Be a good parent and cybersquat on good usernames for them on the cool services like friendster and compuserve.
A common policy is allowing access under gently supervision by putting the family-use computer is a common area, but with iPhones and Netbooks, that rule is getting to be obsolete.
Hasn't come for me yet, but will soon. Along with traceable for life (corollary: viewable by people who hate you unless you have locked-down access, which is antisocial), mention forwarding of private communication by someone you shouldn't have trusted.
Parents should tell their kids they'll look in occasionally, and do so. Like playing basically privately, but with the door cracked. I'm not sure exactly how this will play out wrt passwords in my case, but being upfront about some but not blanket privacy should be workable.
Don't be mean online is another pretty important one-- writing "You made me mad and I don't want to talk for a while" is much better than "You suck."
Agree about focusing on the wrong dangers. Say "no racy pictures" if the kids are extroverted, I guess.
some but not blanket privacy should be workable.
This is sort of my instinct, too -- though at some point I think we need to give kids increasing privacy, too. I guess being upfront that they will get diminished privacy from us online is a good way of introducing the idea that the privacy of your written, online life is never, by nature, absolute.
Do kids not know that the public library has internet access? Why would you ever tell your parents about your internet-related activities? I question this girl's intelligence.
Public libraries are full of strange people. Not to mention the risk of shelving accidents. Not really a place for kids.
"relational aggression"
This was has been the experience of several friends when their daughters first started with the social networking apps. My sense is that kids kinda just have to get burned once or twice before they learn their lessons, and the best parents can do is be there to dress the wounds.
5: Yeah, strange people like these. Best to stay away.
Keeping kids off the internet is just like keeping the tide from coming in. You just have to show resolve. Ignore the naysayers!
and that anything you say online under your real name will be traceable to you for life.
In other words, you're telling them this will go on your PERMANENT RECORD.
Keegan (6th grade) has a Facebook account. But I can't look at it that often because so many of his friends are all "omg r u goin 2 the game!!!!!!!!! kewl!!!" and it just makes me grind my teeth. On the other hand, I'm proud to report that he uses proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Best I can tell, his friends seem to think that's a charming eccentricity.
The real problem with kiddie porn is that it's exploitive -- for adults, not for the kids themselves.
So what would genuine an und fur sich kiddy porn for the kids themselves -- be like?
People don't ask these important questions. You probably think you love your dog, but have you ever asked yourself what he wants to smell like? Skunk and dead fish, that's what. But what do you do?
You neuter him and destroy his doggy smell with perfumes and unnecessary baths, that's what.
I was actually TOS'd from Q-Link when I was her age for using profanity. How's that for Internet cred?
Hard to imagine there were days when you could have your right to use the Internet completely revoked for calling someone a dick.
13: You're supposed to be packing. Get off the internet!
My teen sister is on it and the thing that bugs me is the same thing that bugs me about my internet use, that it is addictive and detracts from experiencing my daily life. She, like I am to different degrees at different times, would rather be checking for new internet stimulus than being in the company of real people. (Maybe that is just boring people, like her family. I don't know if she seems distracted and impatient to get back to the keyboard when she is with fun people, like her friends.)
But I don't know if that problem is any different from videogames or tv addictions, and in any case doesn't seem fixable. Still, I'd take a step back from any particular application and question whether someone can or should hold out against the mesmerizing screen.
(We don't have to do that in this thread, having hashed it out a number of times. I think that time we arrived at "depends on what your real life is like".)
Set up your home network to route all traffic through a transparent proxy. Install keyloggers on your kids' machines. If they complain, point out to them that you're just teaching them what it'll be like to use the computer at work when they grow up and get a job.
I have 12 nieces and nephews above the age of 15 or so, all of whom have accounts on Facebook. This post inspired me to figure out how many of them are my "friends."
Turns out there was just one who wasn't, and I just now friended her. If she accepts, I will become the third person in my family of my generation to be her friend - turns out her mother is not among her friends, but one of my brothers and one of my sisters is. Altogether, my non-friend niece and I have six mutual friends, all in the family.
So I guess my point is: What's the fuss? You just make sure that you're part of any social networks and you're fine.
E-mail seems like a much bigger problem. And don't get me started on that whole telephone thing - jeez, you wouldn't believe the problems that can come of that.
If you have a recalcitrant and incorrigable niece or nephew, a hostile friending might be advisable.
Man, if your relative is concerned about her daughter's internet use, just wait until she hears about sexting.
