I just received the following feedback from a reader regarding this week's Backspin, What My Parents Don't Know. It should be a warning for every parent about the risks of unfettered Internet access:
Mine wound up dropping her grades, getting depressed almost to the point of suicide & posting pictures of herself. Yeah, both of us should know better. I'm a network administrator & she's been told a ton of stories about what happens to kids in chat rooms, but she got that bad anyway a few years ago. She was 14.
Teenage girls are moody enough, but the loss of her dog coupled with problems at school masked some of the cause. I finally bought a clue & invaded her privacy - found her email accounts & monitored them, logged her chat sessions, etc... It took 5 minutes of reading before I unplugged her Internet connection, leaving the PC since it is required for school work. Her attitude & grades improved. I reinstated the Internet connection a month later & all went back down again. We repeated this cycle a couple more times before I just pulled her PC completely. She had to work on my PC when I wasn't using it & knew I was monitoring her closely. The problem stopped.
Friends & coworkers couldn't believe I took away her PC, her birthday present, after 8 months. I'm still kicking myself that it took me so long & that I let things progress so far when such a simple solution was available. There's a lot of pressure not to be the bad guy, enable your children & all of that. But too much power corrupts & she proved she just wasn't up to the responsibility of an Internet connection, unlike her 2 older brothers. They weren't saints, but they didn't use it to self destruct.
I hope you make this story available to other parents. It was a hard one for me & I'm sure a lot of others could benefit by the example - it was a scary one.
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"What my Parents don't know"
This was a terrific article. I have 3 kids and worry about how they are using the internet. The Internet and a PC are generally required for school work so we monitor but could do a better job. The children all know we monitor. If you, or anyone, have a list of recommended tools for improving the effectiveness of monitoring this would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer a centralised solution as we have 5 computers currently so constant updating can be a weakness in any solution. Also Free tools are always preferred.
Keeping kids busy other ways
My 14 year old son doesn't have his own phone and I monitor his online activities pretty closely. We're not zealots or anything, he just has other things that keep him busy - track, x-country, ultimate, guitar (now the rock band thing may get to be something to worry about...).
Great job!
I love your column and read it every week! I don't have anything to add because my kids aren't old enough to apply to this yet but I wanted you to know that the way you wrote the column and how the "kids worked" was really artistic. Great job! *pat on back*