I have spoken at schools, from primary to high school, about internet safety. And this was not a one way conversation, I spoke, but also left plenty of time for questions, and this is where I learned the most about how our children are using computers, and the communication potential the internet has created for the world. I also repeated the presentation on internet security to the parents and teachers, in a closed session away from the kids, where they too could ask questions. Being able to experience both sides of the coin, so to speak, I was faced with the uncomfortable position that we always joke about, that the kids knew far more than the parents when it came to their own safety, let alone usage.
Now that is not across the board, and don't get me wrong, this was no psychological/scientific study, it was just me trying to answer questions about something I work with daily, internet security. What I wanted to do for the parents and kids, was to help them understand how to safely use their computer, but back to my original point. If the kids already know it all, what could a parent do? Now I will have to contradict this belief in a big way.
In the pattern of questions from the kids, it became apparent to me that many of them had no idea that what they were doing could be publicly seen, or could stay available to the world for the rest of their lives (. . and your grandkids lives, and your great grandkids lives). Let's take a moment and think of the ramifications of this. Let's suppose your child was caught spray painting graffiti, of the racist type. Off colour joke about someone, maybe a threat. Whatever. You get the idea. The local stigma will be bad. . for a while, probably a long while if it's bad enough. And it will be a tough lesson to that child that we all know usually sticks when they learn the meaning of sorry. And who among us hasn't done something oh so massively terrible you wonder if your parents will ever love you again? Turns out they always did love you, and you get to deal with it together. The point is, we all make mistakes and time passes and we move forward.
But what if that was an online blog instead of the concrete wall behind the school? That is something a child, potentially a very young one, will have to live with for the rest of their life. What happens when a simple google search dredges up the same incident, over and over, like it just happened. And it doesn't have to be something inflammatory. It could be quite innocent. Check out the story about the Star Wars Kid. He became famous, but at what cost? Kind of scary, isn't it? I don't know about you, but I don't want the kind of life for my child, or any child for that matter, where they can't move forward in their life, and simply become an easy target for others to attack.
I was asked by a principal at a school for some help along these lines and I witnessed, first hand, some awful cyberbullying, which is really just bullying. When one child torments another child, be it on the playground, or over email, its still the same cowardly, vicious act either way. The disturbing part was that the principal of the school was bombarded with incidents of kids saying some pretty nasty things about other kids. Then a bunch more jump in and make it worse. When confronted with school yard bullies, the system knew what had to be done. But when it was most of the students involved in attacking others, with code words and fake names, fake websites, somewhere out on the internet, it was haunting the victims as bad as if it was done in person. And we were finding allot of victims, even teachers themselves were targets. It was astounding to the teachers and parents, that it was this prevalent. However, when these 'cyber' bullies were confronted, being only children themselves, most just crumbled when presented with the horrible truth of their actions, and a disturbing pattern emerged.
On the internet, these kids thought they were invisible. Mom and dad didn't know what they were doing, so no one else does, right? They had no concept that the situation was exactly the opposite, and we could tell them, down to the second, when and where, they sent those awful messages or made some mean spirited web posting. Now lets consider that, other than these online incidents, these were not bad kids. But when young children think they are invisible, they tend to say and do some pretty dumb things. Imagine the escape and freedom they must have felt, thinking that they were (most likely for the first time in their lives), able to say and do whatever they wanted on the computer. Imagine the freedom they must have felt. Then imagine their horror at seeing these online experimentations appearing back before their eyes, when they thought it was gone forever as quick as they hit delete. It is absolutely critical to their survival in an online world, that you enforce into your children that this is simply not the case. It's exactly the opposite. Whatever they put out there can easily come back to haunt them, so would they want their parents to see it? Their teachers? Their future employers?
So when I say the children knew far more than the parents when it came to their own safety, I'm only really talking about the tools, like firewalls and anti-virus, and anti-spyware, malware. You name it, there were allot of kids who knew their stuff. I had one child describe for me the tools they downloaded from the internet, in order to clear out some spyware, that their parent had acquired while web surfing. Some of the kids were basically fixing and maintaining the computer security for their parents. And there is nothing wrong with that, let's face it, it's great that they have taken enough of an interest to learn on their own, and there is no question that parents should support their child and the computer interests, but this wasn't the area most kids needed help with.
