Here Be Dragons: Where Your Kids are on the Internet
My five-year-old recently used some of her carefully hoarded birthday money to buy herself a Webkinz. She generously bought one for her little sister, too. The girls have spent the past week naming, cuddling and grooming this fluffy stuffed critters. They’ve made collars and bracelets and hats for them, all with matching sparkly beads and ribbon.
Luckily for me, I don’t think either girl has realized yet that there’s a Webkinz website where they can extend their play into the Intertubes. It’s only a matter of time, though.
Once they do start socializing online, I’ll be able to turn to helpful resources like CNN’s recent report about kids online. The report tells us that kids are using social networks on the Internet in ever greater numbers. They also reveal the shocker that kids are flouting age restrictions on sites like Facebook and Myspace. Social networking starts younger every year. There are sites devoted to social networking for kids as young as five.
To learn something I didn’t already know, I followed BlogHer’s Susan Getgood over to Radical Parenting, a site that offers up parenting insights from a kid’s perspective. A host of articles awaited me there, offering tips for parents and kids on how to deal with everything from “cyberbullying” to “social networking fatigue”. I don’t think my five-year-old has hit the fatigue point yet, but I did bookmark the site for later.
My only pressing concern about my kids and computers right now is keeping them playing outside, actively using their imaginations instead of being passively entertained. So far, they’ve been pretty compliant about that. I expect the fight will get harder when they learn to read and type on their own. It’ll be even harder to pry them away once they realize there are Other People on the other side of the screen, and that some of those people are their friends. I know how hard it is to pry myself away from the laptop to go indulge in a little real life.
For now, though, they’re blissfully in the dark about Webkinz World. I just have to keep them playing outside till bedtime so they’ve won’t notice what they’re missing on the Web.
What about your kids? Do they use social networking sites? What age should kids start socializing online?
Photo: San Jose Library
Comments I just had a serious talk with my nine year old about an internet danger I wouldn’t have foreseen a few media blitzes ago, making it as clear and inarguable as I possibly could that under no circumstances can kids ever send electronic images of their naked selves to each other, no matter how funny everyone involved thinks it is. I hated explaining this to his fairly innocent, sweet self, who otherwise really might not see the harm in it — but he’s hit that tween stage, and he’s got friends with cameras and email, so I figured I had better let him know about the idiotic ways the laws are being enforced.
I highly recommend the Berkman Center’s recent report on child safety online (for facts instead of hype — the media ignored a lot of this report because it didn’t support the sensational story they wanted to tell) and danah boyd’s work on teenagers’ use of social networking sites, for painting a sensitive and honest and informed picture of what these technologies actually mean in their lives.