Internet Task Forces, Net Nannies, and the Stupidity of Not Parenting
by
on March 08, 2008,
I never seem to run out of material for one of my favorite topics: keeping children safe online. We've had New York's E-Stop legislation, and the equally useless MySpace agreement with most of the states' attorneys general. Next up? An Internet Safety Technical Task Force to “focus on identifying effective online safety tools and technologies” for keeping children and teens safe online. The task force has real teeth here, tasked with preparing quarterly reports as well as a final report at the end of the year. It's being led by the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Never mind the study that revealed that the monster-in-the-closet stereotype prevalent in every one of these announcements is just plain wrong; we need to keep issuing press releases and reports and name-checking for a single reason: making lazy parents feel like they are doing something to protect their children with words and no action.
There are days that I feel sorry for my children. While the oldest has a laptop of her very own, she has the most amount of supervision of any of her friends, and I use no software or legalese to do it. I have two secret weapons in keeping my children safe online, and they are simple: knowledge and actual parenting.
Take Facebook as a perfect example. I have two friends whose children wanted to start using the site. One is not quite 10, obviously under the minimum age anyway. But my friend's response was that she “didn't understand all that stuff anyway.” I'm sure her son will make his way on with a false birthdate any day now, simply because it takes less time to remain ignorant than it does to go out there, see what your child wants to be doing, and actually keep an eye on him.
Another set of parents caught their daughter trying to set up a profile as well, and did the smart thing by joining themselves to keep an eye out for her appearance. They continued on the site, and when she reached the minimum age, let her create a profile they could monitor. Only one problem still exists; they don't have any clue either. Between family pictures that get posted and tagged with user names on the site and a detailed update of their family's whereabouts while posting vacation photos, etc. there's just as great an exposure to these mythical predators, if not more than there would have been if they weren't on the site with her. A profile visible only to friends doesn't mean photos or videos visible only to friends, and I have seen family wedding pictures, children's pictures, and just about anything you can think of on the site that most users have no idea are visible to anyone other than friends.
The problem in both these examples as well as the general fear of letting children online is that many parents expect people to do all the work for them. Minimum age requirements and privacy policies and profiles visible only to invited friends are never going to do a parent's job, and adding layer after layer of useless legal blathering or high-profile “task forces” will never fix it. Rather than continually try to push the responsibility for keeping children safe onto the Internet, why not spend all this time, energy, and money on educating parents on how to monitor their children online? Making social networks jump through more and more hoops each time someone has a complaint or a news story breaks about a pedophile is never going to solve the problem. It's a parent's job to be the bad guy: not allowing children online in the privacy of their room, not allowing children to block your access to their accounts so you can check up on them, and overall, teaching them how to keep themselves safe rather than relying on someone scouring a site for profiles of known sex offenders or a blacklist of “bad” sites.
We don't need a task force. We just need more parents doing their jobs.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to profy RSS feed!
Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
Great article. You are absolutly right!!! I am so tired of fear mongering tatics. Parents need to learn how to parent on the web. I am a teacher and a parent and I use the resources at i-SAFE. Unlike other organizations, i-SAFE teaches parents to parent online. Your post is refreshing becuase new legislation or a PR stunt “MySpace agreement” does not helps kids to be safe online.
Excellent post!! I find it nearly laughable that people still feel as though creating a technological solution will work to keep kids “safe” and that it absolves them of having to rely on parents to do their job. You may want to take a look at my book, “Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation” where I give parents explanations of why kids need to be online and why they need to understand that and how they need to parent their children. I talk about a variety of issues including Internet addiction, identity formation, cyberbullying, blogging, and more. Each chapter presents an issue, the psychological theories to help understand that issue (in very straightforward, down-to-earth style), and parenting solutions to keep kids safe. The final chapter presents my model of parenting gleaned from more than 30 years teaching child development, parenting, behavior modification, and the impact of technology. If you want to talk more about this you can email me at LROSEN@CSUDH.EDU. Thanks again for the great post!
Sorry, just realized that i mistyped my website. It is http://www.Me-MySpace-and-I.com. I guess my fingers were so excited at the excellent ideas that they couldn’t slow down enough to type correctly!
