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As parents, you must TEACH your children how to be safe on the Internet. You cannot simply PROHIBIT them from going online. That will not work.
But you say, "I refuse to buy and pay for a smart phone for my child! They do not have an iPad. The computer is in a common area. I always know when they are on the Internet."
And I ask, "Do they ever visit a friend's house? Another relative's house? Do they have computers/tablets/devices at school? Do they ever socialize with neighbors? Ride the bus? Go to movies with friends? Go to the library? Go anywhere?"
If they spend any amount of time away from you, they may very likely have access to the Internet.
So TEACH them to be safe online, not simply forbid them from going online. Heck, most schools require their students to go online for school projects! My kids' middle school and high school provided laptops for their students, for cryin' out loud! And that was a few years ago. Most schools either provide devices or are a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) school.
As parents, you must TEACH your children how to be safe on the Internet. You cannot simply PROHIBIT them from going online. That will not work.
That would've been along my mom's line of thinking, had the Internet been more prominent when I was a teen. (She did not, and still doesn't, know that much about the Internet or computers in general)
Well.. .. Hope those kids don't discover what about there scary thought.
Ummmm...what?
Kids WILL discover how to get online. The question is will they know how to be safe?
Ignorance (on the parents' behalf) is not bliss, in this case.
Kids are often more tech-savvy than the parents - it is the parent's responsibility to try to stay half a step ahead (or at the very least, caught up!).
I teach a social media and cell phones class for parents at a middle school, and there is very low turnout. I go over the popular social media apps at the time (Kik, Snapchat, Twitter, etc) and talk about what teens are doing, and I give parents apps and methods for tracking what their teens are doing. There are apps that will email you every image that is sent or received through a phone, as well as text messages and other information. If they don't want to go that far, I also talk about "random phone checks" and other less-intrusive methods of keeping up with what your kids are doing. Some parents scoff at checking their kids phones, as if they don't have that right, and I remind them they're paying for the phone. Social media and apps change so quickly that even I have a hard time keeping up with what teens are using, and I'm actively working at it. I have found over the years that most parents would rather be oblivious to their teens' activities and keep the idea that they have great, upstanding teens until they hear otherwise from the police or someone else. I'm at the point now where I'm about to stop updating my presentation and teaching the class because I usually have around 20-30 parents showing up each time out of a school of 1,000+ kids.
Teens are always stupid. Social media is now amplifying that stupidity and allowing others to see how stupid they are with the click of a button.
Instead of banning kids from social media, we should let them know how easily someone can see their posts. Banning it completely will only make them sneak behind our backs. For instance, they can easily borrow their friends' phones or something during school lunch and make a social media account in a matter of minutes.
I teach a social media and cell phones class for parents at a middle school, and there is very low turnout. I go over the popular social media apps at the time (Kik, Snapchat, Twitter, etc) and talk about what teens are doing, and I give parents apps and methods for tracking what their teens are doing. There are apps that will email you every image that is sent or received through a phone, as well as text messages and other information. If they don't want to go that far, I also talk about "random phone checks" and other less-intrusive methods of keeping up with what your kids are doing. Some parents scoff at checking their kids phones, as if they don't have that right, and I remind them they're paying for the phone. Social media and apps change so quickly that even I have a hard time keeping up with what teens are using, and I'm actively working at it. I have found over the years that most parents would rather be oblivious to their teens' activities and keep the idea that they have great, upstanding teens until they hear otherwise from the police or someone else. I'm at the point now where I'm about to stop updating my presentation and teaching the class because I usually have around 20-30 parents showing up each time out of a school of 1,000+ kids.
But for those 20-30 parents you can do a great deal of help. Also they probably are sharing with their friends and relatives so your scope may be much larger than you think.
The key is knowledge and monitoring. Banning the internet all together is unrealistic. My 3rd grader is required to do a good portion of her homework online, not to mention the computer labs and iPads at school. She can do a power point presentation like it's nothing, while I would be fumbling around trying to figure it out. Things change, and we can't force our kids to live in our times, just like our parents couldn't force us to live in their times.
Social Media is here to stay. The sooner us "old" folks realize that and stop being afraid of it, the better I think we will all be. Social Media and the hysteria came into my life when my son was in his early teens and MySpace became the "thing" we embraced it, we talked and talked and talked about responsible online use.
DD has never known life without it, her early days were spent on Club Penguin and the Webkins website. Now at 17, she is an avid Tumblr, Snapchat and instagram user. She has no use for Facebook since in her words us "old folks" took over
I don't monitor what she does, where she goes and what she posts. I never have. We have lots of conversations about the subject but I have no desire to peek.
I admit, when DS first had MySpace I used to check in on him once in a while, the hysteria was still very new and I bought into it just a little bit. I was never a parent who demanded passwords, he was friends with me and I could see what he was up too.
As we all got used to social media, I stopped looking at his MySpace, he was doing just fine and frankly, I didn't need to be immersed in a teenage boys MySpace.
When he transitioned to Facebook, again, he and I were friends but he could block me from whatever he chose, I had no access nor did I want it. Given the things from his college days that I did see, I assume he didn't bother to block me. Perhaps it was because I didn't get all spazzy and freak out over the post of him playing beer pong in his student apt. when he was underage.
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