NOTE- I would NEVER hurt a child. I am not a serial killer. Without going into detail, all my sexual interests involve women of 18 years of age or older who freely give their fully informed consent.
Having said that-
I can make almost any child between the ages of 1 and 11 do whatever I want. As I use my powers for good, this generally includes things like saying please and thank you, not putting balloon animals in their mouths, or saying “A la peanutbutter sandwiches” with me so that the magic works.
Not only do I not have to try to get children to leave their parents and follow me. I have to repeatedly tell them not to follow me or any stranger.
Think what I could do if I was some perverted monster using these powers for evil?
It would be terrifiyingly easy to take kids someplace, molest them, convince them not to tell, AND have them come back for more. (Again- I would NEVER. NEVER. NEVER do this)
There are plenty of monsters online who would do these things. Many of them have the same gift for thinking like a child that I do. Cybersex? Getting the target to send them pictures? Arranging a face to face meeting? Not a problem. They can easily convince their targets that they are just other kids and not those nasty grown ups your parents warned you about. It’s easy.
The porn sites only worry me due to viruses and spyware. IMing could get her killed.
Find some reputable news stories of kids who ended up raped or dead by somebody they met in chat. She needs to see this not just as another rule you made because you disaprove, but as something everybit as dangerous as that time she almost stuck a fork in the wall socket.
One of the things I did to teach my kid that the Internet has its dangers was to tell him about a “job offer” I received through email. The job consisting of depositing checks for a German software firm. In order to get around onerous banking regs that meant it took forever to get the money cleared through German banks, if I’d just deposit the money in my account and send 90 percent on to them, I could keep ten percent for myself. Since the checks typically ran to the thousands of dollars, I could make money working at home.
It smelled kinda fishy so I Googled it and got quite a few sites where people recounted woeful tales of having taken the “job” and then having spent many hours explaining to the cops and their bankers what had happened, because of course it was a check kiting scheme in which the “job” offered was “patsy.” The checks cashed were bogus, as was the German software firm.
I told my son all about it and said, “If I’d taken the job, I’d be a suspect in a felony. You have to be real careful with the Internet, because criminals can use it just as easily as anyone else.”
If you’ve gotten communiques from Nigerians in economic distress, you can do the same for your kid.
Well, dammit, some of these kids are too damned trusting. Forget porn-I remember once someone sending me this goopy, syrupy fan site (I think it was Hanson or some other teenybopper band) as a joke, and said, “The guestbook’s a hoot!”
I was disturbed by what I saw-nine year old girls leaving their names and phone numbers and addresses saying, “TAYLOR!!! WRITE TO ME I LOVE YOU!” (only less grammatically correct!), giving up tons of personal information. They didn’t even have the skills to be able to recognize that a fan site is NOT owned by the band or whatever. HOW are they going to be able to tell if some jackass is scamming them? They’re not. They’re kids. Hell, I used to be pretty trusting when I first logged on, and I was 18! (No, I didn’t fall for any scam artists or pervs, just passing on stupid forwards.)
And let’s not get into all the viruses and spyware and shit that porn sites bring. It’s not so much kids looking at porn (although some of the really weird shit might put them off sex for good!). It’s that most of those sites are extremely dodgy and you practically need a cyber condom just to get through them.
Kids love those cutsey download programs-putting cutsey shite on your computer, all the bells and whistles-they’re liable to destroy a perfectly good machine.
Not trying to be an old bitch here or anything, but talk to me about this when you’re 36 and have an 11 year old child who loves to play on the computer.
I wish to hell we didn’t have to be so diligent and intrusive, but this is a child I carried for nine months and have spent over a decade raising. I’m kinda attached to the little guy.
I’d say that any child so lacking in experience and/or intelligence to:
mistake a fan site for an official site
make a post directed at the band, who has no involvement with the site
and
include personal information in said post
Likely has absolutely no place on a computer without some sort of supervision. So yeah, you’re correct there. That said, any reasonably intelligent child who is aware of the dangers of information security, etc. should be fine on the Internet. I say this as (and I hope I’m not aggrandizing here) a reasonably intelligent recent former child.
I realize you’re attached to your kid’s life, but I was fairly attached to my own life, as well. People tend to be (especially those damn kids with their hopes and dreams and so forth).
There is nothing inherently “wrong” with parental controls, as they are tools that do see legitimate use. Regardless, I would rightly have felt insulted had a parent attempted to put them to use on me. The idea that if a kid is computer-savvy enough to develop a workaround, then they’re “ready” for the Internet really seems to be sending the wrong message, to me. It strikes me as something that rewards underhanded/devious/scheming behavior, which isn’t something most people tend to appreciate in their progeny.
What percentage of adults aren’t aware of those dangers? Think about the people who download attachments and infect the office network, who forward urban legends, who give out information to phishing sites etc. It seems to me that the percentage of kids who have the same problems would be higher. They haven’t learned how to recognize all the dangers yet.
If the kid is capable of a workaround, they have the abilities to set up and maintain a firewall, run antispyware programs, remove viruses, scan attachments etc. If they can do all this without leaving tracks for parents to find, they’ve certainly got the skills to protect and maintain the system.
It’s like the story of Theseus. Aegeus decided that when his son had grown strong enough to move the stone and get the sword and sandals, he was strong enough to claim his birthright as prince. A kid with the computer skills to circumvent parental controls and leave no evidence has the skills to surf safely.
A kid engaging in underhanded/devious/scheming behavior is also more likely to recognize that behavior in others.
After talking around the subject since it occurred, I managed to have a long chat with her yesterday about the situation. (I love long car trips where she can’t escape!) We didn’t talk specifically about the but rather about internet/chat safety. She’s taken courses on 'net safety and can verbalize it all - she hopefully now understands that she needs to implement it. It was noted that her cruising caused one little virus to lodge itself in the system (which was quickly removed). We discussed IM safety and she did say that one person she didn’t know popped up and starting talking to her, but she just closed that chat.
I informed her that I did install a monitoring program, but the controls are very loose. I won’t down unless she gives me a reason to. She understands that, as Stillwell Angel said, I didn’t give birth and raise her with as much love as possible for nothing. I kinda want to she what she’ll become.
[aside] I had installed one program that didn’t work - didn’t disconnect at the time it was supposed to. She called me at work and informed me that she had been online for three hours as opposed to the agreed upon two hours. So she ended up banned from the internet in total yesterday. You’da thought I killed Santa for all the wailing and eyeball rolling. Bummer. [/aside]
I’m just glad you’re talking about it with her. That’s alot more attention to the matter than some kids get, and it will plant that seed in her head that mom is watching, so I better be careful.
And to porphyrogene, I truly hope you wern’t insulted by my response to you. You actually sound like a very together and intelligent young person.
I just wanted to emphasize that until you have a kid of your own to fret about, you can in no way understand our protective instincts kicking into gear like they do.
I can remember many times growing up saying “When I have kids I won’t make them do this”(insert mundane chore here) or “I will let them do____” (insert forbidden activity here) But beleive me, it all looks different from the other side of the fence.
