Internet Saftey

I am not a parent. I am, however, a child who grew up on the internet. My time was never censored, my path was never tracked, i was never watched. I'm sure that my parents probably tried but, lets face it, one of the perks of being a kid in my generation was that we were better at the internet than our parents and getting rid of things is way too easy when the people looking for it wouldn't find it unless it smacked them on the face. Anywoo, for what must be the 16th time this summer, the local news had major coverage of that nasty nasty internet and all of the bad things it can do to your kids so I want to ask any parents out there that may or may not read this; when your child was old enough to walk, did you let them cross the street right away or did you wait until you were sure that they were responsible enough to handle it? Did you teach them to look both ways, never to dart out from in between cars and, when it doubt, wait? Sure you did. And when they were ready, you let them cross and, behold, your child has survived! When your daughter started asking to go to the movies or the mall with friends, did you make sure she knew about 'stranger danger' and let her know where to meet you afterward? Sure you did. Your entire job as parents is to teach your children the lessons they need to learn to be productive, competent, responsible adults and a lot of that involves developing their judgement and then trusting that you've done a good job.

On what planet did the internet become an alternate universe where all of your parenting practices disappeared? You teach your kids to do the right thing and arm them against the world and then you let them go. There are no more perverts on the internet than there are in real life and they are no more aggressive. Sending a child into a chatroom is the equivalent of letting them wander into a porn shop or a strip club but you only have two choices; either your child is responsible and mature enough to handle the situation appropriately or they need to be watched more closely. If I here one more stay-at-home-soap-opera mom on television in tears bitching about all of the hazards that the internet brought into her home and how she had no idea, i'm going to have to go on a killing spree. This is insane. Of course the internet can be a dangerous place but it's not dangerous if you're not an idiot.

I grew up online. I was one of those golden children who doesn't clearly recall a time before there was a PC in the house and i've had the internet since...forever... Maybe because then fewer parents were terrified of it, maybe i'm just smarter than your kids but i've managed to make it 20 years without running off with some registered sex offender who propositioned me in a chat room. That's not to say that I haven't been propositioned in chat rooms; if you want to protect your kids from that you might as well just cut the ethernet line because thats just part of being on the web kind of like whistling men is part of walking down the street. You just have to learn to cope and isn't coping one of the skills you're trying to teach your kids?

Furthermore, there is more to the internet than chatrooms and if your kids are spending a lot of time in them, there's a reason. No child online has ever been coerced into a conversation about sex that they weren't interested in being in for some reason. One of the greatest things about the internet is that you can always close the window and move on. They don't put those block buttons there for nothing. Yes, that's right, I would allege that if you've found little Susie in the middle of an NC-17 conversation with Chester the child molester she probably walked into that in some regard.

The funny thing is that you assinine parents seem to miss the key point in the interviews they do with all of these kids who've been recovered from internet abductions; they went willingly. Yes, they were lied to. Yes, this person probably told them that they wanted to help them and care for them and love them and be their friend and thats probably not what they were interested in at all but at some point you have to own the fact that the reason your kid got duped into this is that they weren't happy at home and at some point you failed to impress upon them that most people on the internet are perverts.

I find it unbelievably frustrating that the media lays all the blame of a 'dangerous internet' on perverts and doesn't ever say "you fucking dolt! you did the equivalent of letting your kid wander the streets at three am without the aid of the friendly police officer and it never occured to you to talk to them about it first? Maybe explain that on the internet everyone lies just as much as they do?" Jesus christ. I'm not saying that any child who has ever been lured by an online pervert is to blame for their situation or that the parents could have prevented it but don't you think you owe it your kids to try? And, seriously, when they're three you tell them not to take a piece of candy from someone that they don't know; maybe we should just start throwing "plane ticket" on that list, too.

Really, I think that a lot of this boils down to sheltered kids. I look at my brother who isn't allowed to watch the nightly news because it's 'too violent' and that's fine when they kid is 6 and the only place he goes is from home to school to soccer practice and he's attended by a parent or a teacher the entire time but before you let your kids out into the real world - and the unsupervised internet is the real world - you have to let 'em watch the news because it may be violent but the world is really that violent and letting them out there with nothing but youth and naievtee not only makes them unprepared it makes them targets. Give your kids the information and have some faith in them.

The internet is a great tool and an amazing resoures but i'm fucking sick of a bunch of retarded 15 year olds who don't feel like their suburban parents pay enough attention to them running off with sex offenders and giving 'the web' a bad reputation.

News flash: it's been over a year since I felt the need to go into a chat room. There is more to the internet.