This article and others like it speak the truth but parents who want more technological keep kids safe tools are the same parents who don’t want to parent their children. They are the ones who are screaming the loudest for more and more sex offender legislations just so they don’t have to spend their valuable time parenting and getting to know their children.
Children, especially teen aged children or person’s go online in areas they do not belong because they are by definition of the rules of a social networking site too young. They go onto these sites because they want something that their parents are not giving them and that is friendship. These teens, the ones who seem to be solicited the most are teens taking risks online.
The sexual predator online whether he or she be an adult or a peer would have no power to solicit some teens if in fact parents were doing their parenting. Most teens are not solicited online, a well known fact.
John Walsh and his organization cybertime or something like that have their radio spots warning of the Internet predator (i’m too lazy right now to get the actual name), always intimating that the Internet predator is an adult and is a registered sex offender.
Some of these teens are disrobing online and doing other sexually oriented things which isn’t the fault of the so called Internet predator. It all comes back to parenting and every time it does, these parents run to the legislators wanting more legislations against the dreaded sex offender, the dreaded registered sex offender, who by the way is not the problem. The problem is risky teens and gutless parent(s). It’s always somebody else’s responsibility to parent their child or children.
Like most, I couldn’t agree more. The general apathy among parents is bewildering, while I have spoken to parents who have no professional interaction with the web (they don’t use it, or email at work) they are increasingly few and far between.
The majority of parents know and think they understand the web and yet they hardly take the time to ask their children what they are up to (let alone take the time to experience what they are doing).
The problem for many web savvy parents is not their homes, but the homes of less interested parents, where older siblings are playing unsuitable games, or visiting unsuitable sites. Profiles and email addresses are free almost everywhere and youngsters know exactly how to get them and how to keep them private.
Discussion is the main weapon, but like most things takes time and requires effort. In the UK, the government has suggested that ISPs should responsible for policing their customers, but how many parents would really know whether their children are frequenting P2P websites?
It is about time that parents parent properly online, at http://www.digitalparents.co.uk we are trying to help parents understand what young people are doing on the Internet, as well as building a resource for those talking to parents.
Great post! I think filters and various other tools are helpful for younger kids, but I agree… the best protection for kids (especially teens) on and offline is good parenting.
Hi Cyndy,
Great post and I couldn’t agree more. Our company, Palaestra Training, has created a video training series for parents that is a comprehensive series covering everything from computer basics to online predators and identity theft. The training is very similar to what someone would find in a classroom setting. The instructor is a former police detective and computer expert who specialized in computer/cyber crimes.
Interestingly enough, this training series has not been a big seller for us, and the main reason I believe is parent’s not taking the initiative until it’s too late. Just as you stated in your article, parents must take an active role in monitoring their children online, and keep up to speed with the emerging technologies, new social networking sites, etc. It doesn’t mean they have to become computer experts, but they at least need to have a basic idea of what’s out there and what’s possible - so their children don’t pull the electronic “wool over their eyes”. Burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist unfortunately isn’t going to make it go away.
Perhaps the scariest part of that scenario is the fact that predators know all too well how lazy or disinterested some parents are - and they prey on that fact. It makes it all the more easy for them to contact their victims and in some cases teach their victims how to hide things from their parents and circumvent the controls put in place (if there even are any).
Bottom line, parents need training to keep up with the things their children are learning and to stay ahead of the curve if at all possible.
If anyone knows of any Internet Safety training sessions, conventions, seminars, etc., that would like a few free copies of our training, please visit us at http://www.palaestratraining.com and drop me an e-mail. We’d like to help however we can, and getting training into the hands of parents that need it (ours or anyone else’s for that matter) is an important first step in keeping our children safe, online and off.
Christopher Rees
Palaestra Training
http://www.PalaestraTraining.com
1-800-324-0946
I am a teacher and have been teaching internet safety for 4 years now. The federal governement needs to continue funding for programs like i-SAFE America. (www.isafe.org). They have some awesome videos, presentations, and training resources for kids, parents, and seniors. The best part is that it is all FREE to schools and parents!!!! So why not promote those organizations keeping our kids safe online!
