Children and the Internet - Essay Example

?Don’t Talk to Strangers with Candy: Children and the Internet In Dostoyevsky’s famous novel Karamazov Brothers, Ivan Karamazov asks a very provocative question: “If everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what children have got to do with it?” For Ivan Karamazov, a child’s suffering cannot be justified for the sake of eternal harmony. Anyone with a conscience would probably say no to Ivan’s rhetorical question and reject child abuse even for the sake of eternal harmony of the world. Yet, while many children suffer from sexual predators and cyber-bullies, parents seem to be unaware of the dangers lurking behind the internet or they do not bother to disturb their own harmony and take the burden of supervising kids. The aim of this paper is to explore the reasons why parents should monitor the time their children spend on the internet, and show the serious dangers that children come across when their internet time is not being supervised. It is very strange that some parents, who are normally very protective of their children, supervise their behavior in public spaces and warn them against the dangers of the strangers with candy; are not aware that internet is also a public sphere full with dangerous people. The biggest danger of the internet is that it is a virtual space. Hence, when parents think that their children are safe at home in the privacy their rooms, they are neither safe nor private if they have an unsupervised internet connection in their rooms. Thus, the internet creates an illusion of safety and privacy, while the children engage in various activities in the social networking sites. While some parents, whose children are probably better at using technology, are unaware the dangers of the internet; some people, including the educators, know its dangers but still advocate unmonitored internet usage in the name of “teen privacy”. In fact, they seem to be under the illusion that internet activities are private affairs, which are not to be monitored. However, internet is such a place that connects privacy of homes with various virtual communities; thus, most of the internet activities like e-mail, instant messaging, social network sites etc. are social and communal practices not private ones. Hence, monitoring internet activities of the children has nothing to do with their privacy, since they engage in social activities on the internet. Frances Jacobson Harris is one of the people, who underestimate the threats of the internet posed to the children. In her article “Teens and Privacy: Myths and Realities”, she called the parental concern with regard to the dangers of the internet as “technopanic”. Indeed, she seems very naive in a sense that she resorts to the testimonies of her students as evidence of her rather weak arguments. She simply believes that children would automatically block the sexual predators and she supports her naive “belief” with her students’ responses like this: “This guy wouldn't give up asking to meet me in real life (through a game site) so I blocked him.” And this is “end of story” for her (76). However, students’ responses to the casual questions of their teacher are far from being credible sources for an article; thus, her argument is not convincing. Plus, her students’ responses would not change the fact that many children still fell victim to the sexual predators. Indeed, Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky warns families and asks them not to be naive and think “my child knows better” (3). In “Internet Safety Toolkit”, they point out the fact that “predators are skilled at using manipulation. They portray themselves to be a friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, mentor or confidant to a child and even sometimes to the child’s parents or caregivers as well. They sometimes make themselves out to be helpful, interested and wanting to improve the life of their potential victim in some way” (3). Hence, children may not automatically block the masters of sexual manipulation as Harris would like to believe. Moreover, as Tina Martins noted “The impulses that a child or teen displays alone is evidence that they cannot be trusted. For the most part a child or teen is not trusted, not because they are purposefully being deceitful out of wickedness, but because they are learning. They are curious; humans by nature are curious.” Thus, trusting a naturally impulsive child in for his or her own safety would neither be rational nor sensible. Plus, such trust puts so much burden and responsibility on child’s shoulders; it is parents’ duty to protect the child not the child’s. Furthermore, Harris continually underestimates the dangers of the internet as if she is trying to ease her mind and buy some “harmony” at the expense of a child. She happily notes that cyber-bullying is in decline (76). Even if cyber-bullying has been decreasing substantially as she noted, it does not mean that it has totally disappeared. One cannot consent to such horrible act; even only single child has been subjected to it. Moreover, in an attempt to keep the threat at bay, she argues that it only happens to the children who are prone to it, as if bad things don’t happen to good kids. She states that “The fact is that teens are not equally at risk online. Those who are most in danger typically already engage in risky behaviors offline and experience difficulties in other parts of their lives” (77). Nevertheless, she does not support her argument with any scientific researches and credible sources. Again, the