At one extreme, there's the fun stuff, like the private languageour 12-year-olds use with friends in instant messages:
"sup?"
"nm. u?"
"hw."
"haha, lol . . . j/k."
"pos, ctgr."
"l8er."
At the other end of the spectrum, there's peril: Late last month,a 29-year-old Whitman man was charged with breaking into a house andattempting to rape a 14-year-old girl he had met on line in a chatroom and corresponded with via e-mail for about a year. According topolice, he posed as an 18-year-old and may also have contacted 20 ormore other girls. Police also say the girl had willingly met him offline several times.
Sadly, the space between the two extremes is not the chasm wemight hope for.
With all the positives we know children can get out ofcybercommunication, most of us think of our kids' e-mail and buddychats as innocuous or, at most, a hindrance to homework. But thechilling Whitman arrest highlights not only how vulnerable ourchildren are but also how they put themselves at risk.
Why are our kids so attracted to cybertalk to begin with?
"For the same reason I used to come home from school and get onthe phone with the friends I had just left," says children's culturespecialist Kathy Merlock Jackson, a professor at Virginia WesleyanCollege. At this age, she says, there's a deep, powerful need toconnect to peers, "but in this day and age it's the computer thatcomes naturally to kids instead of the phone."
That need begins to surface at about 10 and peaks from about 13 to16. E-mail (one-to-one conversation) and instant "buddy" messages(instantaneous e-mail to a specified group of users) are more popularthan chats (public conversations, often with strangers who share acommon interest), but a staggering number of children, about 12million, engage in some kind of cybertalk, says cybersafetyspecialist Parry Aftab.
Better than the telephone
At a stage in life when independence and privacy are paramount,cybertalk has much more to offer than the telephone.
"Parents can't overhear you," says Jackson. "They're less likelyto know how long you're on or who you're talking to. Even if they payattention, they don't know what you're saying because of the `secret'language."
Not that anything of substance ever gets said anyway. "The pointof it is the connection, not the content," says Jackson.
The advantages for shy or socially awkward children are evengreater. "On line, there's no one judging them," says Pittsburghpsychologist Kimberly Young. "That frees them to express themselvesin ways they can't in person. Kids who are misfits in school suddenlyfeel they belong." Young is executive director of the Center for On-Line Addiction (www.netaddiction.com) and the author of "Caught inthe Net" (Wiley).
But cybertalk does have negatives:
It creates a culture of detachment. At a time in life when teensshould be honing interpersonal skills, they withdraw from real lifeby spending time on the computer. If anything, says Jackson, "Thechild who's shy in person only becomes more so."
It's easy to misread. Because there's no tonal quality to e-talk,it's easy for a child to take offense where none was intended. Thistranslates to real-life hurt feelings, even broken friendships.Younger children are especially prone.
It's easy to pretend. What begins as newfound freedom to expressyourself often turns into trying on a new persona: A timid boy playswith being a threatening, macho type; a 14-year-old girl who'soverweight tries out being sexually provocative. "It's easy to getcaught up with it," says Young.
The danger is that provocative words and content draw attention.Chats are notorious for attracting "lurkers," people who listen inrather than participate and contact a person privately afterward,through e-mail. Their goal, says Aftab, can range from sending kidspornographic material or initiating cybersex (sexual talk about whatyou would do if you were there in person) to meeting off line. Atypical lure: "I just got the new Sony PlayStation! I bet my unclecan get it for you, too!" Aftab is executive director of Cyberangels,a national Internet safety organization safety group(cyberangels.org). She also is the author of a must-read book, "TheParent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace" (McGrawHill).
It's easy to feel safe. Teens tend to feel impervious to danger."They take risks on line because they don't see them as risks," saysAftab. In an online survey of 11,000 girls aged 13 to 16, 60 percentsaid they engage in cybersex even though they said they wouldn't havereal sex until they are married. Similarly, once a 14-year-old chatsand then exchanges e-mail for months with a stranger, the person nolonger is a stranger. "He was a friend," the Whitman teen reportedlytold police.
"It doesn't occur to a teen that the person isn't who and what hesays he is," says Aftab.
This is, of course, what's so frightening. According to Aftab, 12to 13 percent of preteens who engage in cybertalk agree to meet offline someone they have met on line. Children most likely to do this:middle-class suburban kids. "They're naive and trusting," she says."Urban kids are far more likely to know it's a stupid idea." Since1995, the FBI has arrested 515 people accused of trying to arrangeoffline meetings with children, and last year it opened 1,500 newcases, double the number from 1998.