Thank you all for your comments. I don’t understand why the technology angle is always pushed over the social issue, but my experience seems to indicate there is a tendency for parents to want to push blame and responsibility onto everyone. I had a school principal look at me shocked when I saw her and mentioned I knew one of my kids had been a problem and the steps I’d taken with the appropriate staff to make sure it didn’t happen again. I take my job as a parent seriously, and that includes monitoring my kids online.
Excellent point Cyndy. Parents DO want to push blame and responsibility onto everyone. I am asked to speak to parents about internet safty and it always surprising how much parents have no clue. Most of the time parents have no time!!! I ususally send them to the FBI parents page or i-SAFE. Parents need to learn that internet safety is not just a school issue. It is a home issue.
As a former educational technology specialist in the GA school system, I understand this discussion. My county used content blocking filters as the technological answer to online safety. Teachers would talk about online safety to their kids, but monitoring was more efficient (and preceived to be pro-active) with filters. However, filters were the “cure, “not a preventative. I believe that educating kids to make an intelligent choice, and giving them some guidance while learning, instead of simply keeping them from “danger” is key.
Here’s one tool that is a technological AND social solution combined–Web of Trust. (full disclosure: my employer) WOT is an online community for reputation rating that allows users to rate sites based on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. It’s people-driven security that I think would be valuable for kids and their parents.
As a user searches on Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, etc, a tiny traffic light style icon appears next to the links—green for go, yellow for proceed with caution and red for stop. This gives kids a visual clue, making them more aware of their environment, and when they land on a “dangerous” page, WOT’s big red stop sign makes a dramatic impact. Then they have a choice whether to proceed or not, and parents and teachers have an entry into the conversation.
Please check it out, http://www.mywot.com
hello, actual kid here. in my opinion, the best way for kids to stay safe online is to not be idiots. that is, to know how things work, and what does, and doesn’t, belong on the internet.
It’s for the children though! Lets set up another task force with your taxes, giving another group of no-talent hacks who can’t get real jobs something to do… and then when we’ll pass some laws (with a few of my own personal addons in the law) for the children!
The day the common man makes use of the fact he has the sum-total of human knowlage at his finger tips and begins to learn is the day our government collapses under it’s own stupidity
Buckykat:
I agree that a smart kid online is a lot safer but there comes in two problems.
A: That kids intentions may not match with the parents. If they don’t want the child surfing porn or going to hate websites (simple examples, there are more reasons of course)
B: That kid isn’t experienced. I know this is hard to mesure, but things like phishing sites, or other similar tricks. Let alone people who are experienced at gathering information from children. Hell, adults fall for it, it’s just another layer of filters for safety.
Granted there really aren’t nearly as many ‘evil peoples’ out there trying to get you… regardless of what Fox News will tell you… but that doesn’t mean taking the time to be involved in what the kid is doing when learning the world (no offence intended) is unnessisary.
I absolutely agree that parents are slacking off on their parenting. With computers kids often know much more than parents, unless he/she works with computers at the job site. Even then trusting some “net-nanny” is never going to work, and i know this for a fact.
My parents attempted to install yahoo’s “online protection” on my pc. I for one do not want this on my computer as it slows things down and is absolutely useless because i don’t use the yahoo browser extension of IE that SBC/yahoo bundled with the service. There are ways to get around all internet monitors, whether it is disabling it on startup or just using a different web browser.
Parents should be aware and just check up on their children online. Ask them what they are doing and educate them of things to watch for. Not only do they need to be educated but they need experience as well. You can’t give them experience with things like viruses and phishing if it is neutralized on contact by some program you bought.
I think Net Nanny tools have evolved quite a bit. You can monitor you child’s myspace or facebook profiles. It gives a list of where they’ve been online and who they’ve been chatting with. I know the new Net Nanny is going to have tools that actually display the myspace profiles, pictures and all. Here is a list of common Net Nanny filters: http://child-internet-safety.com/netnanny.php