I just spent an hour listening to NYT reporter Kurt Eichenwald on a talk show describing the current state of Internet child pornography. It’s just so sad.
I remember as far back as 1998, when I helped launch an Internet safety campaign called America Links Up. We organized teach-ins, a TV program, a family website and a lot of other material to help parents keep their kids safe on line. I, stupidly, thought people were a little overwrought about the whole thing. If you were honest with kids, they could be trusted. [ASIDE: I am, I often observe, a walking demographic… here for the George Lakoff nurturing parent.] How could we deprive them when the Internet was, as John Perry Barlow said, "the most important discovery since fire?"
I was so besotted that I was incorrigible. My boss at iVillage, whom I represented at American Links Up, used to call me a Web rat. But it’s a sign of my eternal naivete that I never thought it would get as bad as it (apparently) is. AND that so many kids would log on when parents weren’t looking and participate. ( If the stories are true, it’s not just toddlers and preteens being exploited, it is also older teens getting sucked in and abused as well. )
We raised our kids in a style very similar to that described by long-time Wired writer Jon Katz, writing as Wired’s Netizen. In 1996 he wrote a kids’ bill of rights on line – linking web rights to responsibilities met. I wonder how that would play just ten years later.
In addition, I still don’t understand – when there are so many Law and Order SVU and a dozens of other programs portraying the dangers of these people – why young people would engage in this stuff to begin with. Either too many kids are too lonely to care or we just aren’t paying enough attention. Parents have to work and if they want decent housing they often have long commutes. They need help.
So what do you think? Is the Web as scary as Eichenwald portrays it? Is some of it hype? How do we keep kids safe and still help them to savor the Internet in all its wonders and opportunities? Holler out some ideas….