The "sexually explicit photos" thing was there in 1965 at least, just without the internet.
Tell them to use pseudonyms if they're writing anything that might embarrass them ten years later. That took me too long to figure out.
I disagree. Pseudonyms are completely unnecessary.
Also, warn them about arguing with people posing as reasonable but secretly armed with heaps of well-worn talking points.
My God, the Usenet posts. I've just spent an hour reading things I wrote on Usenet when I was a teenager. It's half horribly embarrassing fandom-type stuff that I find incredibly disturbing now, and half super-technical questions about things like assembly language and heteroclinic bifurcations that I don't even understand now. At least Usenet posts don't come up much under normal Google searches, these days.
I'd direct them to this recent study, and also (unfortunately) a BB post.
You're right to think that bullying is more of an issue than internet predators. Unless the teen in question is of a sassy mold and is at risk for screwing with cops trying to create trap predators online. Constant vigilance!
16's suggestion is what friends of mine actually did with their children: "they're allowed on the internet unsupervised once they hack daddy's security and get past mommy's firewall".
Their children are surprisingly well adjusted.
My eldest two have Facebook accounts (12 and 10 - yes, they lied about their birthdays!). I keep an eye on them - C and I were rather amused the other day to discover that Violet (the 12 year old) had joined the FB group "If Voldemort had gotten laid none of this shit would have happened". C asked her what that was about because he 'didn't even know what it meant!' She was embarrassed.
She uses the internet for social stuff quite a lot, the 10 year old not so much. They have both set up their own gmail accounts in preference to the ones C set up for them. They both got their introduction to talking to people on the internet via a fan board for a series of books they like. It's moderated gently, by people who seem to be near-enough adults, and is very good from what I can tell at self-regulating, and telling those who act like idiots that they are being idiots. They have meetups, but mine have never wanted to go - I saw one post on there once from someone saying that they thought they might go to a meetup next year, but they were only 14 and they thought that was a bit young still! Which is a fair representation of the kind of place it is - I think it has been a good intro.
I don't ever feel bad about occasionally having a poke about on their computers (both have pc's in their bedrooms, Violet also has a netbook). I've never found anything dodgy. I suppose this might just mean they are crafty enough to hide it, but actually I don't think they are. I would be uncomfortable if they passworded their pc's. Violet just told me she'd set up a Blogger blog - I must find out where that is.
Facebook is safe, so long as you make sure to use the built-in privacy features. Way safer than the rest of the internet. Just make sure to tell your relative to go through the privacy settings on her own to determine when her daughter's profile will show up in a search, who can view which parts of her profile, etc. If only kids in her high school can see her profile, then you shouldn't have to worry about creepy MySpace style stalkers.
I don't necessarily approve of parents' poking around on a kid's profile (as opposed to, say, being "friends" with the kids) but it probably is a much more efficient way to keep track of your kid's minute-to-minute social life than, I dunno, reading her diary and tracking her cell phone with GPS. I would say that if you trust the kid enough not to read her diary, though, then there's no reason to ask for her Facebook password.
By the way -- if the daughter is going to post naked pictures of herself on the internet, then it'll happen whether she's on Facebook or not. So it might as well be in a gated community where only her closest friends will see them, and where they'll probably be flagged and removed even if her parents never check the profile.
4: Not at all, Matt. Much smarter to have Internet access that your parents know about, as cover for Internet access that your parents do not know about. Any intelligent kid knows that having a cover story that your parents will question is only the first line of defense: the second is the story your parents dilligently uncover for themselves by poking around in what they think of as your private area. Genuine privacy for underage kids still living under parental supervision is only achieved by having a private area your parents do not know exists and it does not occur to them to look for because they think they've already invaded your privacy and found out your inmost secrets.
My younger male relatives both have Bebo pages. As far as I can tell they are precisely the sort of thing that'd give some people the horrors -- lots of discussion of being drunk, semi-nude photos of teenagers, etc. However, both of them have 'friended' various relatives, so they aren't exactly being sneaky about it.
Speaking of things that give people the horrors, the Sunday Express was quick to condemn the now teenage survivors of the Dunblane massacre for having drunken Facebook pictures up.
(The journalist who wrote it did the same thing, but she isn't a survivor of a national tragedy so she's allowed.)
The Express article is some disgusting shite and no mistake.
And yeah, the stuff on the various survivor's Facebook and Bebo pages is pretty much par for the course for just about every teenager as far as I can tell.
