I do think, Anna, that you’re being a little hard on parents who have genuine, valid concerns about what their kids may encounter on the internet. You don’t need to read reddit to know that way too many people use a screen name to act in ways we can only hope they don’t replicate irl. Cyber-bullying, posting of material that was intended to be private, sexual and financial predators-these are all real dangers. And there is quite a lot of content that is not age-appropriate for young kids. I have always felt that pictures can be a lot more upsetting than words, and once you see a photo or a drawing or a video, it can’t be unseen.

However, part of parenting is teaching your kids how to deal with potentially dangerous situations. We don’t keep our kids locked up inside because there are bad people outside the house, and keeping them off the internet won’t work either. I think if I were raising a kid now I’d be very active in monitoring the kid’s activity and probably not allow the kid to have a laptop in his or her room until I had a sense that the kid knew when something was off or dangerous. That said, kids are growing and make mistakes in judgment, so I think parents have to rachet down the tension and treat bad computer experiences as learning experiences. Computer capability is just going to expand, and if you and your kid can work together in exploring and setting limits, that would probably result in the highest adherence rate.

Also, I hate the idea that “outside”=good/safe and internet=bad/unsafe. I was a really anxious kid, and I was also really into the internet, because it was a way to interact that didn’t make me nervous. My mom would try to limit my time online (mostly Neopets). That actually led to me conquering my anxiety around being home alone, because when my mom went out I could be on Neopets all I wanted. The internet helped me become more confident and happier as a kid. It’s not all doom and gloom.

As for the “safety” issue, I’m with Anna. If you want to know what your kids are doing on the internet, pay attention and impose limits—just as parents do for every other fucking thing their kid/tween/teen does. I get irritated when parents complain that their children are more internet savvy than they are or they can’t monitor their child because they simply don’t know how to use the software. Educate yourself, parents! Your kids aren’t smarter than you are, you’re just willfully ignorant and lazier than they are and they’re counting on that.

A couple of other observations: any effort on the part of adults to control the access of the young to the internet is doomed to fail unless it actually involves individual restrictions on access to hardware. The vast, vast majority of older people aren’t tech savvy enough. Even as a digital native who is not yet so old (I hope…), I’m not 100% confident that I have a good grasp on how people younger than I am spend their time online.

Also, as it pertains to the internet, efforts to curtail the freedoms of adults in the name of protecting children have been relatively unsuccessful overall. Frankly, there’s just not much on most adult-oriented websites to interest most very young children and there’s enough content directed straight at them that I don’t think it’s likely to ever be a problem. Instead, my concerns regarding young people online have more to do with protecting adults from obnoxious teenagers. :-/

We communicated with some of their parents to reassure them that their children weren’t interacting with predators, but most of them didn’t seem to be worried at all about them virtually hanging with people old enough to be their parents.

When my daughter was around 10ish she got involved in the fandom around Sonic the Hedgehog. I was a little flipped out by some of the fan art people posted. It was quite violent. I think this is an outgrowth of video game culture: I find it violent. I tried to stop her, but she snuck around anyway. So then, I abandoned that strategy. I would just ask her to show me some stuff sometimes, and I would add my comments.

Other parents frequently refer to online bullying. I don’t mean to minimize questions of bullying, which is certainly a serious problem. However, that has not been my kids primary experience, and so, in that case, I am glad to let them explore their online selves.

The one rule I did lay down was this: “You will never ever meet any of your online friends.” That was iron-clad.

Now my kids are 20 and 17, and so this rule can’t realistically apply anymore. So when they head out to meet ups with their online friends I say: “Buddy system! Public places only!”