They are alone. It's just them and the computer. It's late at night and everyone is asleep or you are at work and they are home from school. Whatever the situation, your kids may be spending a lot of time alone and on the computer. Do you ever wonder what they are doing? Do you check? Do you talk to them about it? Have you set rules? Do they have a time limit online? Do you know the dangers and risks? Do they?
Remember the concern that used to be expressed over using the TV as a babysitter? Well, take that concern and multiply it by like a billion and that is how concerned you should be about leaving your kids alone online without any rules, restrictions, monitoring or limits.
Think about it. You leave a 15 year old boy alone with access to millions of porn sites. You really don't think he is going to look? You leave a 11 year old boy at home alone with his friend on a rainy day. You really don't think he is going to do a Google search for some choice words he recently heard? You leave a 13 year old girl alone in her room for hours every night. You really don't think she is going to be tempted to leave a nasty comment on the wall of the boy that just broke up with her? You allow your 11 year old to play Zynga Poker on Facebook every day. You really don't think there is an increased likelihood that he will start gambling with real money as soon as he finds he can online?
You need to wake up and take responsibility. As a parent,you need to be accountable for what your children are doing online.
Consider this. if an employee in Company X views porn on the Internet at his work computer and another employee walks by and sees it and is offended - she has a case for a lawsuit -- against the company. For years now, companies have been held accountable for what their employees do online. Their concern over lawsuits and other legal actions has led companies to take action and deploy Internet usage policies and monitoring tools that allow them to be accountable and ensure that employees do not cross the line online.
It's a matter of time before governments start to try to legislate accountability for online behavior at home. Cyberbullying, Internet Addiction, pedophiles, underage gambling, sharing inappropriate content among minors are only some of the issues. The liability is with parents. While until now, cases of cyberbullying often result in no more than a slap on the wrist or maybe forbidding a child from using the computer for a short time, as the phenomena grows out of control and the implications become more serious and overwhelming, something will be done.
But legislation and the law should not be the driving motivation for parents to wake up and be accountable. You already know that your kids need structure, rules, a schedule to follow in real life. You need to recognize that same goes for their online life. Just like you have visibility into what books, magazines, gadgets, products, etc enter your home and you expose your children to, take the same approach with what they do online. Can you imagine telling your 16 year old son he can join friends for an outing to a peep show? Probably not. So why can he sit in his room alone and do the same thing? Maybe he is or maybe he is not. but if you have never talked to him about it and at least set expectations and rules, how would he know that he should place limitations on himself?
Don't expect, even the most responsible and well behaved children and teens, to be mature enough to exercise self discipline. Children expect that if something is accessible to them, it's permitted. Why wouldn't they?
The best solution? Set clear rules, discuss how they are permitted to use the Internet, set clear limits concerning time online and content and install a web filter that blocks out content that no one in the house should have reason to need - pornography, gambling, violence, drugs, pro-ana etc.
