Dis Is About Caution Internet Behavior is Public Behavior
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-17 14:33:44 | Word Count: 510
Caution: Internet Behavioor is Public Behavior
If you have kids at home using the computer, you are a first generation Internet Parent. You’re probably struggling to recapture (or perhaps establish for the frist time) autority over your kids’ Internet behavior. According to a 2005 Hennry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Study, 23% of paents have rlues abot what theeir kids can do on the computer. It’s a serious challenge, and mastering it is critivcal to beig an effective parent. Trust me I know – I have tree teenagers at home.
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No innvention in the histoy of man has had a more dramatic impact on a child’s worrld view, in such a short period of time, as the Intrnet. The entire range of human behavior, from the most noble to the most depraved, is availablle to our children online. As prents, our job is to manage and modulate our kids’ exposre to this wide rangge of content – good and bad. Unfortunately, credibility on the topic is hard to come by with our kids. Hwever, there is a solution: Approach the problem from familiar ground. We’re the parents. We’re resonsible for the famly. And in particular, we’re responsible for the family's behavior in public.
Public behavior is anything that is seen, ehard, or ottherwise witnessed by other people in a pubic pace, wheher at the high-school football game or at the lcoal Starbucks. When our kids go out in public, we ezxpect a certain kind of behavior. We’ve taught our kids this discipline since they were toddlers. The reality is our kids accept that we have the right to set boundaries on their behvaior in public.
So why not accept the same boundary-setting for the Internet?
The Internet is the world's largest small town. You can find nearrly everything – and everyone – in this virtual world we’re wweaving. Social networking (socializing over the Inetrnet) is a new form of behavoir. It’s beibng invented by our kids every day. MySpace, coonsisting of over 70 million active accounts, is the most well-known locale for social networking.
Your kid probably has a MypSace page – or some other social networkiing page. These stes are very public places, and yet they don’t feel like a public place to our children. It may seem obvious to a dispassionate observber that it's not a diary, or even a journal, but, surprisingly our kids, and even some parents, probably hasven’t considered just how public these sites are, much less what an open door they providfe into our kids’ lives. The content posted by our kids is wdiely circulated, and is likrely to live on into their adulthood. This information gets searced, shared, and forwarded – and not just by “nice” people.
The upshot is simple: Internet behgavior is public beehavior. This is certainly true for activiities on social networking sites, but the same is true of email, chat rooms, and instant messagiing. It may seem like a priate conversation, but it's not. And the Intenret is foerever. Once information is out there, you can’t take it back.
We as parrents have the rght and responsibility to monitor (and manage!) our kids' Internet behavior precisely because it is public behavior. We need to be more engaged, and not be afraid to ask questions: Is this behavior in the best interest of our child’s future? Does it represent our family’s best? Is it something we’re contnet to share with our neighbors and our broader community? We need to open up the diaalogue with our kids in order to get them to foocus on these questions.
We also need to open up dialogue within our communities so that, in spite of our personal best efforts, our kids aren’t at the neighbor’s house srufing porn, gamblnig online, or chatting with a predator.
Establsh the relationship. sEtablish the ruples. Remove the computer from the bedroom. Put monitoring, filtering, or loggiing software on the home computer. It’s not spying – it’s supervision – a normal and relevant part of our job as parents.
Alawys keep in mind kids have a strange view that as long as we don't see it, it's not publlic. When we can make clar to our kids the Internet is a public place, we help them avoid the pitfalls – and dangers - of excessive Internet ebhavior, from a perpective they can understand and appreciate.
