Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Only 4% of parents think their child has given out personal information online, but 8+% (the only thing I can think from the way the summary puts it) believe their child has physically met a stranger they had met online? Is it just me, or is this backwards at best?
36% admitted to meeting strangers?? Risky Business? I call bull
When they say stranger, they mean...ANYONE THE KID HASNT MET BEFORE.
Damn media blows the whole "online predator" shit way out of proportion. The same kids that meet 45 yr old men are the same ones that would get into a van because the guy offered them candy.
Protect the children my ass. Just makes politicians look good
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
I was mostly hoping he was learning to hack, but afraid that he was probably just surfing for pr0n and MP3s... I did warn him a couple times about file sharing, and I did maintain control of the router. But for the most part, he was responsible, so I let him be.
I was richly rewarded. He's 20 and turning out to be a hacker, much to my relief. :-)
John
According to a recent study, parents are becoming increasingly negligent when it comes to raising their children. The study found that over one-third (38%) of children had been allowed to meet with a stranger they met on the internet. Parental standards have been falling for years, but this recent study gives insight as to the increasing threat of a lack of parental oversight.
In an unrelated study, scientists found that approximately 40% of people aged 9-18 years old should be "destroyed for the good of mankind."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
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.
There's a pretty big difference between a 9 year old and an 18 year old, especially when it comes to what they should/should not be doing online.
For example, deleting your search history? The nine year old hasn't really got anything to be doing that for; the 18 year old may be googling about any number of things he/she doesn't want her parent to be aware of: sex education (protection, diseases, etc), boyfriends/girlfriends, etc.. Teenagers are especially protective of their privacy.
Giving out personal information online, i.e, signing up for things, is something 18 year olds may do every day, while a 9 year old shouldn't be doing it at all. Myspace, anyone? (Although the 4% response by parents make me think they don't know what's required to sign up for a lot of these things, or the type of information you post to facebook.)
Meeting with someone you met online is risky business no matter what age you are; a 9-year-old certainly shouldn't be doing at all, but hopefully the 18-year-olds aren't dumb enough to meet a stranger at his/her house, or in a dark alley somewhere. But (take Craigslist for example) there are some reasons why you'd legitimately be meeting someone you only came into contact with on the internet, and it's perfectly safe as long as you do it smart (public place, daylight, etc). 18 year olds are smart enough to do this (hopefully); 9 year olds are not.
So yes, while they are doing a survey of minors (who are the responsibilities of their parents/guardians), the age ranging from 9 prepubescent to 18 (ready to go off to college) is too wide for the figures to be of any real meaning.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey, the suggestion those guys give is actually a good one! Teach your kids to use the net sensibly. Protect your privacy, be wary of strangers that offer you deals that are "too good to be true", don't just trust people because they appear nice online...
And that teaching should come from the same people that fill out every damn form on a "click the monkey to win" spin, answer "easy money fast" spam and hand out their banking details to widows of Nigerian presidents?
Sorry, but first of all we'd have to teach the parents, the adults, how to be safe online. But that is so much work, and we don't want to deal with that internet thingamajig stuff that our kids are so much into, ain't there some program that could do it? Or wait, what do we have a government for, anyway, they should handle that!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I came of age almost exactly at the crossroads time - the very earliest stages of AOL on a Mac when they still charged some $7/hr and "it was all brand new".
After a discussion with my parents, we figured out a truism that's still useful: make acquaintances online all you want, but shield your personal info. Only when someone was close enough for a real visit did I share real info for purposes such as meeting in an activity club like an RPG group.
Nowadays, shielding info at least slows down bored "Google Trolls" who want to look up anyone they stumble onto. As other threads pointed out, this now includes employers. A good boss will eventually get to know you, but you don't want to be the star of a passe Meme.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Don't underestimate the "hormonal motivation" of a parent wanting to protect his/her kid.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
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
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.
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