A few years ago, I accidentally took a room full of factory workers to a pornographic website in the middle of a computer class. I was tired and had been teaching the same classes from 9AM to 9PM, to different shifts of workers in the same factory. As we toured the Internet, I told them all to type a web address, but I accidentally got it wrong.
The whole room gasped as the website appeared. They all got an eye full.
I immediately had them go to a different website and had visions of being reprimanded, or my department losing a client, because of my mistake.
The next day, with the next shift, the workers asked, "Are you going to take us to that web site too?" They all knew the web address.
"No. And no one in here is allowed to go to it either."
I'm more than grateful I didn't make the same mistake at home. We have an Internet filter, but filters are not foolproof. I discovered that the day I did a Google search for a demonstration video. God was gracious, and my children were distracted when the video showed.
Our kids will live in an information age. How do we protect their innocence, not only from the bad guys, but also from the careless mistakes of their parents?
Lay Down the Law
First, establish rules. A 4H computer manual for young kids has the following sample rules (paraphrased and summarized):
- I will not give out personal information such as my real name, address, phone number, parents' work address, phone number, or name and location of my school without my parents' permission.
- I will tell my parents right away if I come across any information that makes me feel uncomfortable.
- I will never agree to get together with someone I meet online without first checking with my parents. If my parents agree to the meeting, I will be sure that it is in a public place and bring my mother or father along.
- I will never send a person my picture or anything else without first checking with my parents.
- I will not respond to any messages that are mean or that in any way make me feel uncomfortable. It is not my fault if I get a message like that. If I do, I will tell my parents right away so that they can contact the online service.
- I will talk with my parents so that we can set up rules for going online. We will decide upon the time of day that I can be online, the length of time I can be online, and appropriate areas for me to visit. I will not access other areas or break these rules without their permission.
Other restrictions I include are that Internet surfing must be done on a family computer, in a readily available place, where my husband or I can observe any time. It must be done while we are home so we can observe.
Get a good Internet filter, but don't rely entirely upon it to keep your child safe. I use two different junk email filters to clear garbage from my inbox, but junk messages still occasionally make it through. Outlook has an additional safety feature in that no email message will include graphics until I confirm its address is a safe sender.
Privacy Issues
How do we protect Internet privacy in an era when you can type a phone number into a search engine and generally find the person's name, address, and a map to their home? Cross-check directories for phone numbers have existed for decades. Now, they are just easier to access. If this happens when you type in your phone number, jump through the hoops to delist yourself.
Give no personal information. Create a secondary email address that you use for all web queries. That's the address I use whenever signing up for web services that require an email address. Once I started using that address for signups, the junk in my inbox gradually decreased. I go to the alternate address once every week or so and delete the piles of junk mail it accumulates.
Guard your friends' and other people's Internet privacy as much as you do your own. Most email programs have a bcc: section when composing email addresses. When you use this, other people cannot see to whom an email message is sent. When I send a bulk email, I often use this so other people's email addresses are not distributed.
Don't distribute other people's email addresses without their permission. If you have an email address of a minor child, never, ever, forward that email address without the parents' permission.
Never send an email when angry. Email shows no emotion or inflection. Never, ever, send an email that assassinates someone's character. What if the person who reads it has just received tragic family news or is about to leave for an important meeting? You don't know what they will be doing when they read it or what they will need to do.
When our children learned to walk, they sometimes stumbled, walked too fast, or wobbled. We didn't forbid them to walk, but helped them to do it safely and with confidence. The same goes for surfing the Internet. They will live in an information age, vastly different from our world. We must find ways to help them learn to use the Internet safely, so they will gain the life skills they will need for a lifetime.
In our home, that has meant finding ways to surf safely, play some online games, and chat with friends. If your kids instant message, make sure it is only with people whom you both know. Never, ever, solicit messages from people you don't know. What if a single letter in that unknown email address is wrong, and instead of getting a young potential friend, you instead stumble upon an online predator? If I can give the wrong web address to a room full of students, how easy would it be to give the wrong email address to someone?
When our son was little, there was a man (a distant cousin) in town who had the same name – and same middle initial. We learned of him when our son was two, and I got an urgent phone call one night, "Put him on the phone right now!" My son was in bed sleeping. I refused, and the person added, "But he's supposed to fix my car!" Then I explained the case of mistaken identities. We had similar issues in our library, ensuring books were checked out on the correct library card. Imagine what might have happened had their email addresses also been similar.
I never post photos of children on the Internet. Yes, it seems fun and innocent, but it isn't worth the risk. The only way I would do so is on a restricted website with password access.
If you're involved with a website for events involving children, think carefully about what and how you list that information. Don't include photos of kids that identify them by name. Once I saw an athletic team that posted the names of all their team members and then posted their practice schedules, along with contest schedules – including the dates and places of all away games. Let's think for a moment. If I wanted to snatch one of those kids, would my job have just become easier because I could target a kid and make a good guess when he would be off his home turf?
If you post emails to a list, don't post information telling when you're leaving for vacation or for how long. Would you put a sign on your front door that says, "The Jones family will be vacationing at Panama Beach this week and will return on Friday"? That's an open door to trouble. Don't do the same online either.
When my children were little, I sometimes used a baby monitor while they napped. Now I monitor by checking their email and occasionally looking at the histories of where they surf on the Internet. I want to know where they go when I am not looking over their shoulders.
Our children will use the Internet in ways we can never imagine. Let's set the example and give them tools so they can use it responsibly – and safely.
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