Summertime means vacations, time at the pool, and for today’s youth: time on the Internet and cell phone, often away from the eyes of parents and guardians. During the school year parents and teachers may disagree about whose job it is to educate children about how to be safe online, but in the summertime, it is clearly a parent’s job to keep his/her own children safe. As a teacher and the mother of a teen, tween, and eight year old, I try to give my children some freedom to roam, but I also set clear rules about online activity and behavior.
I have found, though, that many parents just “ask around” to make safety decisions without doing their research. With the Internet evolving daily, no one expert can provide everything needed to help children stay safe, so parents need to establish their own family “safety lines.” Safety lines are used in sports like rock climbing and bungee jumping to help keep the sportsman (or woman) tethered securely to a point of safety. When children jump into the wide world of social technology, this is what they need from their parents – a clearly delineated source of security and guidance. So let’s look at some guidelines for building a family summertime safety line:
1) Connect Yourself To Good Sources of Information
Fear sells. Too many books on Internet safety make me want to lock my children in their rooms with a book and throw away the key! I have found that parents who quote these books to their children often drive a wedge of misunderstanding and distrust between them and their children. Typically research shows at-risk teens offline are the ones exhibiting at-risk behavior online, but sometimes kids make mistakes out of ignorance. It is your job to help your child be educated!
There are some well-balanced sources of information that will help you give wise guidance and these should be on your pre-summer reading list. My favorite book on online safety is Look Both Ways by Linda Criddle, but you don’t have to buy the book to learn a lot. She has a great website at http://www.ilookbothways.com/. Your safety line should begin with reading Linda’s Checklist for Family Internet Safety.
If you prefer to watch videos, the site PBS Growing Up Online has some video that I use with older students. Although some may think this is a fearful approach, using and watching these videos with your older child will give you something concrete to talk about as you discuss Internet safety.
Join a group of parents like DigiParent a site that I work with, to communicate with parents about online safety.
2) Open The Communication Lines
I’ve found that different groups of children have preferences for websites. Find out the websites that your children like to use now, or ones that they want to begin using this summer.
Younger Children. I like to use websites with my eight year old like Woogi World and Build A Bear that will report to me when my child has reported someone else for bad behavior. When your child wants to use a new site, set it up with him/her and watch him/her play it at first. Talk to your child about the sites his/her “friends” are using. And most importantly, use the timer to set a time limit so your children do not become too sedentary. While you may enjoy eight hours of peace and quiet, that much of anything is not good for them!
Tweens and Teens. Agree with them that if they are going to use a profile-based service, they must set it up initially with you so that you can help them double-check their privacy settings. Some parents create a generic Facebook or MySpace account (set up in a way that won’t reveal to their child’s friends that it is a parent) and then friend their child just to keep an eye on things. Others just use the “over the shoulder” method. What ever method you use, make sure that you agree up front what is fair for each service, particularly if you have a teenager; otherwise you’ll be accused of spying.
My fourteen year old is not interested in Facebook yet, but is a heavy cell phone texter. We have discussions about appropriate use of photos and texting.
3) Harness Your Safety Precautions
When teenagers get their first car, every parent I know has “the talk” about keeping the car safe. Using your research and the unique situation of your child, come up with safety precautions and agreements with your child. This should include: how to report inappropriate behavior to both the service and to you; making friends; deciding which information they can and cannot share about themselves; setting a limited amount of time online; deciding on the location of computers (we don’t allow them in bedrooms in our house); and agreeing about how to handle online problems that they are having.
Most important this safety agreement should include your rules about meeting people offline that children have first met online. Although many frown upon this practice, as many as 25% of people getting married today met online first!! The Internet is their “mall” and where they go to meet people. While I am convinced that most people on the Internet are normal, good people, there are liars and thieves everywhere and they hide under the cloak of anonymity.
The best way to prepare your children for being cautious about meeting people they met online first is to discuss and share with them the stories of when such meetings went wrong. They will still want to meet people; parents should insist on accompanying children to such meetings, if parents allow the meetings to happen at all. We want children to understand the risks and responsibilities involved with meeting “cyber-friends” in “real life.” This is a lifetime behavior that you should teach now!
4) Beware of Privacy Wear & Tear
This generation is most in danger, not of strangers, but of losing their privacy. Electronic privacy is the greatest blind spot for today’s youth. For example, a substitute was in my class and my fourteen-year-old son went through my classroom network to message his friends. He didn’t realize that the message would also come to me!! The message was “I am bored in computer class.” Needless to say, I was not happy! He said, “But I didn’t mean to send it to you!”
Anything that is written, photographed, or recorded anywhere at any time can be published for hundreds of thousands to see. Things done as a teenager can keep a child from running for President or holding public office thirty years from now! Using this lesson, we sat down with our son and discussed the illusion of privacy. My husband said something that has stuck with me. He said, “Son, never write anything that you wouldn’t want to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal the next day.”
These discussions best come from teachable moments and examples you see on the news. Privacy of photographs, Facebook, MySpace, instant messaging, and cell phone messages – it’s a complete illusion. Demonstrate and teach your children this from the moment they get on the Internet. Show them how easy it is to copy photographs! Help them understand that the best way to protect their privacy is to not publish or take certain photographs at all. Teach them to be vigilant of others who are taking photographs. I have had friends go on family vacation who noticed their child in a bikini being photographed strangely by a person. They asked the person to stop!! You have the right to ask people to stop.
Summer is a great time to build your safety line. These are things children need to know to be safe now but also so they can live productive lives in a digital age. Keep them safe now and for the rest of their lives.
Vicki Davis is a teacher in Camilla, Georgia, a mother of three, and a blogger at Cool Cat Teacher
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