1. A Leader's First Responsibility

“A leader’s first responsibility is to define reality…. You can’t define what you don’t see.” -John Maxwell, International Authority on Leadership and Author of Leadership Gold

Since YOU are the most important teacher and leader in your child's life, what is the reality of Internet Safety in your home?

Leaders everywhere offer similar advice on the importance of defining reality.

Dr. Phil: “You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.”
Jim Collins: "You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.”
Jack Welch: “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were.”
Jesse Jackson: “You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t lead where you won’t go.”

It's hard to protect and educate our children when we don't know what they're doing. What can we learn from some of the instant message abbreviations created by our youth?

KPC: Keeping Parents Clueless
POS: Parent Over Shoulder
PAW: Parents Are Watching

When we fail to "define reality" as it relates to child safety online, it opens the door for other risks.

  • We are "dismissed" by our young people for being clueless. “We lack credibility when we fail to recognize widely accepted online behaviors among youth.” American Academy of Pediatrics
  • We offer generic advice and blanket statements that fall short of educating young people to make smart choices. Teens and preteens tell us plainly that, “Adults in their lives mostly offer prohibitive advice rather than dealing with the true situations at hand.” (Girl Scout Institute, 2007)
  • Our perceptions of risk and how our children use technology differ greatly from how our children actually use technology. The 2007 Pew Internet and American Life Project reported a “…striking consensus among parents and their teens that the teenage population is not as careful as it should be online and that teens do things online they don’t want their parents to know about…” This, in itself, is a serious risk. Why? When parents are “kept in the dark” they feel less inclined to discuss online safety or to monitor online activities. Altogether this contributes to further isolation of a young person in their private online activities, leaving them more susceptible to harm. Then, when our young people encounter or participate in negative online experiences, they typically do not confide in an adult for fear of losing the technology or some other repercussion. This is only natural.

Youth and Technology: An Intoxicating Mix
Technology changes daily and trends come and go, but the characteristics of youthful behavior remain fairly constant--such as being naturally curious, risk-taking, self-absorbed, eager for independence and freedom, driven by peer acceptance, and invincible, or so they think.

Our wonderful young people are completely unaware that the prefrontal cortex of their brains is still developing and will continue to do so until their early twenties. This region of the brain controls planning, self-control, judgment, and mood. Scientists refer to it as the region of "sober second thought." That explains a lot, doesn't it? If you want to learn more about your child's developing brain, take a look at what this neuroscientist has to say at PBS.org.

During this period of developmental upheaval in youngsters' lives, they are immersed in a digital playground with no boundaries. The very nature of this intoxicating mix (youthful tendencies + digital media) serves up a wealth of opportunities, but with these rich opportunities come a flood of inappropriate material and unhealthy experiences. No one is policing this virtual wilderness, as law enforcement does on our roads, and an unsavory act is committed online every few seconds. It is no surprise that the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that, " . . . traditional methods of educating youth on wired safety issues are no longer effective." (2007) Ronald Dahl, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, explains that the very nature of adolescence has changed significantly in recent history, resulting in our youth experiencing, "...several years of sexually-activated brain circuits yet with relatively immature neurobehavioral systems necessary for self-control and affect regulation." He warns that this puts our youth at an "increased risk for disorders of self-control and difficulties navigating complex social-emotional situations." He likens this to "starting the engines without a skilled driver."

"Place a good person in a bad system, and the system will win every time." -Seymour Sarason, Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University

Respect Their Privacy Online? What Privacy?!
We need to understand that privacy in a digital world takes on an entirely new definition. We live in a world where social networking pages become future resumes and emails/texts end up on national TV.

Daniel D. Broughton, M.D., FAAP, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Communications, bluntly states, “There is no such thing as privacy [on the Web].” The position taken by the NC Department of Justice and Attorney General Roy Cooper is that a teen or preteen's "computer use is NOT confidential" and should not be thought of in the same way as a diary or journal.

“Invisibility undermines the potential impact of both authority and social disapproval. If a transgression cannot be detected and you are unlikely to be punished, threats of punishment are not likely to have any impact whatsoever on behavior,” writes Dr. Nancy Willard in a 2002 article on CyberEthics. (Source: “How can we help young people use information and communication technologies in an ethical manner?” )

In light of what we have learned about the intoxicating mix of youth and technology, monitoring software -- used in a manner which protects the adult-child relationship -- is the only way to determine precisely which risks are associated with a child’s online behavior profile. Then, and only then, can we understand the real problems our children face. It is the only opportunity we have as parents to receive unfiltered information about a child’s behavior online and to set up an early warning system for inappropriate behavior so that we can intervene with the right treatment before it escalates out of control. This PDF contains a list of award-winning monitoring software titles.

We can no longer dispense a generic list of eSafety Guidelines while our teens and preteens struggle silently with issues that beg for serious intervention and counseling. The American Academy of Pediatrics (2007) understands this and states that “...traditional methods of educating youth on ‘wired’ safety issues are no longer effective.”

We need to know what the real problems are. Monitoring what they do online is not an invasion of privacy; it’s smart parenting.

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