Joe Bruzzese (17 page)

Before bringing your family's discussion to a close, spend a few moments talking about the consequences for failing to adhere to
the family's plan. Children often propose extreme punishments (a year without the Internet) that do little to educate and promote healthy internet use after the punishment is lifted. Temper the severe punishment ideas with a more logical, long-term approach. Consider a healthy portion of cyber safety reading and a session with the school's computer lab specialist, who can guide your child's development of safe internet practices. Education coupled with a short respite from the Internet is often enough to reestablish an adherence to the family's mutually agreed-upon objectives.

Continued communication keeps kids and parents connected. Establishing a climate of trust helps to ensure an open line of communication on internet-related issues. Occasionally, though, kids stop talking or become secretive about their time online. If you suspect behavior that violates your family's acceptable use plan, ask for some one-on-one time when your child can guide you through a tour of his recent internet adventures. If your request is met with an eye roll or similar gesture of reluctance, you may need to conduct an informal search on your own time. Fortunately, your computer remembers where you go and who you see.

Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox are all internet browsers. Each of these programs serves as a connection point between your computer and the Internet. Like a car traveling along an endless stretch of highway, a computer's browser can deliver you to any destination (website) on the World Wide Web. But unlike the average automobile, a browser retains a history of your internet travel destinations.

Taking ten minutes to investigate your child's online activity can save you hours of needless anxiety. With your computer on and the internet browser open, look for the word “History” along the top line of your browser screen. In Internet Explorer, click “Tools” and look for History in the dropdown menu. The browser history records a detailed list of website locations the user has
recently accessed. Although you can adjust the duration of your browser's history, the default setting is two weeks, giving you ample opportunity to scan for any suspicious activity. Different browsers offer different methods for clearing the browser history; if yours is not obvious, try the Help feature.

If responsible internet use continues to be a struggle, consider purchasing one of the many commercially available parent monitoring programs. With a few quick clicks parents can gain access to every instant message and email a child sends or receives from the family's computer. Unlike a browser history, a monitoring program's memory cannot be deleted by anyone except the person who originally installed it. Before you resort to this, though, sit down with your child and share your concern for his safety. Installing an internet surveillance program sends a specific message to your child: “I don't trust you.” Often kids and parents can come to an agreement about the importance of safe internet use and the value of retaining an honest and trusting relationship.

“OMG PAW G2G” (“Oh my god, parents are watching, got to go”). Sitting next to your middle schooler as she happily clicks away on instant messages (IM) won't reveal much about her online conversations unless you learn the lingo for these often indecipherable exchanges. Unfortunately, most kids are not interested in educating their parents in the finer points of this modern-day pig Latin. Consider the following list of commonly used acronyms as a primer for learning to understand teen tech speak. You'll find a complete dictionary of online acronyms at
www.teenchatdecoder.com
. Tackle a few new terms each week and you will be well on your way to IMing with the best of them. Try a few of your newfound favorites in a text message to your child, and wait for her startled reply.

Amid the flurry of text messages kids send and receive, it's hard to believe that this nearly ubiquitous form of communication accounts for only a portion of their peer-to-peer communication. If you want to know where to meet a friend or the status of your social plans, you send a message. But messaging doesn't provide an efficient way to share your plans with an entire group of friends or a venue for sharing highlights of special events. A growing number of kids are extending their one-on-one and small group interactions to their entire network of friends through the use of social networking websites.

The modern-day equivalent of hanging out at your local community center, social networking now accounts for nearly 90 percent of the time kids in the twelve-to-seventeen-year-old age range spend online. Unlike the local community center that was open only during the afternoon hours and staffed with qualified adults, social networking sites draw around-the-clock participation, with a minimal amount of supervision from a virtual staff monitoring millions of users. People are free to drop in at any time either for a live conversation or to leave messages for friends to see on their next visit.

The move toward full-fledged social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace begins before a child enters middle school. Elementary school age children delight in spending hours tending to their online pets at Club Penguin, Webkinz, and Moshi Monsters. Under the guise of a fun-filled arcade, each of these sites operates a child-friendly version of social networking. Users establish a primary residence and have access to common areas, which are
accessible to anyone with a user account who is currently online. What is the criterion for creating a user account? With the exception of Webkinz, which requires the purchase of a stuffed animal and registration code, nearly all of these younger social networks are free for anyone to join.