only source she cites for her rather naive argument is her students’ accounts. Let’s leave literature and unfounded assumptions aside and take a look at the crude facts about the real dangers of the internet. US Department of Justice stated that “at any given time, 50,000 child predators are on-line prowling for children” (Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky 2). Below statistics taken from “Internet Safety Toolkit” clearly illustrate the gravity of the situation: Fifty nine percent of 7th–9th grade victims said their perpetrators were a friend they know in-person; 36% said it was someone else they know; 21% said the cyber offender was a classmate; 19% indicated the abuser was an online friend; and 16% said it was an online stranger. While 2:3 of teens are likely to be harassed or bullied off-line, nearly 1:3 have been harassed as a result of technology. Seventy one percent of teens receive messages online from strangers, 45% of teens have been asked for personal information online and 30% of teens contemplate meeting a person they met online (Teenage Research Unlimited, 2006). Forty two percent of youths (age 10–17) have seen internet porn in the past year. Two-thirds of these exposures were unwanted (DeNoon, 2007). (2) Above statistics show that how widespread and in close proximity the internet abuse is. Thus, it does not only happen to some bad boys or bad girls already engaged in dangerous activities; it could happen virtually to anyone and the threat is posed by anyone including friends. Hence, parents should be aware of these threats and monitor their children accordingly. The advice of Attorney General of Texas is valid not only for Texas parents but all parents who cared about their children: “Cyber crime investigators across the state have seen firsthand the dangerous criminals that lurk online. Texas parents must remain vigilant and remind their children that cyber predators pose a constant and very real threat.” Furthermore, child pornography and human trafficking is on a steady rise with the popularization of the internet since the 1990s. Below graphic illustrates the increasing rate of sexual offenders. Graph 1 According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, there was a 15% annual average increase and sex offenses have become one of the fastest growing crimes handled by the Federal justice system (Child Abuse Statistics). It seems that popularization of the internet made sex offenses easier and faster, while making the victims more accessible. To make the matter worse, according to The Internet Watch Foundation report, % 80 of the victims on child sexual abuse websites, are under 11 years old. Even babies are sexually molested on these websites, as it can be seen from the chart below, % 10 of the victims appear to be under 2 years old. Graph 2 Above chart clearly shows that teens and even babies are subjected to online sexual abuse, and it is unthinkable that these babies involved in dangerous activities before they were molested on the internet. If Ivan Karamazov had lived in our ages, he would have committed suicide seeing little babies raped on the internet. These charts show how grave the danger posed by the internet. Hence, the parents must take online sexual risks more seriously. Thus, it has nothing to do with “teen privacy” or “my child knows better” attitude, while sexual predators are freely roaming in the living rooms and bedrooms using the internet as a mere facade. According to Minikel and Kearon, “the best way for parents to protect their children is to educate them about risky online behaviors and to monitor them when they are online” (2). Nevertheless, as Sonia Livingstone and Magdalena Bober have shown, the parents themselves are unaware of the threat and underestimate the risks of the internet. In fact, children had more problematic online experiences than their parents have ever assumed. Livingstone and Bober provide clear and reliable statistics in regard to the parental underestimation: For example, nearly half (46%) of 9-19 year-olds who go online at least once a week say that they have given out personal information while only 5% of parents think their child has given out such information. Similarly, while 57% of these young people have come into contact with pornography on the internet, only 16% of their parents believe this to have occurred. And again, while one in three say they have received nasty or sexual comments online, only 7% of parents think that their child has received sexual comments, and only 4% think that their child has been bullied online. (6-7) Above statistics show that parents are extremely naive with regard to the serious dangers of the internet. They do not seem to have grasped the gravity and scope of the threat. Indeed, threat is more widespread (half of the children disclose personal information, one in three receives sexual comments etc. ) than they have ever imagined. Only few parents are aware of the danger and have a realistic idea about what’s going on the internet; the rest prefer to close their eyes to the grim realities of the internet. Thus, not only the children should be educated, but parents too. The parents must also go through an extensive training about internet safety and risky online behaviours so that they can protect and monitor their children. Besides sexual predators, cyber-bullying is another great danger of the internet. Cyber-bullying is very similar to bullying, however it takes place online. Children and teens are bullied in cyber space, someone else makes them feel