while they surf the Internet, pretty much the only way to make sure they stay in the places you would prefer them to go is to be a jerk about it.

Layne

Re:Corrected

[Gulthek]

Good lord!

As a parent:

Thanks for removing some competition for jobs in the computer industry for my kid.

Re:Corrected

[bendodge]

Ah, yes, I remember SafeEyes. Just rebuild the TCP stack and it's toast. That filter was eventually replaced with a filter at the ISP level, which is the only technical solution that comes close to working.

A much better idea is to have the computer in a public place where others can see what you are doing.

Re:Corrected

[Creepy]

Incidentally, Vista can also set age appropriate ESRB restrictions and enforce time restrictions. I didn't care to set up any other monitoring, so I don't know what else it supports, but there were other features. I set this up about a month ago to keep my nephew from playing games like UT3 (which I had to update - it erroneously had an ESRB of EC in 1.0 - 1.1 patched it) on my laptop.

I'm not sure how good either of these would work against a determined kid - I disabled everything I came across when I was a kid on mac and PC (Foolproof and At Ease on mac, PC Lock or something like that on Windows) and any exploits are quickly posted on the net these days, not sneaker-net like in my day. I even created programs to clean up the system after I was done - esp. when I was doing root exploits on UNIX later.

Re:Corrected

[bigtangringo]

I'm guessing you weren't subjected to this draconian douchebaggery, yet here you are all growed up and more or less ok. I grew up, unrestricted, on the internet and I'm a developer because of it.

This is natural selection if you don't teach your kids about the internet - good and bad.

The article is so bad

[BenEnglishAtHome]

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?

Who cares?

[Quiet_Desperation]

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?

Re:Corrected

[a whoabot]

Yeah, well, some people actually grew up before the internet, believe it or not.

Re:Corrected

[Jimmy King]

The most likely case, imo, is that it was a 14-18 year old guy who may have had a friend or two sitting around or a script forwarding the chat to another channel or private chat (I used to have something to do that in mirc) just trying to find an old pervert to sit back and laugh at.

Oh yeah?

[Boronx]

I met My wife on a system of towers that relayed messages through semaphore.

No surprise

[FrozenFOXX]

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.

Re:Corrected

[LWATCDR]

Frankly I would be glad if it was that and not a little girl. I wonder what they thought of me trying to do the right thing?

Re:Corrected

[Ubergrendle]

BIOS is a nice protection for, maybe, a 6 year old. By the age of 9 I had read my motherboard manual back to front, and figured out that unplugging the computer and popping out the CMOS battery would 'soft reset' the BIOS to default. Then i could get to the 2nd hard drive full of computer games.

If you leave an intelligent child alone long enough without supervision, there is no telling what they'll figure out. I suspect on a macro-level this is part of the challenge as a parent... making life difficult enough for the kids to slow them down, but also not constricting them so much that they emotional on intellectually suffocate.

Re:Corrected

[bob.appleyard]

You fool! You should have put one in the parent's as well. Then comedy would have been totally assured!

Re:Corrected

[SQLGuru]

Not sure if you noticed but I said to lock up the computer so that only the monitor, keyboard, and mouse was physically accessible....hard to reset the BIOS without access to the power chord.

Layne

Re:Corrected

[Kadin2048]

You couldn't be corrupted if you didn't have a connection. It's entirely possible to have an Internet connection and not be "corrupted" by it, either. Frankly that seems a little laughable. With the possible -- and extremely rare -- exception of truly insane people coming to your house and assaulting you physically (which is far more likely a result of real-life interaction), people on the Internet only have as much power over you as you give them. The real crime to me is parents who don't teach children to compartmentalize the virtual from the real.

The whole premise seems kind of odd. If any children I might have aren't capable of running circles around any protections I might possibly devise by the time they're 11 or 12, I'm going to be sorely disappointed in them.