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Online Parent-Child Gap Widens
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids writes "A new study by Dafna Lemish from the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University has found that there is an enormous gap between what parents think their children are doing online and what is really happening. 'The data tell us that parents don't know what their kids are doing,' says Lemish. The study found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents, that 73% of the children reported giving out personal information online while the parents of the same children believed that only 4% of their children did so, and that 36% of the children admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online while fewer than 9% of the parents knew that their children had been engaging in such risky behavior. Lemish advises that parents should give their children the tools to be literate Internet users and most importantly, to talk to their children. 'The child needs similar tools that teach them to be [wary] of dangers in the park, the mall or wherever. The same rules in the real world apply online as well.'"
36% admitted to meeting strangers?? Risky Business? I call bull
When they say stranger, they mean...ANYONE THE KID HASNT MET BEFORE.
Damn media blows the whole "online predator" shit way out of proportion. The same kids that meet 45 yr old men are the same ones that would get into a van because the guy offered them candy.
Protect the children my ass. Just makes politicians look good
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Possibly backwards. What I want to know, and what the study doesn't provide, is an answer to this question:
How many 'strangers online' did kids meet that were their own age?
I'm sorry, but yes there are sicko pedophiles out there that will use the 'Net as a chance to meet your kid to molest it. But there are far MORE kids that want to meet the kids they hang out with online. It's part of that whole 'I have friends online' thing that some people think is hogwash.
Yes. I have friends online. Friends that I have never met. Why are they my friends? Because I've known them for 1+ year and we hear each others troubles and joys. It's like a Pub/Bar buddy. But with less drinking usually.
And considering how much computers are now a part of the newest generations lives, it wouldn't surprise me if more and more people hang out with the people they met online in real life.
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
My youth was spent hanging out with friends I met online, and we're still friends. As a matter of fact I met my wife on line 27 years ago. There's nothing wrong with meeting new friends who share your interests, and on-line is a great way for those friendships to happen.
The whole 'pedophile' thing makes the nightly news because it's shocking and sells advertisements, not because it's commonplace. Even a tiny bit of common sense exercised by a parent is usually enough to keep their kids safe.
John
Let's RTFA for a change. It says: "Thirty-six percent from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online" (empasis mine). That is, these "children" are between 16 and 18. Also, I strongly suspect that those strangers are mostly other kids just like them. Talk about spin.
"Like, ohmygawd, you are soooooo Becky's type! What's your phone number?"
Is that considered "meeting online" now? How about if Becky and her beau text each other instead of calling? What if s/he finally digs up the courage to write someone they know of but don't know a short note^H^H^H^Hemail to say "Hi" and get things going? Is all of that considered "meeting online"?
Because if it is, I'm 100% for it. I've got three young daughters, and frankly, I don't have any problem at all with my girls keeping suitors at arm's length. Any technology that makes it possible for them to get to know somebody first before they meet is A-OK in my book.
It wasn't "The Internet." We were both using the same time-sharing computer system via modems and dumb terminals. When it turned out we were only 60 miles away from each other, we decided to meet.
John
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.
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.
Actually, for a typical slashdotter, it is.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.