It’s Not Easy Being a Good Parent in the Digital Age

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I’m turning my blog today over to Kim Komando.  She is a nationally syndicated talk show host, focusing on the Internet and digital consumer electronics.  Kim and I whole-heartedly believe in protecting children and below she details some very important points parents need to be aware of in this digital age.

It’s Not Easy Being a Good Parent in the Digital Age
Kim Komando

I received a call on my national radio show a few weeks ago. A concerned father wanted to know about a particular site on the Internet where his 11-year-old son was chatting online. It seemed harmless. His son created a cartoon-like representation of himself called an avatar.

Dad approved of it. But soon, the son was buying virtual goods for his avatar. Dad took a closer look at what his little boy was about to purchase. Good thing; they were sex toys.

Far too often, parents don’t get involved with their children’s online activities until something bad happens. They dismiss the warning signs. They don’t monitor what the kids are doing because they don’t have the time, their child would never do that, or some other lame excuse.

I am still astounded by the parents who don’t want to invade their child’s privacy. They don’t think it is right to snoop on their child’s Web travels, e-mail and text messages. They usually liken it to reading a teenager’s hidden diary. “No one should do that,” they say.

If only it were that simple.

With the Internet now in our homes and on our phones, this wonderful digital world has brought the inappropriate and criminal elements directly into our lives. What seems harmless and fun can quickly turn into a pedophile’s dream and a parent’s nightmare.

For instance, you may be unaware of Web sites where kids use Webcams. In effect, they broadcast live video and audio from their bedrooms. The people using the live broadcasting sites can watch them. They can leave comments. You can bet pedophiles are watching them, too.

Pedophiles have actually helped kids set up sites. They have arranged credit card acceptance through online payment sites. The children perform sex acts, broadcast with Webcams. The pedophiles pay to watch.

The other day my 8-year-old son Ian received a text-message from his friend John. John wanted to know if he downloaded a particular free game from iTunes. The rule in my home is that before anything gets downloaded, Ian and I learn more about it. I need to approve it.

The game these two boys were talking about had a plot something like this: A convicted felon escapes from prison. He is roaming the streets of downtown Los Angeles. He needs to make money to survive and go on missions. To do this, he has to kill people.

Needless to say, that game didn’t make it onto his phone.

Social-networking sites are less dangerous. But you still have to watch what children say. They have profiles. Be sure they’re not including their phone numbers and addresses.

Again, the best protection is alert parents. Don’t wait for trouble! Be proactive!

Need some help? Here are tips to help you get in front of the issues.

* Find out if sex offenders live in your area http://www.komando.com/kids/tip.aspx?id=2306
* Cell phone plans that put you in control and even tell you where the phone is located http://www.komando.com/kids/tip.aspx?id=3861
* Figure out text messaging lingo http://www.komando.com/kids/tip.aspx?id=3496
* Control kids iTunes use http://www.komando.com/kids/tip.aspx?id=4092
* The free tool that I use to block inappropriate content in my home http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=6501

The Kim Komando Show (www.komando.com) is the largest nationally syndicated weekend talk radio show. Kim Komando focuses on the Internet and digital consumer electronics. Komando also distributes the Kim Komando Digital Minute, a one-minute consumer update on digital news.  

Families Need a No Wireless Zone

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“Technology is the Evil Empire, Bent On Destroying Family Intimacy!” That’s the headline I’d like to put on this post, but guns don’t shoot people - people shoot people - so technology is not destroying families. People are destroying their own families.

The technology I’m talking about is texting, video gaming, Facebook, email, Twitter, MySpace and more. Remember when the only complaint about lack of communication in families was when family members were all in separate rooms watching different television programs? Well, now, family members can all be in the same room, totally ignoring each other for the sake of fake friends and useless information, instead of for family conversations. Some family members even text each other from different parts of the same home, rather than walk the 15 feet, hug, and talk to each other.

I remember the not-so-recent TV ads that promoted a family eating dinner together. Now, if you showed an ad with a family at the dinner table, there’d have to be a sign nearby that said “No Wireless Zone.” I wonder what depth of interaction is being missed because one is getting superficial “quickies” from texting or emailing or Facebooking?  On the other hand, I already know that we’re less able to engage in reasoned, significant discourse and profound intimacies these days, because, from the age of 4 or 5, we’re geared toward the superficial, faceless exchange of comments on each other’s web pages.

Parents, you must get yourselves into gear and limit the amount of time per day donated to the wireless world outside of work. Otherwise, over time, there’ll be no need for lips and vocal cords and eye contact, and we’ll evolve into “thumbs only” beings who just peck away with a false sense of actually participating in the real world.