I mean, obviously most teenagers get drunk and boast about it. I meant that the Bebo/Facebook stuff is par for the course ..
Public libraries are full of strange people.
You jest, but IME this is actually slightly true. I've spent a fair amount of time at various points in my life policing socially marginal and/or creepy people who take advantage of the fact that libraries are open to everyone and Internet terminals are next to each other. For the 20% of kids who don't have good parental watchdogs and haven't developed their own independent radar, it can be really unpleasant when one of those guys* fixates on them.
*They're almost all guys.
But in all honesty, the biggest danger I've seen among preteens using technology is those whose parents have failed to help them develop good judgment in general. Then it just carries over to technology usage. If you're desperately insecure and have no baloney detector or sense of self-preservation, your problem is that you're desperately insecure and have no baloney detector or sense of self-preservation, not that OMG technology is eeeeevil!!!111!
Of course, I'm biased because I was online as a young teen doing all sorts of stuff and making friendships my parents knew next to nothing about. Naturally I flatter myself that that all went well because I had such exceptional judgment -- but the serious part of me really does think that having a chance to make decisions and think for yourself (within general boundaries) at age 5 and 8 is about the best preparation you can have for making good decisions at age 15 or 35 or whatever.
The extent to which this thread is converging on the "playing in the woods" thread is striking, but maybe not surprising.
I tremble to think of the fate of the poor man who succumbed to 5-year-old Witt's illegal advances.
My Fargo niece corresponded in French with a considerably older Brazilian man when she was in 11th grade. I didn't eavesdrop and she didn't tell me anything, but I presumed* he was imagining a exotic, statuesque northern ice princess of the Ingrid Bergman type, which is not descriptive of my niece.
*It's equally possible that they were just talking about proper reptile care, her hobby, but where's the fun in presuming that?
In Oregon I knew a woman of NYC Puerto Rican background who went to the library every day after school and stayed until closing, because nether the neighborhood nor her family was nurturing or even safe. She grew up to be a successful professional and credits her good luck in life to the library more than anything else.
This is the kind of thing that doesn't get found in cost-benefit analyses, and I don't think that it's for technical reasons. The welfare of individuals and populations, especially the non-property-owning individuals and populations, is very poorly described in most economic analyses, including the neoliberal ones.
And I meant to conclude, "because it's not important to them."
Jesurgislac is obviously an expert at this.
J: Can I consult with you when my kids get to be tweens?
I'm wondering if there isn't going to be a cultural shift in attitudes in what is considered to be horribly embarrassing or a mark of bad character. I can't see someone born in 1990, running a company in 2030, getting the vapors because someone has pictures of themselves drunk in college on Facebook.
Also, if we're all on Facebook, by the time our kids are on Facebook, it will be for old people. So.
Also, if we're all on Facebook, by the time our kids are on Facebook, it will be for old people. So.
Too late, already there. There's a bunch of big companies which use Facebook for staff communication. (and not spying at all, honest).
There's no way I'm letting Iris on Facebook.
Just came back from her 5th BDay thing at Waldorf School. A little fruity, mostly lovely. The teacher had us write up a mini-biography, and then she read it to the class. The other kids all did crayon drawings, and the teacher bound it for Iris, which will be a very nice keepsake.
(1) Parents should get facebook pages and insist the daughter friend them. Also they should mess around a bit on facebook to get a sense of the thing.
(2) The parents should show their daughter this article about the potential downside of sexting.
(3) The parents should not freak out about online ephebophiles, but should insist that if their daughter plans to meet someone she only knows online she should do it in a group, after informing her parents about who, what, and where.
There's no way I'm letting Iris on Facebook.
Eh. My parents wouldn't let me on the Internet, I had no privacy, and no expectation of such. I still think that was a bad idea, in part because I got to college almost completely unaware of what you could do with a computer.
44: I didn't write clearly enough; the joke was "I'm not letting her on [because she's 5]."
Obvs., at some point, we'll have no real choice in the matter. Our parenting approach is "stuffy but not unreasonable," so that will be suitably applied to whatever the hell the kids are doing when the time comes.
You WILL friend me, young lady. And you will friend me NOW!
On the other hand, I'm proud to report that he uses proper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Best I can tell, his friends seem to think that's a charming eccentricity.
Careful, that's how ben got started. And now he's disappeared entirely.
I got to college almost completely unaware of what you could do with a computer
Me too! But then, we are of different eras. My high school computer lab consisted of several monochrome terminals with rotary phones that you dialed, then pressed the receiver into the little rubber-ringed circles so it could call the VAX machine down the hall. Then you could play Hangman!
