by Russell M. Stewart
We all remember being children, looking at our parents in disbelief at the oversights, misunderstandings and plain daft ways they behaved towards us. At the time we promised ourselves that one day we’d show them just how it should be done. So here we all are, wondering where on earth it all went wrong. Our children are now shaking their heads at us whilst looking sadly at their pitiful parents, almost certainly promising themselves that one day they’d show us how it should be done. Such is the comedy of life. The truth is that being a parent is never easy, and there have always been dangers, traditions, expectations, risks and issues that have had to be tackled. However, the biggest challenge parents have always faced is that the world into which they bring their children is not the same as the familiar world of their own childhood, and this is where the problems start.
The biggest change in the world which we as parents can see is the introduction and proliferation of computer equipment and technology. As young children ourselves, some of us would have had some experience of innocent little units that could do relatively little, others of us had no experience at all - it was another world. Today, we are bringing our children up in a world we could not possibly have imagined, and seems as far removed from our own childhood as is possible to conceive. Whereas we spent hours riding round on empty streets on our bikes, our children are stuck indoors mesmerised by the images on their computer screen. Our challenges involved cycling all the way down the hill as fast as we could, our children’s seems to be to unlock the secrets of the Shrine of D’Gaarn or kill as many Wailing Jarpees as possible in the hope of a good drop. If this leaves you cold, or dazed, then welcome to the club.
Parents aren’t idiots - we’re most of us quite capable of working a computer, typing up a letter, creating a graph and sending off some emails, but computers seem to have a whole other world built in to them that leaves many of our generation reeling at the prospect. For those of us who shred our telephone and gas bills before binning them, and always ask to see the identity card of the man standing at our doorstep wanting to read our meter, the idea of happily posting your most intimate details on a worldwide system for the entire world to see and do what they like with is awful. Whilst having friends all over the world sounds appealing, having friends we have never met and are never likely to challenges our understanding of what friends are. Just because you hang out in Doom Forest killing dwarves from the opposite faction each evening doesn’t, in our traditional book, constitute a friendship.
Naturally, with so many news stories about the terrible things that happen as a result of the internet, with people masquerading as children in an attempt to lure them into meeting up in the real world, and then never seen again. If you have considered the idea of simply binning the computer and saving a lot of trouble, you certainly wouldn’t be the first parent, or the only one to have such concerns.
Of course, the truth is that computers, and the internet, are no more dangerous than any other aspect of our lives. Yes, we could easily get knocked down and killed crossing the road, a tree might fall over and crush us, or we might go on holiday and get killed by a falling coconut, but we stand more chance of being killed in any of these ways than of any harm coming to us using a computer or the internet. It’s simply a matter of common sense. After all, crossing the road is a fairly straightforward and relatively safe procedure, but lying down in the middle of the motorway is clearly being ludicrously cavalier with our safety. Similarly, using the internet safely is fine, but there are stupid things that we, or our children, can do which we need to be aware of.
It’s important, therefore, that we appreciate what the real risks are when using the internet, because the more we know and understand what the real risks and dangers are, the better we can help inform and advise our children. If we allow them to take advantage of the incredible technologies that surround us, but hold their hand through the learning stages, then we are all far more likely to come out the other side unscathed. If you can understand more about chat rooms, messenger clients, profiles and online games, then there will be more of a chance to chat with our children about what they are doing. We all accept, I’m sure, that we can’t ban them from living in the 21st century, and so we have to accept that, just as we had to learn the dangers of the road, which was not an issue back in our own parents’ or grandparents’ days, our children have to be taught the dangers of life on the digital highway.
In just the same way that we tell children not to talk to strangers, not to accept sweets from people they don’t know, not to go out alone, but to stay with a friend, to report anyone acting strangely, and other basics to help them stay safe when out and about in our own neighbourhoods, making sure that they realise that people they communicate with on the internet have the advantage of anonymity and can disguise themselves far more easily online than they could in real life. A 12 year old boy your child bumps into at the park is clearly exactly that - he needs no further proof to back up his claim, and is therefore probably quite safe as a friend. However, someone online who claims to be a 12 year old boy has only words to prove it, and a photo which could easily be lifted from any of the billions of sources on the internet.
Possibly you may already be aware of the fact that there is a wealth of security software available for parents. These enable you to lock down and protect your computer, installing filters and logs, restrictions and blocking tools, guards and scanners, but to be honest most of this will simply cause our children to be ever more curious about what really is on the other side of the wall you’ve built. We were children once, and we know that the first thing you want to do if told not to look over the wall, is to look over the wall, and most children are smart enough to work out a way of getting past the security. A far more effective way of supporting and protecting them is to communicate with them. To have the computer somewhere publically visible so that you can see what they’re doing, share an interest, and talk with them, is far better than trying to lock everything down and then running away to pretend the dangers will go away.
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