"Parents Don't Understand Internet Risks"
"Children cannot be protected from risk but parents must be educated in the dangers posed by the internet."
This is a quote from Dr Tanya Byron, government parenting guru and television personality, perhaps best known for 'Little Angels' and 'The House of Tiny Tearaways'.
The initial analysis is true - the majority of parents aren't aware of how a child's life extends from the real world and into the virtual one. There, physical boundaries have little meaning (even in a shared virtual space), and spoken language is often substituted for one of acronyms and emoticons to further efficiency of communication.
But in the context of this article, I take issue with the casual flinging-about of terms such as "risk" and "danger". I'm of the opinion that unless your child is talking online and "being groomed" by a pedophile in Internet Relay Chat (and let's face it, nobody in IRC chatrooms are who they say they are. In fact, it's more than likely that half of them are FBI agents unwittingly entrapping one another), then they're probably using a social networking site to talk to their friends. Like Facebook, Bebo and (shudder) MySpace. And if that's the case, there is no risk, there is no danger. There is only ignorance.
As a teacher and technology consultant I have met more than my fair share of parents who insist that their children are "brilliant" on the computer, and just let them "get on with it" (as a side note, I've also seen one or more of those "brilliant" children struggle to find the power button on a monitor). Some of the more hopeful ones look for guidance: courses to send their children on (and for clarification, by "children" I mean under the age of 13) to enhance their technological capabilities, but rarely make the logical jump to join them for said courses and learn alongside them. The truth of the matter is that the majority of parents are scared themselves, hoping against hope that their children will inherently "know" what is going on with the computer. Because somebody in the family has to, right? And I don't know a child alive that wouldn't take full advantage of that:
"Yeah Mom, I'm blowing away these zombies for a physics simulation. It's based on rate-of-fire vs blood density. Also, the bling my character is wearing around his neck throws off his centre of gravity so I have to compensate for semi-automatic kickback. It's all about hand-eye co-ordination. No, I don't have any other homework."
C'mon.
In my first year of teaching, I was welcoming the parents in my advisory class and one of them raised her hand and said: "My daughters come home every night and are on the computer chatting away from 7pm until bedtime." She then looked at me expectantly. So did every other pair of eyes in the room. "What are you going to do about it?", said those eyes. "You're a teacher, you know all about IT...". And that's where I made a decision that has prolonged my career rather than stopped it short.
Part of me - the layman, frank "don't-skirt-around-the-issues" part of me wanted to look her square in the eyes and tell her that the problem wasn't with the internet, or the technology, it was an issue of parenting. Your kids spend too much time on the computer? Take away the damned computer. End of story. Read a book. It's not that illogical a jump to make now, is it? I wonder really. Mankind got this far without the iPhone.
Of course the "don't-irk-the-parents-on-your-first-day-on-the-job" (what I also refer to as the self-preservation instinct) assured her that time-management skills were key to a student's growth and development, and that those issues were concentrated upon early in Middle School (which was true).
We'll see what Dr Byron's full report will say next month - expected are recommendations for a video game classification system, which may work well in the dedicated consoles and PC gaming industry, but I fear will be wasted on the vast amounts of free online games that are really a click away.
Manage your child's time and know what they're doing by spending time with them when they're on the computer. Don't put your faith in online monitoring systems, Even early teens need time management and direction, and computer-human interaction will not deliver that.
Moreover, don't believe the lie that technology will fix everything, is easy to implement and your kids will begin hacking out microcode in utero. Western society has been following that carrot since the fifties, and I'm still waiting for my rocket car. Put away the Blackberry, spend some time with the kids and don't be afraid to pull the plug on the computer.
Children can be protected from risk but parents must be educated in not believing the hype. The singularity may be near, but we still have eons to go.
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