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Foggy here this morning (only just starting to clear), and this striking pic is in the paper. That's a fountain with Pan and Harmoneia.
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rotary phones that you dialed, then pressed the receiver into the little rubber-ringed circles
Apo went to high school in a TV spy story.
43 you are kidding, right? that's called censorship imo and if one gets accustomed to it from the very beginning, childhood, i don't know how unfree the person would feel all his life
i mean parents should just teach the basic moral norms what is bad and good and leave the kids alone to make their own judgements, trust is a more powerful tool than all the restrictions
pressed the receiver into the little rubber-ringed circles
hott computer lab
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Uh, LB, major discretion error in the Times this morning.
As New Lawyer, Senator Defended Big Tobacco|>
Misread 49 as "a fountain with Pan and Hermione".
Just came back from her 5th BDay thing at Waldorf School.
We just bailed on a Waldorf. Started out OK, then when things began to go wrong (bullying by older kids) the cult response took over and it was all our fault.
+her, ah, these genderized pronouns
our pronouns are gender free coz
53: I'm pretty sure the copyeditor struck out a half-sentence in this paragraph:
Still, in an approach that was not uncommon at law firms that represented tobacco companies, lawyers at Davis Polk were permitted to decline work on the tobacco cases if they had a moral or ethical objection to the work, Mr. Chang said.
Specifically, the part that said "and didn't want to have any kind of future with the firm because they weren't team players."
re: 56
Gah, that doesn't sound good.
FWIW, a friend of mine went to a Steiner school and there were elements of that -- parents and school closing ranks over the fact that a lot of the kids were wankers.
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Fargo is asking whether this next flood will be a 100-year-flood or a 500-year flood. It's predicted to be bigger than either of the two disastrous floods during the last 12 years. It's in the realm of possibility that Fargo will get 650 years of disastrous floods in 12 years.
Talk about fat tails. I think that maybe something has changed. Or maybe the original theory was wrong.
Many blame global warming, but I think that it's connected to the sttock market meltdown. The weather people and the finance people were cooperating.
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59: Huh. I did tobacco work at two separate firms (spent a summer as a very junior associate creating an NYC phone book-sized index of all the correspondence between a particular tobacco industry research organization and any arm of the government over a thirty year period. In a fascinating example of shortsightedness, when I asked the partner "You want a database, right", he told me "No, just a paper document." I made the thing as an Access database anyway, figuring he'd change his mind, but when the project was done, all he wanted was the printout. So I had the database kicking around on a floppy, with no way to put it in the case file. Two years later, a week before I left the firm, a new junior associate called me in a panic to see if there was any electronic version of the index, or if she was going to have to recreate it from the paper. If she'd called a week later, the floppy would have been in the trash.), and never had that offer made to me.
I assume that if I'd actively tried to refuse the tobacco work, it would have been possible, as with any other case I had strong personal issues about, but it wasn't an offered option.
My son has prudently friended me, and not his mother. That way, when she reads his status on my iPod, she asks me first. A song lyric mentioning either sex or drugs rarely escapes comment.
Apo is slipping. Responding to Cala's comment
I got to college almost completely unaware of what you could do with a computer
he predictably provides a link - but the link turns out to be completely harmless!
I got to college almost completely unaware of what you could do with a computer
Not a bad start for a Modern Love column.
62.1 "They take part of a verb point and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German anecdotes."
61:Apocalypse....NOW!
And go go lil' sexters. sextexters. whatever
FYAAYMWF
...I got to college almost completely unaware of what you could do with a computer.
"Teacher, mother, secret lover!"
51: She's 13 years old. Monitoring her activities at the minimal level needed to keep her from serious trouble is perfectly reasonable.
parents and school closing ranks over the fact that a lot of the kids were wankers.
I signed up for the rougher working class side of town so I wouldn't have to deal with the wanks in the rich areas. More punks and gang members on that side of town, but also far less of hand wringing and "my child is a special flower who can do no wrong".
A couple of our guys were at a house on the rich side of town a couple weeks ago because a lady wanted her kid taken to Juvenile Receiving. She claimed he was violent. Her kid was nine years old. He'd refused to go to his room after she told him he couldn't play Nintendo. Bonus wankery was her lecturing a couple of cops on how she has an advanced degree in Child Psych or some shit and describing totally normal 9 year old boy asshattery as deviant mental illness.
