Now Consider The Home Front
from
May/June 2006
by Alissa Curran
It’s a school night, and I’m waiting in
line to use the computer in my house. My two sisters are ahead of me
and we’re all in line behind our brother, who’s playing some
brain-rotting game online. There’s only one computer for four kids in
my house, and what makes this situation even more extreme is the
computer’s location—right smack in the middle of the kitchen (nice
move, Dad). It’s invasive, it’s annoying, and most maddening of all, it
bombards me with distractions when I’m struggling to write a big term
paper.
That said, what I recently realized is that
putting the computer in such a public place was perhaps one of the
shrewdest parental moves Dad’s ever made (no, not because he can read
the newspaper online with one hand and invade the fridge with the
other). Why? Because computers today, while very helpful, also come
with two horns and a tail. Put another way, if you think that wireless
laptop you got Suzy for Christmas is being used solely to better her
academic experience, take another look. She’s probably dipping her toes
into the vast, sleazy world of the Internet—and you haven’t a clue.
Today even good kids are likely to be engaged in at least one of the
following online vices: looking at porn, gambling, cheating for school,
flirting with adults, downloading music illegally, or just downloading
someone else’s e-mail (maybe yours) at the local Starbucks. And that
doesn’t even include the ripoff you’re suffering because your Ivy
League college student isn’t getting out of bed to attend the lectures
for which you’ve paid so handsomely. Reason: She can download the
professor’s lecture notes later, so why not snore s’more?
Of course, there’s plenty of innocent Web activity, the normal range of
online communication in which kids freely banter about movies, sports,
and current events. But kids also spend a lot of time gossiping,
cursing, exchanging sexual advice, or finding out where to download the
best porn. Given how little adults can do to stop their children from
wandering the Internet, the allure of the naughty leads them (okay, us)
to become experts in such departments.
Don’t just take my word for it. According to a survey conducted by
i-Safe America (www.isafe.org), a nonprofit foundation endorsed by
Congress, 90% of parents said they know “some” or “a lot” about what
their children do on the Internet. But when the kids were surveyed,
more than 40% said they do not share information about their Internet
use with their parents. My guess is that the real number is even
higher.
If you’re having trouble grasping all this, take a trip over to
MySpace.com, where more than 50 million kids are able to display
pictures and personal profiles of themselves to share with, well, just
about anyone. “The real idiots post their street addresses and
cell-phone numbers,” says one of my friends. She’s right. Girls post
pictures of themselves in nothing but lingerie to attract more “friend
requests”; I know one of these girls who has more than 1,200 “friends”
knocking at her door. A wayward kid? Nope. She’s an accomplished
musician in our local orchestra. This site also posts personal surveys
in which 13- and 14-year-olds fess up to drinking, smoking, and having
sexual experiences in response to questions like “Have you drunk in the
past month?” “Have you smoked in the last month?” “Have you ever been
called a tease?” or “How many drugs have you ever taken?” MySpace
doesn’t perform these surveys, but it does allow kids to post them.
Even kids who aren’t overtly provocative have a hard time avoiding
pedophiles and stalkers on the MySpace site. A quiet, shy high school
junior (female) I know was sent a friend request by a 47-year-old man
who signed himself “I know how to please the ladies.” For its part,
MySpace.com, which receives more than 30 million hits per month,
requires that kids be at least 16 before posting their personal
profiles for all to see. What nobody told the execs at MySpace is that,
duh, kids lie about their age.
You’re probably thinking you don’t have to worry about all this stuff.
Little Cameron is in his first year at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, and
he clearly has no time for such nonsense. But—hold onto your
mouse!—there’s a college version of MySpace.com called Facebook.com,
where college kids are part of a major profile-sharing network in which
they can hook up with (yeah, it means what you think) any creep on
campus, or even from that Sodom-and-Gomorrah school across the lake.
How do I know this, being an innocent high schooler? Because last
year’s high school seniors are this year’s college freshmen, and thanks
to the Web, we’re all still good friends.
While college students have figured out a way to use the Internet so
they can skip class, high school kids have their own Web-based academic
shortcuts. Says one student I know: “When I write history papers, I go
to the Library of Congress website and search for books on my topic,
throw them in my works cited, and never even read them. But the teacher
is impressed.” Teachers, I should add, are fighting back. Some even run
school term papers through a Web-based program, Turnitin.com, that
compares the student’s text with related works and is pretty good at
spotting plagiarism. It should take at least a semester for kids to
figure out a way around that.
One last preconceived notion I would like to dismantle is the whole
business of “parental controls” or “restrictions” set by adults on
computers and even TV. The concept may be comforting, but it’s also
ridiculous, seeing as how I have never had a problem dodging these
obstacles—nor have my friends or many of the kids in this country,
based on statistics from i-Safe. Teri Schroeder, the CEO and founder of
i-Safe, confirms my own belief that kids are savvy enough to undo their
parents’ regulations on the Internet. In a survey where some 12,000
kids were asked if they had “the knowledge or skills to get past a
filter [blocking software],” 31% admitted to knowing how and being
capable of doing so. Says Schroeder: “It is very easy for kids to get
around parental controls. All they have to do is load a different Web
browser onto the computer, without restrictions. If they really want
to, they find a way to get around the locks set up by their parents.”
It’s also often the case that parents obliviously “store” their AOL or
Internet browser passwords, providing kids with free rein in territory
the parents consider to be blocked.
Even at my high school, where the administration goes to great lengths
to provide a safe and secure Internet connection, kids can get around
the blocks to porn sites and the like. “When you do a Google search,
the blocking software identifies illicit sites based on their URL taken
from Google. If you click on the little blue link that says ‘cache’ at
the bottom of every search result, it blocks the software from seeing
the URL, and suddenly everything is accessible,” says one high school
grad.
“Oh, Lissa, it’s getting late. Time to get off the computer.”
Sure, Dad.
