The New York Times has a review of different Instant Messaging apps with a view to controlling kids’ IM habits.
I was asked recently to give a talk on this whole area to parents at my kids’ school. There had been some (normal) abuse of IM among some kids – impersonating others, rudeness, getting inappropriately close to people rather more quickly than was healthy.
Unlike the majority of my audience, I don’t have to explain to you what IM is and that’s actually the root of the problem. Many parents of teens haven’t grown up with computers and there’s a real sense of alienation and technophobia among these thirty and forty somethings. In particular, many of the Mums hadn’t been exposed to computers at work and they felt the situation especially acutely.
Which is why the New York Times article somewhat misses the point. It assumes that the parents can set the controls on the family computer in the first place. And that kids can’t change them once they’re set.
What I tried to do was to get the parents to involve themselves in using computers in the first place. I did this by trying to show them the upside – all the new things they could do. And the downside of not knowing what their kids were up to online. As an example I asked what they would do if this guy came to their door and asked if their kids could come out to play:
You can imagine the reaction 
Anyway, the point is that as a parent, you can’t possibly understand what dangers and experiences your kids will have online, unless you have those experiences yourself. You won’t even understand the language to talk to them with. It’ll be like a lost tribe in the Amazon (the jungle) trying to explain to a child how to cross a road in New York.
“You go up to a very wide path, but not a path made of this hard grey stuff with big animals, but not animals charging up and down it. Then find a thing which looks like a very hard tree, but it’s not. It has a light on it with some squiggles. If the squiggles say errr….”
Once you understand the issues and the language, you can have a sensible conversation about the risks they face. And set out some ground rules which are acceptable to your family values. This includes some penalties for transgressing those rules like not being able to use their mobile for a month (a fate worse than death for a teen).
But once your kids get to a certain age (say 13 or 14) trying to outfox them with technology probably isn’t going to work. So you need to rely on good old traditional parenting skills like values, communication and trust.
Anyway, gotta run. It’s visiting time for my son in Juvenile Prison
If you’d like me to email you the complete presentation I made to parents, email me at russell at mobhappy dot com and I’ll send it to you.
Also about kids, the BBC also ran article on a new Text bullying initiative. Text bullying is a real problem for some schools. It seems particularly cruel as most kids love getting an sms, so it’s like a double blow when it turns out to be nasty.
The service, Intelligent SMS Centre (iSMSC), means children who get bullying texts will be able to log the mobile number of the sender with their mobile operator.
Any future messages from that number will then be stopped before it reaches the child’s phone.
A great initiative by operators. Thanks guys.
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