71: And who's going to mess with Alice Roosevelt? "I can be the president of the United States, or I can control Alice. No one could be expected to do both."
Started out OK, then when things began to go wrong (bullying by older kids) the cult response took over and it was all our fault.
Ugh. Sorry to hear that. This will be Iris' only year, as she'll be in public school next year, but we've been very happy with it.
69, 12-13 yos are able to make right and wrong decisions i think, following one's facebook doesn't sound like minimal monitoring
'monitoring her activities to keep her from serious trouble' sounds as if one is raising an infantile, dependent kid and one wouldn't want that to happen to one's child, the kid will grow up and be dependent if not on you, then fall to someone else's control
it's a matter of habits, what you cultivate you get like, maybe not that mechanistically
or you get all these teenage rebellions rebelling against all like and hurting all around but mostly themselves, if just let them be one wouldn't need to rebel coz there is no pressure
following one's facebook doesn't sound like minimal monitoring
It's the same amount of monitoring I do for everybody else on my friends' list.
Just the other day apo sat me down to talk about whether I should really be spending so much time with my one friend from the "other" side of town.
parents 'insisting" to be facebook friends i object to, why would you want to 'monitor' your kid that way? if the kid tells you everything and friends you him/herself, great, you are a trusted parent-friend
though i think there should be different roles for parents and friends
what if the 'monitoring' would result in him/her becoming a dishonest being
why would you want to 'monitor' your kid that way?
Because I only see him a couple days a week and I'm interested to know what's going on in his life. Just like the rest of my friends list.
In traditional Mongolia people were adults at 15 or so. That makes a lot of sense. A lot of the toxic effects of HS come from its being a never-never-land limbo between childhood and adulthood.
Delaying childbearing is a good thing, extended education and delaying entry into the work force are good things, but postponing coming of age is a bad thing.
Some kids do end up monitoring adult parents, for example if they're single parents with a tendency to get involved in unfortunate relationships.
Bonus wankery was her lecturing a couple of cops on how she has an advanced degree in Child Psych or some shit and describing totally normal 9 year old boy asshattery as deviant mental illness.
Don't get me started.
Because I only see him a couple days a week and I'm interested to know what's going on in his life. Just like the rest of my friends list.
You see me a couple days a week? Where are you hiding?
The things is that I know that Heebie-at-12 would have been able to easily work around reasonable parental supervision. And I probably would have done so, for fairly innocent reasons like being embarrassed about a boy I liked, or wanting to look up dieting plans, etc.
I still plan on implementing moderate parental supervision, but I think part of having a 12 year old is just the scary fact that they can get into real trouble.
84: Apo is always in your bedroom closet with a camera. Doesn't matter who you are, or where your bedroom is -- where there's a bedroom closet, there's Apo.
84: The camera's behind the shampoo bottle, Ned. You should get that mole checked out, btw.
Not just pwned, but my attempt at clever misdirection foiled at the same time.
My concern about the delayed maturity of kids in the US is not just with respect to a particular individual such as the 13 y.o. we're talking about, but also with the fact that any kids is going to be dealing with an environment in which the other kids are relatively immature. That social context influences even relatively mature kids to do things they wouldn't otherwise because it normalizes immature behavior. Given that fact, maintaining an awareness of at least part of what your 13 year old is doing is merely good parenting because it allows the parent to exercise a countervailing influence.
Actual twittering from the womb: http://twitter.com/perquackey
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A "crack is not a path to glamor" tale for the kids.
We ride with another officer for the first few months as field training. So, it's a slow night and we're rolling around the area downtown where there's been some new mixed use development in the last few years along with the light rail line. It's also a longtime crack dealing area, and naturally we try and keep that to a minimum.
We round the corner and an old beat up truck immediately pulls away from the sidewalk. It's late as hell and there's no legit businesses open. There was also one of our known crackheads approaching the truck before it pulled away. The truck has no registration tags on it. I pull it over so that I can have a chat with the driver about how trying to score crack in that location is a bad idea.
The driver is a woman in her mid 40's, and it's pretty clear from the get go that she's a crackhead driving someone's truck that she borrowed without asking. So I run her through the system and ask her to step out of the truck and walk to the back of the truck with me.
Me: "Do you have a phone number for the guy who owns the truck? You don't have a valid license and obviously the truck hasn't been registered in some time, but I'd rather have the owner come get it so he can avoid the impound fees. The other reason he needs to come and pick it up is that you have an outstanding felony warrant, and I'm going to have to take you to jail tonight."
