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What's Happening Next Door?
Establishing Internet Rules for Home and Away
By Laura Paul
"A good parenting relationship would have a situation where the kid could come back and say, 'Mom they don't use filters, and in fact, everybody at the slumber party was on chat rooms all the time, and all these guys were talking nasty to us,'" Hughes says. "That's the kind of relationship you want with the child. I think if any parent hears anything that is alarming to them that is happening at another kid's house, it's incumbent on them to call that other parent and say, 'Look you may not be aware of this. I was not aware of this for such a long time, but this is an issue and it's a problem and it's dangerous, and I just want to make you aware.' It's like what you would do if you found out your kids were drinking or smoking dope at someone's house. You'd call and say, 'Did you realize this? I'm sure you didn't realize this was going on, but I found out, and I wanted to let you know and what can we do because the kids are getting off base here?'"
Instead of overreacting and taking the Internet away from a child who has accidentally stumbled across pornographic material, talk to the children about how pornographers work to trick children into getting onto their sites. Some of the ways they trick children is through misspelled names, domain names that are wrong and misleading words or the names of child icons, such as "Brittany Spears."
While parents should not punish innocent children who come across the material by accident, they do need to deal with children who disobey the rules, disengage parental controls or download pornography. It's not a situation to take lightly either.