bad about themselves and can cause a great impact in their lives. Alejandro Gonzalez’s article, “High- tech Bullying May be on the Rise. Study: Girls Text Message Threats” presents the troubling trend of online harassment. He notes that ““In a small-scale study presented at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association here this week, researchers surveyed 65 girls ages 15-18 in an upscale Sacramento suburb in 2004 and found that self-identified female bullies most often textmessaged harassment by cellphone, preferring it nearly 2 to 1 over email, websites and instant messaging. About 45% had been victims of cyber-bullying (1)”. These statistics show how widespread cyber-bullying is; almost half of the girls suffer from it. It seems that children and teens harassed continuously on the internet and the psychological repercussions of these harassments are not known yet. As Juliana Raskauskas argued it creates a sense of helplessness in vulnerable children, nevertheless neither parents nor researchers know how deep children’s online scars and psychological traumas due to cyber-bullying. In order protect children from cyber-bullying, social networking cites must be monitored, because they are the main places where teens and children are being harassed or bullied. Such abuse should be reported or children should not post so many personal facts in their profiles. In their article entitled “Are social networking sites a source of online harrassment for teens?” Sengupta, Anirban, and Anoshua Chaudhuri highlight the need for parental supervision specially against information dissemination. They argue that incidences of online abuse may depend on a variety of factors (6). They also take into consideration whether a teen has an online profile on sites such as MySpace or Facebook and whether these profiles are protected, i.e., only visible to friends. (6). McCarty, Cheryl, Aimee D. Pravitz, Linda E. Derscheid and Bette Montgomery also warn against sharing personal information in “Perceived Safety and Teen Risk Taking in Online Chat Sites.” They talk about how teens perceive the chat rooms and how they tend to take risks when chatting with a stranger and at the same time giving personal information. The study done, showed how teens shared personal information with people they did not know but considered friends and thought they could trust them right away. They also note that “adolescents who have difficulty with face to face social interaction are more likely to look to sources like online chat sites for relationship development. Efforts to improve social development in adolescents need to be supported by parents, but can be implemented in the classroom environment as well.” Hence, parents must advise their children when they face a dangerous situation. Such dangerous situation might include entering in a chat room where suspicious activity might be taking place or if a stranger starts asking questions that are a bit too personal. Colleen Gengler also recommends the parents to check the history of the internet often to see where their children have been: “Checking the history of what Internet sites have been accessed on the computer. If the file has been emptied, it is probably for a reason. Teens should be told that the history will be checked periodically. Knowing they are being monitored helps teens monitor themselves”. To sum up, sexual predators hiding in the disguise of the internet pose the most serious threat to children, including sexual abuse and rape. Cyber-bullying is the second most important danger that children continuously faced. Although cyber-bullying does not seem to have dire consequences, physical or immediate dangers; it may cause deep psychological problems in children’s developing psyches. Psychological repercussions of cyber-bullying must also be studied in the future researches. Lastly, parents must educate themselves and their children against the online risks and dangers lurking behind the internet so that they can keep their children alive and healthy. Works Cited Abbot, Greg. “Keeping young Texans Safe on Digital Playgrounds This Summer.” Texas Attorney General. July 2011. “Child Abuse Statistics”. Applicationblocker.com. Web. Gengler, Colleen. “ Teens and the Internet.”A survival Guide for Parents of Teenagers. The College of Education and Human Development. University of Minnesota. Print. Gonzalez, Alejandro. “ high- tech Bullying May be on the Rise. Study: Girls Text Message Threats.” USA Today Apr. 2006. Print. Harris, Frances J. “Teen and privacy Myths and Realities” Intelectual Freedon Online 39 (2010): 74-79. Print. Internet Safety Toolkit. Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky.Web. Livingstone, Sonia and Magdalena Bober. “ Regulating the Internet at Home: Contrasting the Perspectives of Children and Parents.” LSE Research Online (2006): 93-113. Print. Martins, Tina. Why Parents Should Monitor Internet use by Teens as well as Younger Children. Helium. Web. 2011. McCarty, Cheryl, Aimee D. Pravitz, Linda E. Derscheid and Bette Montgomery. “Perceived Safety and Teen Risk Taking in Online Chat Sites.” Cybersychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 14 (2011): 169-174. Print. Minikel, Pat and Joan Kearon. “Promoting Internet Safety for Middle School Students.” Jericho Middle School Library News 5 (2006): 2-8. Print. Sengupta, Anirban, and Anoshua Chaudhuri. “Are social networking sites a source of online harrassment for teens? Evidence form survey data.”Children and Youth Services Review 33 (2011): 284-290. Print. Read More