Now up to this point this lady has been walking around with no signs of any problems. A bit nervous, but otherwise fine. But the minute she hears the words "felony warrant" and 'jail"...
Her: (Squats down clutching her stomach) "Aaaargh! It hurts! It hurts!"
Then that smell hits my nose and sure enough, she's pissed all over herself.
Me: "Oh for Christ's sakes knock that off. You're still going to jail, and you're not fooling anyone."
I get her hands behind her back and the cuffs on with her moaning about the pain the entire time. And then she ups the ante.
Her: "I've got a dead baby inside me! Dead baby!"
I look at her, and she's got a bit of a belly pooch, but nothing that couldn't just be a middle age gut.
Her: "My dealer kicked me in the stomach and killed my baby! Aaargh, it hurts!" (Writhing around for effect)
Me: "How long ago was this?"
Her: "A couple months ago. Aaaaargh!"
Me: "If you've had a dead baby in you for a couple months, you'll be fine for another night. In the car you go."
So now we're driving to jail, but she's still not done.
Her: "IT HURTS! OH MY GOD IT'S COMING OUT!"
Me: "Damn, that's gross. Cross your legs and keep that thing in there." (Looking at my partner) "Have I mentioned how glad I am we're in your car? I bet dead baby smell will be really tough to get out of the carpet."
And after all that, she managed to hyperventilate her way to high enough blood pressure that the jail wouldn't accept her. We never did find out if she really had a dead baby in her or not.
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'monitoring her activities to keep her from serious trouble' sounds like just being sensible to me. I'm really not overly cautious about these things (for that read, half of my friends and 80% of Americans I have met think I'm completely lax and just asking to have my children snatched), but in the same way I don't let my kids just wander out into the real world without knowing what they're doing, who they're seeing, how long they'll be, etc, so I'm not going to just let them wander about the internet without any guidance or knowledge of what they're up to.
I assumed togolosh's 'insist' was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as in Emerson's response in 46.
Although I do feel kind of odd about being Facebook friends with my OWN mother! But we have separate lives, and she's not responsible for me anymore. Violet and I don't, and I AM responsible for her.
I'm mostly concerned about the various crap my son inadvertently downloads to my machine. So far its random Disney PDFs, but one day its going to be malicious spyware, and that's going to piss me off. This is hard for me to explain to him in a way that he will understand, because he's 2.
Keegan and I are friends on Facebook. Rory hasnt accepted me yet.
My son (13) is not on Facebook or any other social network site. I wouldnt object if he was, but I would want to check it out periodically.
Although I do feel kind of odd about being Facebook friends with my OWN mother!
GROSS!
A lot of varied experience on this with my kids that is hard to summarize, some of that a reflection of the changing nature of social tools on the Internet from when my first got started. My daughter and a friend of hers did become close enough to an online acquaintance at about age 12 or 13 that they did arrange to meet (with parents). I was not at the meetup but, the other mother supposedly greeted them with, "Aren't you glad that I'm not a 40-year old man in his underwear?"
For the most part I felt they understood the rules and we did do the computer in a common room thing (so I could keep an eye on them while playing online with my Age of Empires clan).
I just don't feel I can be too sanctimonious about the dangers of the intertubes when the kids know very well that lots of our best friends were imaginary internet friends once, and that I have done stuff like fly to Washington to be raped and murdered go to a party with a bunch of strangers.
Kobe's not on the Internet, the Internet is on Kobe.
Well, I'd have been far less of a gentleman had I known that was what you were in town for.
There's a bit of neuro-something new common wisdom that adult, fully rational decisionmaking is not actually possible until sometime in the 20s, that we're developmentally unfinished until then. It makes me wonder if the problem isn't that rational decisionmaking isn't possible until you've suffered from the results of bad decisionmaking -- if I were making a neuro Just So Story, I'd say there's nothing better for pruning deadwood off the neural tree. (And here's a problem with mostly studying undergraduates at our R1 institutions; they've been more protected, or at least making decisions in a safer enviroment, than most people in the world or history.)
Then I contemplate history and think, first, that there's evidence that the yoot never did make good decisions, and second, that it's not just yoot's problem.
I have two eleven year olds. If I allowed them internet access one would make friends, discuss fashion and follow celebreties. The other would experiment to see how much this extends his ability to act like a jerk (I base this on experience with telephones and sidewalk chalk). I'm not worried about their safety though.
Oops, apologies for the spelling error.
