Real Estate Innovation

The Challenges Facing The 21st Century Parent

We all remember being children, looking at our parents in disbelief at the oversights, misunderstandings and plain daft ways they behaved towards us. At the time we promised ourselves that one day we’d show them just how it should be done. So here we all are, wondering where on earth it all went wrong. Our children are now shaking their heads at us whilst looking sadly at their pitiful parents, almost certainly promising themselves that one day they’d show us how it should be done. Such is the comedy of life. The truth is that being a parent is never easy, and there have always been dangers, traditions, expectations, risks and issues that have had to be tackled. However, the biggest challenge parents have always faced is that the world into which they bring their children is not the same as the familiar world of their own childhood, and this is where the problems start.

One aspect in particular which has worried parents today, and which was not an issue back in the days when we were children, is the advent and proliferation of computers and other technologies which allow our children to meet, interact and communicate online with people from all over the world, and to spend hours glued to a screen focussing entirely on moving bunches of pixels from one place to another in a desperate attempt to do strange things like finish the ‘Quest of The j’Graa Goblet’ or seek out Lord Krakticka to pwn him with the rest of the guildies. If this means nothing to you, then join the club - it’s a big club, with a growing number of members.

Most of us are quite literate when it comes to using computers, and indeed most of us have to use them for work each day. Sending and receiving emails, creating letters and documents, working through spreadsheets and databases is of little difficulty. Yet our children seem to find depths to the computer that leave us perplexed. We are the generation who is aware of identity problems, and shred our paperwork rigorously, protecting our personal data at all costs. Yet our children seem to relish the idea of publishing photos, journals and intimate secrets with rash abandon for the whole world to see and do what they will with the material. We’d never stand in the street handing out our email address, phone number and a bunch of photos to any individual who passed us. Yet this is exactly what our children seem to be doing in the digital world. They claim to have hundreds of online friends, yet have never met any of them, and this goes against our very concept of what friendship means.

Few of us can have missed the numerous stories on the news about children who go missing after meeting up with someone on the internet. The statistics are grim, and the reality is clearly that there are predators who use the internet as a way of accessing children. It’s easy to view the computer as the problem, as the cause of danger, and the temptation is to remove its presence from the home entirely.

But the truth is that it is not the computer which is dangerous, and the internet is not an enemy or something dark and subterranean that we should, or could, avoid. Every day we take many risks that could potentially endanger our lives. We drive a tonne of metal at sixty miles an hour just feet from other lumps of metal coming the other way, and accept this as perfectly normal. We stand far more chance of being killed driving on the road than we do of encountering danger on the internet. The difference is both in perception, and understanding. We perceive danger in the internet largely because of a lack of understanding, but because we understand the nature of the risks of driving, we see less danger. We wouldn’t drive on the motorway blindfolded, because we’d almost certainly be killed. Being voluntarily blinded to the risks of the internet not only increases our perception of the danger, but the actual level of risk involved.

So what are the main problems with using the internet, and what can we as parents do to help increase the safety of our children whilst they are enjoying this resource? The most important, and ultimately effective method of helping to support our children is education. This means education of ourselves, and education of our children. The more that you know and understand what is meant by messenger software, chat rooms, online games, profiles and avatars, the more you’ll be able to help your child understand the dangers, and the benefits of using the internet in a safe way. Remember, we’re not trying to scare our children away from the internet - it’s always going to be around and we’re not going to be able to stop them in the end, but we can help make them aware of the issues and help them make educated decisions themselves.

We are familiar with teaching our children about the dangers of the streets, and they are well aware of the risks associated with strangers. They know not to open the door to strangers, not to talk to strangers, not to accept lifts from strangers, and to simply run away and report anything suspicious. But on the internet, strangers can have names, faces, profiles, histories, and the advantage of distance. The problem is, of course, that our children don’t see a stranger, when they are looking at a profile of someone they’re enjoying chatting to. The fact that the photo of a child their own age, with a name, a school, hobbies and family, could all be fictitious is ignored. It is so easy for people to hide behind fake profiles, and thereby lull children into revealing just enough information to identify them.

Possibly you may already be aware of the fact that there is a wealth of security software available for parents. These enable you to lock down and protect your computer, installing filters and logs, restrictions and blocking tools, guards and scanners, but to be honest most of this will simply cause our children to be ever more curious about what really is on the other side of the wall you’ve built. We were children once, and we know that the first thing you want to do if told not to look over the wall, is to look over the wall, and most children are smart enough to work out a way of getting past the security. A far more effective way of supporting and protecting them is to communicate with them. To have the computer somewhere publically visible so that you can see what they’re doing, share an interest, and talk with them, is far better than trying to lock everything down and then running away to pretend the dangers will go away.