Five Internet Challenges for Parents:
1. Keeping up is hard to do.
The Internet gets more portable every day, which makes it easier for our kids to be online more of the time. Today your kid may go online from a computer or even a mobile phone. But tomorrow? Who knows! It could be via something not yet invented. New sites appear and become "hot" overnight, replacing old ones. Parents need to help their kids learn about safe and appropriate behavior, not just safe and appropriate sites. Because teaching them about the dangers of one site or form of access today will be outdated information tomorrow.
2. Kids go online without us.
The majority of kids report that their parents have no rules about the Internet. The result is that kids visit sites, create content, and communicate free of supervision in email, on social networking sites, via Instant Messaging, and through mobile texting. Parents need to become involved in their kids' online lives.
3. Our kids know way more than we do.
They have grown up online. They know how to go places and do things we can't. Conversely, they also know how to get around any filters, blocks, or history settings we might use to manage where they go online. Adults must still teach codes of conduct, though, even when their kids' forms of communicating (cu l8r, anyone?) may be downright baffling to us.
4. It’s a user-generated content world.
Huh? What does that mean? It means that those using the Internet are also creating its content. Kids can post and receive pictures, stream video, and read and write things visible to anyone online. They can also receive unedited, unfiltered information. We need to help our kids think critically about what they post, read, and see online.
5. We butt into our kids' lives at a time when, developmentally, they want independence.
It's only right and natural for high school-aged teens to demand privacy, try on different personalities, and push at the edge of acceptability — all of which the Internet encourages. That's all part of growing up. Even if we're concerned about their safety, our intervention comes at an unwelcome time. We might be seen as overprotective at best and as controlling snoops at worst. But we have to be sure kids know how to be safe and responsible before letting them loose. It's up to us to make them listen when they don't want to hear.