The part they need help with is the part we are already teaching them in all other parts of their life. You know this stuff, don't get caught up in the techno-mumbo-jumbo, this is about parenting.
When you're child is young, say young enough that you still need to monitor them when they play in the park, then guess what? It's probably a really bad idea to let them surf the web on their own. You need to be beside them, searching for cars, or transformers, or whatever it is they like, and finding the website, bookmarking them so you can take them back to the places you know they like, and ensuring it is what you expect kids should be seeing. Think it's OK to let your young child run their own searches, then you go ahead and let your child search 'barbie' on their own. Let me know how that works out for you.
That's not really so hard, is it? It doesn't take technology to spend some time with them. Maybe search a hobby, plan a family vacation together, make the internet something you use as a tool together. By the way, did you actually try the 'barbie' search? Not as bad as you feared? That's also a common discovery on the internet. But don't fool yourself, it's the whole world out there, lots of good, some bad, and they are too young to wander in it, at this point.
Then your child gets older, and instant messaging comes along. It's latest incarnation is called Twitter, but rest assured it goes on in many forms. Are they playing games online with others? Whole lotta chatting going on there. It's all the same thing, so watch for it. Don't be overwhelmed by the wealth of programs, and ways people communicate, they all do basically the same thing; connect people in real time, sometimes with cameras (Yeah, how bad could that be for kids?), to chat, exchange pictures, programs, stories, music, movies. . . you name it. If you can digitize it, anything goes.
This is probably also about the time you start letting them go over to friends house's, bike around the block, and generally start to become an independent growing child. So guess what, time to let them get instant messaging. And you know what else? You too. Go ahead and have your kids set you up with a chat account and get connected. Do you have to use it? Not really, although it won't hurt to give it a try. What you really should be doing with it, is helping your child make smart choices about the 'friends' they keep. When it starts, make sure you both know your IM (instant messaging) friends, and I mean physically met this person, know their parents, etc. Same things you do if they are going to stay over at a friends house in the neighbourhood.
Unfortunately this won't last long, so enjoy it while it does. Eventually they like to go the mall, or catch a movie with some friends, and when they do this, they will meet new and interesting people we know nothing about. Likewise they will want to interact with people they just meet over the internet, through common websites, interests, friends. I know your gut reaction is to just say no, but life doesn't work that way and you know it. Just like you are going to let them go to the mall sooner or later, you are going to let them chat with strangers on the internet.
*GASP*
Say it isn't so! Could we really let them talk to strangers? Of course, but there are just a couple of rules to follow when you are chatting with strangers on the internet. Parents, take note, this applies to you as well.
1) You don't meet a stranger without parents (or alone, for you adults out there), not even in a public place. I don't care how well you 'know' them online.
2) You don't give out personal information about yourself
The second one is harder than it sounds. Sure address, phone number, credit card, etc all seem obvious, but as careful as we think we are, there are some rather tricky ways to get information out of someone. This is the part where I worry you again.
Let's say your child is talking to someone on the internet about puppies.
creep: hey click here for a picture of a cute puppies!
yourchild: wow are they ever cute
creep: so I like to walk my puppies at the park near Ajax High school, Post Park.
yourchild: I know that school, but I don't go there. Not sure I have been to that park.
creep: I live around the corner from it on Woodhouse Cres., but I sometimes play baseball at Timber Wood park.
yourchild: I go to Timber Wood park all the time, I play baseball there too!
creep: cool, what position do you play?
Let's explain what is actually happening here. When connected in a chat, most systems hide your actual location on the internet by pushing all the communications through other computers. This means that by just chatting with someone, this does not automatically make you traceable to anyone you are chatting with (except the people that run the chat servers of course, they see everything, but that's another blog). But when creep provided a link to view a picture of a puppy, the resulting connection from yourchild is logged by the person who posts the picture on the internet, in this case it leaves a fingerprint of where you are coming from.
What creep gets is your IP address, a number that uniquely identifies you on the internet. It's like a phone number for computers, and you have to use it to call out to the internet when you access anything. It's also what prevents you from easily hiding what you do online. What can creep do with this information? Well creep can punch this number into a special web search and get this information below to work with, while talking to yourchild.
So armed with the knowledge of the general area, and some statistics on the location creep has only to add a simple Google Maps search, and voila. . .