All of the kid-friendly sites have an arcade-style interface. Users are required to create an avatar (an animated figure representing the user) before participating in any of the site's features or common access environments. As the avatars navigate their way through the online world, stopping to play games and purchase trinkets, they may be contacted by any one of the other avatars currently online. The positive side to avatar-based games is they keep your child's true identity and personal information a secret. The only way to learn the identity of another avatar is by requesting it through the site's chat or message feature. Communication can arrive via either a short chat message or a note left in the avatar's mailbox. In either case, a user is free to delete the message without replying to the sender.

The downside to avatar anonymity is you never know who could be lurking around. Guiding kids to keep their true identity a secret is an essential precautionary measure that many parents wouldn't think to consider on these sites, given the playful surroundings. With some coaching and a few side-by-side sessions, you can steer your child away from unwanted encounters and toward the game areas. Given the relatively small number of users frequenting these child-friendly sites and the charge to rid online environments of predators, the online staff at each site are vigilant in their efforts to block users who demonstrate any attempt to contact children in a suspicious manner. Keeping kids safe is their primary concern. Parents are encouraged to contact website administrators if they suspect an inappropriate behavior.

The well-guarded anonymity of these sites for younger children lasts for only so long—as kids and parents eventually realize when making the transition to more mainstream social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Joining the social networking giants Facebook and MySpace now seems like little more than the next step along a predetermined path for many kids entering middle school. Although MySpace and Facebook offer many of the same features, there are distinct differences between the two services. MySpace launched its service in 2003 with a focus on sharing music by fledgling musicians who were hoping to break into the mainstream music recording industry. Little did the founders know that the company's modest mission statement would blossom into the world's largest social networking service, now connecting nearly 120 million users worldwide, with 73 million unique user accounts in the United States alone.

Facebook, by contrast, had its humble beginnings in a dorm room at Harvard University. Early in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, one of three original founders, conceived an idea that would spread like wildfire across the Ivy League in the following year. Originally designed as a place to keep the Harvard undergrad population connected, Facebook quickly grew beyond its Ivy roots to reach colleges across the United States. Interest in this renowned new form of communication grew at an alarming rate, nearly overwhelming the small startup. In a bold move, Facebook founders made the decision to open the network to high school-age students in 2005, thus greatly expanding the network's potential user base. In the fall of 2006, just two short years after bringing their idea to the Harvard campus, Facebook's founders opened its doors to mainstream users across the United States. Membership numbers exploded into the millions, but even with its current tally of forty-three million unique accounts worldwide, Facebook membership pales in comparison to the dominant position MySpace has secured in the social networking realm.

Pressure from peers to graduate from their cuddly penguin or Webkinz pet to a Facebook or MySpace account can lead children to a critical crossroads. Legally, most children cannot participate until toward the end of their middle school years. The
prevalence of underage users falsifying personal information to gain access to both MySpace and Facebook has led to widespread misuse and abuse of these sites. Although the terms of use and eligibility (which follow) stipulate the minimum age of eligibility as thirteen for Facebook users and fourteen for MySpace, many kids think very little of subtracting a few years from their birth date to meet a site's minimum age requirement.

The following text is taken directly from the Facebook Terms of Use document.

Tucked away among the long list of privileges and exclusions is the verbiage detailing Facebook's policy on membership termination:

Also taken directly from their company's website, the following paragraph includes both the eligibility and termination information for MySpace accounts.

Midway through 2008, both Facebook and MySpace reached agreements with attorneys general in forty-nine states (Texas declined both initiatives) to begin instituting a firmer set of policies and technology that will keep their networks free from sexual predators. Although the new call to action does little in the way of firming up their ability to track and delete underage users, the assault on predatory action was the first step that either social networking services or state governments have taken to reduce an otherwise unregulated online environment.

Pornography of any kind, including links to adult content websites and user groups created for the purpose of promoting adult content, will be removed, in accordance with the initiative's objectives. Repeated attempts at changing a user's registered age will send an alert to website administrators, triggering a thorough account review. Each of these social networking giants recognizes the significance they play in maintaining a safe environment for minors. Although they acknowledge the importance of their role in adhering to a higher standard of safety, the brunt of the responsibility for keeping kids safe on social networking sites falls on their parents' shoulders.