The good news in all of this is that we are not as powerless as wemay think in keeping our children safe. Perhaps most important, saysAftab, is making sure your children understand that people they don'twant to get in touch with them are able to trace them if they: fillout any online personal profiles; answer junk e-mail; divulgepersonal information in an e-mail or chat room. Since this mayfrighten some younger children, stress the junk advertising piece ofit: "You know how we get so many annoying catalogs in the mail? Well,there's junk e-mail, too."
Basic safety rules also are important: The computer belongs in apublic space in the house; no Internet surfing except for schoolresearch and/or with a parent present; instant messaging only withpeople you know directly off line, that is, not with friends offriends; chatting only in agreed-to chats.
Create a contract
Once you've established these rules, says Aftab, create a contractfor you and your child to sign; the younger he is when you do this,the safer he will be when he's older. Here are basic items toinclude:
I will never give my name, address, telephone, etc., to anyone Imeet on the computer. (Include names of the teams she plays on, herschool, public transportation she uses, in this off-limitsinformation.)
I won't lie on line about my age.
I won't buy anything without my parents' permission.
I won't open or answer e-mail from someone I don't know.
I won't send my picture to anyone I don't know.
I will never meet a person in real life whom I met on line. Ifsomeone asks me to, I'll tell my parents.
If someone tells me they can get me free stuff, or that there's asale at my favorite store and they need my address, I'll say no andtell my parents.
If someone disobeys chat rules or says something that makes meuncomfortable, I'll sign off.
Only people I know in real life go on my buddy list.
I understand that just because someone tells me something on linedoesn't mean it's true; even if they know the answers to questionsonly a kid is likely to know, it doesn't prove they're a kid.
Unfortunately, Aftab says, we are sometimes our children's worstenemy. "Out of naivete or not-my-kid syndrome, parents don't takethis seriously enough," she says.
Maureen Webb, a teacher in Natick and mother of two teenage sons,was one of those mothers until recently. "A few weeks ago, I openedup my e-mail to find some pretty graphic pornography from someone Ididn't know," she says.
Even though the rule for her sons is to delete e-mail from anyonethey don't know, she wanted to be sure they hadn't gotten it, too."To be honest," she says, "I went in their mailboxes to make sure. Itwasn't there, but with all this stuff flying around out there, itcould have been them as easily as me."
Wake-up call
Young knows a mother who dropped her laissez-faire attitude onlyafter reading her 15-year-old daughter's e-mail via binocularsthrough the window and discovering she was engaging in cybersex. Muchto the mother's surprise, the daughter was willing to abide by strictnew rules.
That doesn't surprise Jackson.
"Believe it or not," she says, "preteens and even teens wouldprefer that we do pay attention. They feel safer and more secure."Since a common reason parents maintain a distance is because theyfeel ignorant compared to their computer-savvy children, she suggestsasking them to teach you what cybertalk is all about.
Better yet, surprise them by sending an e-mail with a few of theirfavorite abbreviations. Truth be told, I needed my son's help for thetranslation of the conversation beginning this column: "What's up?""Not much. You?" "Homework." "Ha ha, I'm laughing out loud. Justkidding." "Parents over shoulder, can't talk, gotta run." "Later."
AFTERTHOUGHT - Today is Absolutely Incredible Kid Day, a "feelgood" campaign sponsored by Campfire Boys and Girls. The idea is foradults to send a letter to a child, recounting what's special abouthim or her.
Barbara F. Meltz's Child Caring appears every Thursday in At Home.She is the author of "Put Yourself in Their Shoes: Understanding HowYour Children See the World" (Dell). She welcomes letters andcomments and can be reached via e-mail at meltz@globe.
com.
SIDEBAR
Parents on cyberpatrol
Limit unsupervised e-mail or instant message access to childrenover 11.
Most public chats have rules about content and language and amonitor to enforce them, but cyberpredators can easily get a child'se-mail address and contact him directly. Help your child find chatswhere he and his friends can register without using a name that canbe traced. The site www.surfmonkey is free, offers instant mail andchats, and requires parents' approval for names on a child's e-maillist. Also safety-minded: www.headbone.com and www.freezone.com.
Most servers offer filter systems and privacy restrictions (AOL,does, for instance), but most users don't even know they exist. Forfree filter products, check out www.clickchoice.com. For privacyinformation, go to www.truste.org, and www.wiredkids.org (it launchesMarch 29).
Internet Relay Chats (IRC) should be off-limits to children of allages; the chats tend to be X-rated.
COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) goes into effectApril 21, prohibiting sites from collecting personal data fromchildren under 13 without parents' written permission. It will beenforced by the FTC and by users who report abuses.
Go through your teen's buddy list with her, asking who each personis and how she knows this really is who it's supposed to be. The onlygood answer: "Because he gave me the address himself, in real life."
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