Last night, when I was driving my nine-year-old charge home from Hebrew School, I decided to ask him about how he spends his time on the internet and with other media. I should note that he is the son of professors – so they are comfortably middle class.
In the fourth grade, Jon (not his real name) is an avid reader. Not only has he read the entire Harry Potter series multiple times, he is also very fond of Garth Nix and other fantasy writers. It is rare for me to see him without a very thick book with him. He was rather disappointed by Eragon – he said it was too much like Star Wars. I tried to have a conversation with him about Joseph Campbell, but he wasn’t ready for it.
In addition to reading, though, Jon is allowed an hour and 15 minutes of “screen time” every day. (There was a week when he lost these privileges, and he was very unhappy about it.) This means anything that has a screen, except his iPod, which I assume only plays music. How he chooses to spend his screen time is entirely up to him. If there is a show he likes on TV, then he will watch that, or play video games, or play on a few websites, like lego.com and marvel.com. For Channukah, he received a subscription to marvel, which allows him to read any comic that has been digitized. Three months on, and this is still very exciting to him. Aside from these and a few other kid-oriented websites, Jon doesn’t use the internet.
There is one website he uses on which he chats with people he knows. I asked him if anyone had ever tried to talk to him in a way that made him uncomfortable and he cracked up and said, “This one time, this person asked if there were any boys, so I said yes, and then he asked if I wanted to be his BOYFRIEND! That was really embarrassing. But that was it. Also, I usually go to that site when my Dad is around.” I asked if that was because he wasn’t allowed to chat when he was alone, but he said, no, it was more that it was fun to hang out with his dad. He never visits a sit he doesn’t know, and when he has a homework assignment that requires the use of the internet, he always gets one of his parents to help him, because he doesn’t want to see “anything inappropriate.” When I asked if he uses the internet to find information he doesn’t know (i.e., reference), he said he doesn’t need to look stuff up because his dad always knows the answer. I found this particularly amusing, since I know his father.
Several things jumped out at me based on this conversation. First, as we have discussed in class, the whole thing about children’s being vulnerable to predators online is definitely overhyped. Second, Jon is a happy, well-adjusted kid who reads a lot. “Screen time” hasn’t interfered with this positive personal development, or with his being an avid reader. Third, I was struck by how important it was for him to avoid content that he knew he was too young for. When he got into the car, he saw a book I was reading for YA Lit for next week, Crush. He knows I read a lot of kids’ books and he likes to give me recommendations and know what I am reading, too. When I said, “It’s about two girls who have a relationship. It’s for older kids, I don’t think you’d like it very much,” that was enough for him. I guess I just remember wanting to be older when I was a kid, and Jon seems happy to be a kid. Finally, with the exception of when he lost his screen time, he seems to be ok with the boundaries his parents have created for him.
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6 comments:
Great anecdote! And it turns out, I just listened to a great report on NPR, in its Technology segment, on the Online Predator Myth. Very interesting (and reassuring).
Oh, the URL for the story is http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19200895
I'm guessing/hoping potential predators these days are scared by a much more policed internet than before. That, and accidentally starring in an episode of "To Catch a Predator", ha.
When I was in 7th grade in the late 90s, things were pretty crazy. Middle-aged men messaged me at least once a week asking to have cybersex with me or talk to me about their race-based sexual fetishes and a couple guys wanted to meet me in person but then stopped talking to me when I firmly said no. I am hoping AOL chat rooms are a lot safer than they used to be.
I really like your post about talking to a 9 year old! It might be my favorite post so far to this blog. And it makes me feel better about the state of the internet.
Thanks so much, Klara! You always have such interesting things to say in class - I feel like that is high praise, indeed.
I wonder if you're right that the internet is _actually_ more "policed" than it used to be. I get the feeling that all of those efforts are fairly ineffectual, and more like window dressing to help big companies (*cough* Rupert Murdoch) feel better about themselves. Maybe there are simply more venues for icky types to proposition those they perceive as children? (Because, as the New Yorker informed us in the mid-90s, on the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog.) Although I could also note that in my various forays into online communication with people I don't know, the incidence of being propositioned for various activities I don't care to mention, along with the use of webcams, has definitely decreased. Maybe I'm just getting too old for the weirdos? Or maybe I'm just spending a lot less time on web-facilitated communication with people I don't know, in general. Now that I have all of these fabulous GSLIS people to talk to, who needs cyberfriends? :)
Your comment on the possible ineffectualness of policies reminds me of this thing I read on Slashdot about how bad certain proposed legislation about cyberbullying and online predators are. I really think they have no idea what to do. It reminds me of the interview where the CEO of Universal Music Group admitted "there's no one in the record company that's a technologist ... They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"
In any case, anecdotal evidence leads me to believe more parents are taking an active role in their kids' online lives, even if they can't prevent everyday occurences from happening. Like I said in an earlier post about cyberbullying, dealing with mean people and/or attracting weirdos is an inevitable part of growing up. I hope when I'm a parent one day I'll make an effort to make it as painless as possible; what more can anybody do?
(Although I guess one could be like Obama and run for president and ask knowledgeable tech people like Lawrence Lessig for advice about technology poicies. Dang, I can't find a link to the site where I read he did that.)
Here's Lessig talking about Obama, for anyone who's interested. Some people have been talking about Lessig as a possible running mate since he isn't running for congress. I can't see that happening, but Obama has talked about the need for a "Chief Technology Officer" in the president's cabinet, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him show up there in such a possible future.
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