The Emptiness of Internet “Friending”

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Either directly (e.g., sadness about not having a relationship with a parent or sibling) or indirectly (e.g., having trouble being intimate), more and more callers to my radio program report a sad sort of alienation from close, loving relationships. Yet the numbers of people deeply invested in “virtual” relationships via Internet “friending” social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, is growing exponentially. We are involved more in frivolous levels of intimacy and less invested in warm, caring, loving, involved relationships.

The pseudo meaningfulness we imagine as we add our names and faces to someone’s Internet site is addictive, yet ultimately vacuous. There isn’t really anyone out there who cares enough to hold your hand when you are in pain.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of California reported last week that 28% of Americans interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with family members. That’s nearly triple from the numbers in 2006.

In the old days when television was young, families watched together in one room. Now there are TVs in every room of the home, with 500 or more channels, and the family is dispersed, with each “doing their own thing.” The Internet is a one-on-one, non-family experience also - breaking down the cohesiveness of family dynamics, parenting, sharing, and plain old caring.

The problem is that people are, by nature, gregarious. That means we need company. When we spend our time with the technology that minimizes the intimacy of company, we forever alter the ability of individuals to actually experience pure intimacy in a positive, ultimately satisfying manner. And the experience of having lots of so-called “friends” on the Internet is beguiling, but empty — -in effect, a distorted form of solitude.

There is no wonder that so many people have a deep problem with being able to love - they mostly want to be satisfied by flattery, freedom from reciprocal responsibility and the reality of obligations and responsibilities, much less sacrifice for the general good or the benefit of another.

Technological advances in “communication” have actually increased the number of people you can interact with, but have more importantly diluted out the meaningfulness of those same interactions.

Think of families together at dinner, and a whole town helping rebuild your barn. Compare that to what you have now in your life. Which is better for quality of life?

Social Networking for Tots

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If I were any more disgusted with modern parenting my head would explode.  I just about screamed so loudly that they could hear me in Dallas, where the Dallas Morning News published a piece with the headline:  “Social Networking Sites Cater to Moms and Babies.”  What?  What?  What?  Internet social networking for babies?  What the heck does that even mean?

I’ll tell you what it means: it’s another self-centered, insensitive, lazy, neglectful way for most mothers to pretend they actually care about their children and are making the sacrifices and efforts to give kids what the kids NEED.

Here’s a great comment from the article: “The messages, of course, are from parents, usually moms, who say sites such as TotSpot provide them with TIME-SAVING ALTERNATIVES to PLAY DATES and FACE-TO-FACE RELATIONSHIPS…”  [Note:  The capitalization is mine].

So let me understand this…these so-called mothers spend time on the computer posting pictures and descriptions of their kids to virtual strangers (which we now call virtual “friends”) and get texted back with the saying, “You’ve been tickled,” and they assume that this in any way serves any need for any baby or toddler?

Other equally ridiculous mothers (and all these women actually gave their real names…is there no shame?) are quoted as saying that they don’t have time (what happened to MAKING time) for actual play dates…this way they can connect with moms and kids without leaving the house or the office.

Since when were play-dates only about the moms?  I always thought play-dates were about introducing children - FACE TO FACE - to other children, adults, environments, pets, experiences, and so forth.  I didn’t realize play-dates were just “jabber jabber” time for busy busy women who seem to wish to live in a virtual world rather than the concrete one their children will have to deal with eventually.  These are probably the kind of women who get crazed when their husbands choose to do the same with naked women on the internet.

Aside from the oh so obvious problems with parents putting information about children on the internet (a pedophile’s play land), it directs children (from the time they’re infants and toddlers) toward a life on the computer instead of in the park, the back yard, the street, a friend’s home, etc.

Many of the parents spoke about being “proud” of their babies and wanted to show them off and have them - even before they can burp on their own - have their very own social web page.  This is so utterly pathetic.

This is all about three things:
1. FEELING, versus  BEING connected.
2. FAKING being a parent who nurtures, protects, teaches, and loves by a web page    
3. SHOWING off your child and text-gossiping

Let me go back to that one most damning statement in the Dallas Morning News piece: “The messages, of course, are from parents, usually moms, who say sites such as TotSpot provide them with time-saving alternatives to play dates and face-to-face relationships, while helping them connect with parents and children in nontraditional ways.”

We’ve come a long way, baby…we’ve become women…mothers…who are too busy to introduce our kids to life.  Great.

Promiscuity and Social Networking Websites

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Turns out that the latter leads to the former!  Recent research by the University of Buffalo Department of Communication and the University of Hawaii reveals that the people who watch reality television visit social networking websites to engage in behaviors like the celebrities they see on shows like American Idol or Survivor.

