My kid’s on the internet — again. Should I be worried?
Q: My kid’s on the internet — again. Should I be worried about cyber-bullying or internet addiction?
Dr Wright answers:
Of all the stresses facing parents these days, one of the most persistent is worry about the safety of the internet. Kids spend increasing amounts of time on the web — and for much of that time, their parents aren’t involved in what they’re doing. How safe are they ‘out there’? And how vulnerable are they to abuse from ‘cyber-bullies’?
It’s natural to be concerned — and it can be difficult to walk that fine line between ‘concerned and involved’ and ‘concerned and paranoid’. After all, we all know that our children need the skills and interactions that they develop through online communication and learning. Cutting them off, or heavily restricting their access, isn’t the answer. But we can’t help worrying about what — and who — they’re encountering as they traverse the online world.
One thing that parents need to remember is that while we, for the most part, learned our internet skills in adolescence or young adulthood, our children are what researchers call ‘digital natives’. For them, the internet is not the novel, game-changing terrain that it has been for many adults. It’s simply part of the landscape — one of their modes of experiencing the world.
Much of what they encounter there isn’t unique to the internet, but is an online version of what they encounter in the offline world. Cyber-bullying is bullying that happens online. Cyber-scams are scams that are perpetrated online. So just as you’d help your child develop different skills for managing different environments — one set for city streets, another for school playgrounds, another for the football field — you can help your child develop the tools and instincts to be safe online.
A good place to start is with some of the well-documented benefits of internet use by kids. Many disabled and learning-disabled students — or simply students who benefit from varied learning platforms — find ways of accessing and absorbing information that play to their advantages: visual learners find infographics; hearing-impaired students use online visual communication tools; nearly any kind of learner can find a video, a podcast or a blog post that provides a new approach to an old topic of study.
The internet also helps young people find ‘people like me’. Most adolescents feel isolated at times, as though no one could relate to their particular experience — particularly those who feel some sort of stigma. Connecting online with others who help them see they are not alone can make the difference between an adolescence that is difficult and one that is deeply damaging. Add to this exposure to diverse perspectives (which research links to a greater capacity for ‘perspective-taking’ and diminished tolerance for bullying), greater involvement in civic life, reinforcement of offline friendships — much of kids’ online communication is with people they also know in the ‘real’ world — and venues for creation and self-expression, which build feelings of competence and mastery.
The internet is not a one-sided story, however. There are risks, such as cyber-bullying and internet addiction. These are the kind of terms that make parents wring their hands — so let’s replace some of that worry with facts.
Cyber-bullying does happen. Thirteen per cent of Australian children say that they have been bullied at least once while using the internet — more than double the percentage for the other 24 nations included in a 2012 study — and one in five young Australian mobile phone users say they have received hateful messages. Parents don’t always know it’s happening: just under half of Australian children access the web in their bedrooms, and nearly two-thirds access it from friends’ houses. Its impact varies — some kids shrug it off as ‘drama’, while for others the highly public nature of online bullying, witnessed by a virtually infinite number of bystanders, can make it seem uniquely inescapable.
And is it really possible for your child to become addicted to the internet? Internet addiction is a somewhat controversial subject — ‘excessiveness’, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Rather than debating physiological addiction, it’s more helpful to look at what impact your child’s internet usage has on the rest of their life. Fifty-five per cent of Australian youth aged 11 to 16 say they spend less time with family and friends than they feel they ought to, due to time spent online. More than half feel frustrated and restless if anything prevents them from accessing the internet, and nearly half have tried, unsuccessfully, to reduce their web time. Whether heavy internet use is a sign of trouble or a cause of trouble, an increase in it, combined with other worrying symptoms, should be a red flag — just as it would be if your child began closing herself off for hours a day with a deck of cards.
So how do you help your child manage the risks, and realise the benefits, of an active internet life? The skills and instincts they need to be safe on the internet aren’t that different from the ones they need to be safe anywhere.
First, make sure you’re up to date on the internet technologies your child is using. Research shows that when parents are active, educated internet users — with a good awareness of how their kids and their kids’ peers use the internet — their children are much more likely to listen to their advice about internet safety.
Second, discuss family internet usage openly and respectfully. Rather than furtively monitoring what your kids are doing online, talk to your children about the benefits as well as the risks, explain what your concerns are based on, and help them learn common-sense ways of keeping themselves safe. They understand why they wouldn’t hand out their name and address to strangers on the street — so they can understand why they don’t post personal information on the web.
Third, use monitoring and filtering programs to support your family’s internet policy — openly, to show you use them to stay involved, not to spy. Rules and technological fixes are good supplements to open communication, but they can’t replace it.
Fourth, resist the temptation to over-restrict your kids’ internet usage. Ironically, there is evidence that constant control can ultimately lessen your child’s safety online, diminishing their ability to make prudent decisions. A child whose hand is always held doesn’t ever really learn to cross the street — and a teen who’s never left to himself on the internet won’t ever really learn to navigate it. Work with your child to develop compromises: closed networks of friends for games, agreed guidelines for open ones. If you show that you respect the kind of online experience your child wants, they are much more likely to respect the guidelines you set.
Finally, focus on the behaviour, not the technology. Schools that tried to discourage cyber-bullying by blocking sites nearly always failed — students simply found workarounds. Success comes from targeting the practice of bullying itself, whatever the venue. The same holds true for parents: technology changes too rapidly to be the basis of your guidance, and it isn’t really the point anyway. Educate your kids about how to interact online, how to maintain privacy, and how to block abuse — and you won’t have to worry about which tools they’re using.
The bottom line is that helping your kids stay safe on the internet is a lot like helping them stay safe anywhere. For most of the decisions they make, you won’t be there looking over their shoulder. Give them the tools they need to make the right choices for themselves: educate yourself, then communicate openly and respectfully — and you’ll be giving them the best preparation possible for making the most of the nearly infinite possibilities of the internet.
