Online Parent-Child Gap Widens 201
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.'"
Re:Hmm? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Fixed (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Completely misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Parents (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Hmm? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Knew what the adults wanted to hear, and were keen to please; and
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Knew that video nasties were cool, so wanted to appear cool to their peers and the adults.
The claim that 36% of children are meeting strangers they met online is prone to the same distortion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the number runs so counter to general experience that it must relate to a specific population, or have confounding factors. I'd be surprised if there were many communities in the UK, at least, where much more 36% of children simultaneously had access to computers and were allowed out unsupervised, which makes the number perhaps sixty percent of those with motive and opportunity. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that. ianRe:Corrected (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Always useful to consider shielding info. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Corrected (Score:3, Interesting)
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.