The Computer Age

Social media has offered our children a whole new world of opportunities. Research has become so much easier and faster. Gone are the days of Dewey. Long live Google. Banned books are no longer really banned. They can be downloaded, for a price, to any e-reader.  Pornography is available at the touch of a finger. Videos are forever imprinted on the internet. Cyber-bullying is in full swing. Wait... What did I say? Pornography? Videos? Bullying? What are our kids really up to?

I always fancied myself a laid back mom. When we had kids we had visions of talking to our children about the dangers of the world. Internet included. We had decided that we wouldn't be those parents that would put parental locks on the television or on the computer because everything was in a common area. We eliminated the need. There was no way they could seek out "danger" without us knowing about it.

Boy were we wrong.

It used to be that boys would look under the mattress or in the closet or garage or wherever for their dad's Playboys, Juggs, Hustler or Penthouse Magazines. But hard copies are so passe. Who wants to scour through articles to get to the good stuff when you're a twelve year boy who's curious about the female form? Not today's youth. Not when it's so easy to snag a laptop when your mom is taking a nap or cooking dinner. Not when any search engine will give you all the answers you need to know. And some you don't.

All I have to say is thank God for the History function on my browser.

I understand that boys will boys. This is really not much different than snagging Dad's mags and sneaking a peak. But it's so much more dangerous. There are so many things that a boy can accidentally stumble upon that we as parents don't want him to see. And once you see something, you can't unsee it. So it is up to us to protect our kids from the internet. I succumbed. We installed a parental control on the kids' side of the computer. And the television downstairs. Sigh...

But how we do control what they do at other people's homes? The truth is, we don't. We have to trust our kids to do the right thing. When I was high school I was working on a class project with a couple of boys. We were all together at one boy's house putting the final touches on our project. When we were done, they decided to get on the internet and search for sexy pictures of Teri Hatcher. Of course all that was available then was dial up on early home computers and the picture never fully loaded. That memory sticks out clearly in my brain. Boys being boys in an era that was slowly changing. The point is, we can't control what they do at their friend's houses but we can try to monitor it if we're sneaky.

My kids made the mistake of telling me that they had made a YouTube video with the kids down the street. I found it and watched it. It was completely innocent. Basically they were just playing a game in the front yard. The point, however, was that my minor children were video taped by other minor children and posted it on the internet to a minor child's YouTube account for the world to see. Of course I was furious. Not at the content, but at the sheer naivete of their actions. They had no idea that what they did was wrong. They didn't have parental approval from me to be on the internet. The account holder is under age and has a public account. These children don't know how to set privacy settings to protect themselves (or my kids), yet they have been given this powerful technology by their own parents. I now regularly check this account for videos. Yes, I am a stalker. I know who this person is watching, commenting on, posting and doing every minute of every day. The things we do to watch out for our kids.

My children (ages 12, 10, and 8) don't have cell phones, iPads, Game-boys, Nintendo DS or any other handheld electronic devices. We made that decision as parents to keep our kids part of a real community, not a cyber one. They walk with their heads held high, not staring at a screen. I'm not against the advancement of technology. In fact they use technology everyday and are very adept at it. I'm just against placing such power in the hands of those who don't understand how to use it. There's enough of that in the adult world.

So call me old fashioned, over protective, hypocritical... Call me what you will. But my kids came to understand why I felt what they did was wrong. So maybe we did get to have our dialogue about the dangers of the world after all. And do you know what? It was a good talk.