One of the major news stories this morning was the agreement that MySpace and 49 Attorney Generals have reached to protect minors from online predators. One of the major concerns by watchdog groups and lovers of children everywhere (the good kind of love, not the NAMBLA kind of love) was the lack of parental control over their children’s ability to have a MySpace page. The ingenious solution that the collective brainpower of Rupert Murdoch’s multi-billion dollar empire and our country’s Attorney Generals have developed is the creation of a database where parents can submit their children’s email address, wherein they will be prohibited from creating a MySpace page. I hear the trumpets of heaven welcoming this momentous initiative.
Because, you know, like, it is going to be such a drag and like totally unfair, to, you know, have to spend a whole two minutes, to like, create a whole new email address at like either Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail or AIM or BlueBottle.
Parents, I have a piece of advice for you. You are NEVER going to be smarter than your kids when it comes to dealing with the internet. It just isn’t going to happen. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy but I have come to grips with the fact that my kids are going to be laughing at me for whatever the future equivalent is for programming the clock on the VCR.
You have two choices. One, you can be a Luddite and ban any form of internet connectivity in your home. Or two, you can just trust your kids. If you go with the first choice, be prepared to have raised a kid that is several steps behind their peers when they enter the real world and most likely will end of like the preacher’s daughter when she goes to college. Lying on the floor of a frat house passed out drunk in hopefully only her own puke.
In my oh so humble opinion, the job of parents is not to protect children from the bumps and bruises of life, but to prepare them for dealing with whatever the world throws. Face it, you and I are never going to be able to foresee all of the challenges they are going to deal with. Our best hope is to build a foundation of love, respect, justice and integrity upon which they can survey the world and shape it in their image.
Oh yeah, and Sophie, if you ever read this, it doesn’t apply to you.
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5 comments:
I'm so glad yo my baby's daddy. Roots and wings, baby. Roots and wings.
Haha you know I had a similar conversation with a friend recently about when I have kids. Oh the poor number of young-uns I've had work for me who have been sheltered and hidden from the world only to watch them go to college and be wholly unprepared for what the "open" world has to offer them. I've said time and again that it is not our duty to hide are kids from the evils of the world but to show them and prepare them to deal with those evils in the right way!
I mean I was taught every curse word by second grade, could watch R-rated movies by middle school, smoked at 14, and experimented with drugs before high school was over and look how I turned out......oh wait shelter your kids!!!!!
This comes down to the government trying to raise the kids that parents leave behind. We have come into a time where parents no longer take responsibility for the actions of their children.
Yes, sexual predetors are an issue in this day and age but by being a part of your childs' daily life you can explain to them why they need to be cautious who they talk with and what information they give out.
I can already see it - Someone will hack the database with all the children's email addresses and it will be on ebay for the slime of the earth. Good job, game over.
BTW - awesome blog Roy :)
I feel compelled to comment on the blog... but I keep going back to the preacher's daughter comment at college... was I really that bad?
:)
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