Go take a look at the conversation again. With markers picking out local schools, you can see it would be trivial to fool someone with that much information, they don't realize you know. creep offers the information first, supposedly about them self, so they must know and live in my area right? They aren't really a stranger, they live in my area! This doesn't even have to be a technical trick, some people are just great at asking the right questions. Sometimes it's to steal information and identities (yes, people steal the child's identity, one day they will be 18 and have a credit card, why not start collecting the information now), but sometimes it's for much worse.I don't want to downplay online predators, its a fact of life, just like you worry about your kids at the mall, or at the library, they could just as easily be stalked online. But let's not make this into something it's not. This is not an everyday occurrence, and some due diligence up front can keep your child safe. How you ask? Stay involved. Join the chat or simply just ask your child about their new 'friends'. Get to know who they are hanging out with, just like you ask who they are going to the mall with. Either way, the fact that you are asking questions will come out in the online chat, and it will be clear to anyone talking to your child, that mom or dad is around and interested. If that doesn't scare away this new 'friend', you can be assured they are safe, although I still recommend to keep up on it as much as possible. Eventually the child will know to question the person on the other end when the conversation falls outside the original interest. I Just want everyone to try and be realistic about this threat. Most people online are not crazed loonies out to get you, although if you believe this in the real world, I guess online will be just as bad in your mind. There are police out there actively hunting these people down, and there is no denying it exists, but you cannot cut yourself off on a fear that represents your smallest risk. I'd be more concerned with making sure your children keep the firewall and virus checker updated for you. Virus/malware/computer exploits, that stuff will hit you every few minutes.
If you think that's being dramatic (and that there are predators lurking behind every web page doesn't sound overblown), then consider a statistic from the a great website, dshield.org. This organization correlates thousands of security logs from volunteer sites all over the internet looking for a variety of information about hacking and virus activity. They can generate allot of interesting reports, but a favorite of mine is something called the Survival Time.
Feeling any better about how to approach your child's access to the internet? Hang on, we are almost done, but we still have to talk about blogs. Sooner or later, hopefully later, your child will want to start a blog. It's like an online diary, stories, you name it, and it comes in many forms. Probably a huge example of a 'blog on steroids' is Facebook. It represents a somewhat public space to post whatever you like about yourself, your family, your friends. It can be a wonderful way to connect with family and friends if you give it a chance, so don't just dismiss it as pointless. Systems like Facebook,MySpace, and Twitter are changing how people communicate and interact so let's clear up a big misconception about using online services like Facebook and Twitter, or more to the point, that by NOT using it, you are somehow not connected to it in any way. If you think banning your child from using something like Facebook will keep them off of it, boy do I have a surprise for you, and I am not talking about them sneaking behind your back and opening an account.
Afriend: I don't even understand all this facebook stuff, but I have no interest in putting my personal life online.
Me: but you are already on Facebook.
Afriend: What? What are you talking about, I've never used it!
Me: I know, but MutualFriend put up some pictures of you recently, from back in high school, remember the crazy things you used to do? *grin* . We tagged your name so people that don't know you, could see what we were talking about.
Afriend: YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT ME WITH STRANGERS!?!?!
Me: Well, they aren't strange to me. . . .
So of course the reality is, you will have an online presence of some sort, whether you like it or not. Maybe it's not happening now, but it will happen later, just give it time and you don't get to decide if you want to be included or not. The question is, do you want to be around to see it happen, comment on it yourself, and untag or remove references that try to point to you? Or are you just going to keep on pretending that it's not happening to you? If you have friends and family using things like Facebook, blogs, twitter, you will get blended in there at some point. It's your call if you want to be there to see it, but don't think stopping your child from using Facebook keeps them away from it, it just keeps them from taking part, and potentially stopping or responding back if someone tries to post something they don't want up there. In some cases you may not be able to stop something, but you can flag it so others know the truth around any information to do with you. If something appears that is a mistake, and it stays out there, your response/clarification stays with it.
Last suggestion, and probably the most important. You have now spent far too long reading this online blog. It is time to turn off the computer and go outside. Get some fresh air, do something fun outside, take a walk, whatever you like. Google 'fun outdoor activities' if you are short on ideas, just get off this thing for a while and see the real world. And that is by far, the most important lesson you can teach you child about using a computer safely on the internet.
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