When people on reality TV are rewarded for their behavior, it communicates to the (usually) young audience that these behaviors are good things.  These so-called “reality” TV shows depict people being exploitive, deceitful, hyper-emotional, vengeful, conspiratorial, sexually promiscuous, generally undignified, immodest, self-centered, and basically exhibitionistic.

According to the university research, “heavy reality TV viewers may adapt personality traits association with celebrities….Reality TV even may be to blame for the erosion of the distinction between the everyday world and the celebrity world.”

This phenomenon is encouraging young folks to make personal information about themselves publicly available online.  We’ve all heard about the proliferation of youngsters sending photos to each other and through the Internet, revealing their genitals and showing themselves engaged in various sexual acts.  Instead of this being “shameful,” it’s trendy.  Parents are becoming way too lax in allowing their children access to electronic equipment, from cell phones to the Internet, without any supervision.  So, with a little “push” and little “pull” back, kids are getting themselves into situations which will impact them for a lifetime.

When children behave like out-of-control celebrities, including drug use, sex, having out-of-wedlock babies, “shacking up,” and testing their parents’ limits as well as the limits of the law, they are less likely to be studying, participating in sports, or contributing charitably in their neighborhoods.

Do Teens Yearn for Internet Seduction?

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Reuters’ Julie Steenhuysen wrote a news essay recently which was a real shocker.  She quoted Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham:

A lot of the characterizations that you see in Internet safety information suggest that sex offenders are targeting very young children and using violence and deception against their victims….

Especially since social networking sites became popular, people are suggesting that these offenders are using information to stalk and abduct their victims.  We are not seeing those types of cases.  The great majority of cases we have seen involved young teenagers, mostly 13, 14, 15 year old girls who are targeted by adults on the Internet who are straightforward about being interested in sex. 

From the perspective of the victim, these are romances.

Among the study’s other findings:

* Internet offenders pretended to be teenagers in only 5% of the crimes studied.
* Nearly 75% of victims who met offenders did so more than once.
* Youths at risk have “buddy lists” including strangers, and they discuss sex online with strangers.
* Boys who are gay or questioning their sexuality are more susceptible to Internet-initiated sex crimes than other populations, resulting in 15% of criminal cases.

Other than religious institutions, there is virtually nothing in our society that elevates sexuality to a spiritual status.  This is the result of a society which takes kids out of school (without parental notification) for abortions; which has peer sex classes showing how to put condoms on bananas; which has “sex fairs” at major colleges and universities; which has porn as mainstream, primetime television and advertising; which has practically naked models in store windows for Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret; which has families repeatedly torn apart by busy, “two parent career” homes, divorce, re-marriage, shack-ups, and other adult misbehaviors that emotionally devastate children who look elsewhere for love and comfort. 

What is normalized is yearned for by children who want to be “adults.”

Facebook Breakup Revisited

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In response to my blog on the degeneration of interpersonal relationships through Facebook, MySpace, and the swell of gossip media outlets, I got this from Paul French:

You are so correct.  My wife came across a great quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that I believe explains a lot of this:  ‘Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.’

Thanks, Paul!

“Breaking Up” With Facebook

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A recent essay in the New York Times (December 2, 2007) talked about the growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and others where the word “friends” is used to describe email relationships with folks we barely know.  Humans are gregarious creatures and fare better belonging to networks of family, community, spiritual groups, clubs, and so forth - all of which are sustained through face-to-face contact.

The bottom line is that the more time we spend online, the less time we spend having true relationships complete with challenges, vulnerability, risks and profundity.  These are not real-world relationships with depth.  These on-line relationships are shadows and facsimiles which ultimately amount to little more than casual, superficial experiences.

One mother, Jene, who listens regularly to my radio program, sent me this letter her 21 year-old son wrote to Facebook.  I suggest you show this to all your children and read it twice yourself if you are hooked to on-line pseudo-friendships:

“As a mother of two young adults, I’ve witnessed their obsessive involvement with the many electronic forms of communication that are all the rage in recent years…email, instant messaging, texting, and the several web-based social networks like Facebook and MySpace.  All are useful communication tools, but often counterproductive in really getting to know people.

It came to my attention that my 21 year-old son took a bold step recently and closed down his Facebook account by writing a breaking-up letter and posting it as a good-bye.  When he shared it with me, I was touched, relieved, and very proud of his stand.  I asked him if I might share this with you.  His grin, soft laugh and nod of his head spoke volumes:
Continue reading “Breaking Up” With Facebook…