Chapter 7
What's Really Out There . . . and What Can We Do About It?
As much as I wish I could, I can't write this book without focusing on some of the dangers in cyberspace. It is my goal to make you careful about surfing the Web, not to scare you away from it entirely.
Although no one can dispute that there are some really nasty things on the Internet, the amount is vastly exaggerated. Unfortunately, the bad things receive a lot more press than the good things, even though the good far outnumber the bad.
In large part, the Internet's bad reputation is attributable to an unreliable survey, which was picked up by the press and used by proponents of Internet censorship as a scare tactic. This information, faulty as it was, was the catalyst for laws attempting to regulate sexual content on the Internet. It is also the root of many parents' fears.
In addition to being criticized for hardcore sexual content, the Internet gets blamed for anything and everything negative that happens online. Whenever something hits the news that is in any way related to the Internet, the talk shows are filled with people blaming the Net. Parents are frightened by all the hype, and vow that their children will never be allowed online.
And that is the real tragedy. It's rather like never taking your children to a Broadway show, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty or the Museum of Natural History in New York City, because some areas of the City might be more dangerous than others. (This was just an example. One that I suspect I will regret. In fact, I'm regretting it already . . . I know that New York City was recently found to have the lowest crime rate of all major cities in the U.S . . . no calls or letters, please . . . .) Or never taking them to Rome because of the pickpockets at the Spanish Steps. (I wish I had thought of this example earlier, since I suspect that it's less likely the Mayor of Rome will write me to complain . . . )
A woman (and cyber-celebrity) I admire, Robin Raskin, the editor-in-chief of Family PC magazine and perhaps best known as "Internet Mom," put it best. She wrote an article for the Family PC website following the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, titled Blaming the Net, A parent laments: Why did it have to be the Internet? Her article still echoes in my ears, and I'd like to share part of it with you.
When I first heard that the mass suicides in San Diego were tied to the Internet (the cult members built Web sites to raise funds and recruited on the Internet), an exhausted sensation overtook me. I'd just come off months of television and newspaper interviews about kids' safety on the Internet, and while I'd been realistic in my responses to those queries, the Web can be an equal opportunity offender in that there's something to offend just about any parent.
As a result, when I heard that the Heaven's Gate cult used the Internet to espouse its beliefs and recruit members it was as troubling to me as if they'd used a home in my own neighborhood. After all, I'd been advocating Internet use for families and I knew now that the medium would take lots of the blame for the tragedy. I wondered: "Why blame the Internet?" If it had been a TV cult that used late night infomercials to recruit new members, no one would be questioning the value of television.
I agree. It's become a kneejerk reaction . . . to blame the Internet. (Although I'm not a big fan of infomercials either.)
You read it somewhere . . . therefore it must be true
Whenever I speak on the subject of the Internet and children, I hear the same things from concerned parents: they're afraid of the perceived online dangers and are starting to overreact. Parents, every day, bad mouth the Internet. Most of these parents have never been online, though, and are only repeating what they've heard and read in the media.
And, the stories which appear in the media are usually the online horror stories: cyberpredators, pornography, people stalking others online, online scams . . . There's on overwhelming amount of negative press, and parents are, understandably, confused about what to believe. I want to put these things in perspective.
What they say: There's hardcore and perverted sexual content that our kids are accessing every time they get online.
Keeping it in perspective: Most of the time when kids use the Internet to access inappropriate sexual content, the information they access is often only this generation's version of the contraband issue of Playboy magazine, tattered and dog-eared, passed from friend to friend and stored under the mattress. It's undesirable, many agree, but not likely to pose a serious danger to your child's physical well being and safety.
In addition, although there's still too much hardcore sexual content available to everyone, more and more of these sites are requiring proof that the viewer is over eighteen. Unless they're really looking for it, it's not likely that your children will stumble on hardcore sexual content. (Read on for the NASA site story where I contradict myself by discussing inadvertent exposure, but that's far more rare than people think.)
Education and building a solid and trusting relationship with your children is the first line of defense against these dangers.
What they say: The Internet is loaded with criminals who try to lure your children into sexual encounters and steal your credit card information.
Keeping it in perspective: The Internet is a community, and like all communities it has its good and bad actors, its safe and dangerous places. Predators exist everywhere, online and off. The proportion of bad actors in cyberspace is no different from that in the real world.
As long as we have criminals in this world, though, we will have ingenious people who abuse the system through the use of new technology and media. They are often the first to learn how to manipulate the new medium. The trick is knowing how to avoid trouble and taking whatever steps are necessary to protect yourself and your family and prevent problems.
What they say: The only way to keep your children safe is to keep them offline.
Keeping it in perspective: The only thing you are guaranteeing if you keep your children offline is that they will fall behind in knowing how to use and enjoy the most powerful educational and communication medium in the history of the world.
There are many things you can do to protect your children in cyberspace. It's just like protecting them anywhere else. You don't let six-year-olds wander into a big city all by themselves. You know what dangers exist "out there" and you teach your children how to avoid those dangers. You set rules and enforce them.
Protecting your children in cyberspace isn't any different. The only problem is that you don't know what the dangers are. Once you do, you can set the rules and enforce them, just like you do in the real world. It's really that simple.
Adult Site Self-Regulation . . . A Partial Practical Solution
Although some of us may debate whether certain information should be censored on the Net or anywhere else, there are a lot of sites that can be labeled as "over-the-line," to which no children should be exposed. (An argument can also be made that no adults should be exposed to these sites either, but that's another story.)
These are sites which contain hard core sexual content. They are, by and large, commercial sites which charge for access or charge for viewing special graphics or photos.
Fortunately, many of these sites now require that visitors use adult identification services or a credit card to gain entrance to the site, in order to screen out children. After all, in commercial sex sites, the website operators are marketing to adults, not children. So, in many ways, parents have an "unholy alliance" with the operators of sexual sites that have voluntarily adopted the screening systems previously mandated in the now defunct sections of The Communications Decency Act. They're doing what they can to keep your children out.
Global Access . . . Means Finding a Global Solution
The Internet is global. Whatever you put up in New Jersey is immediately available everywhere else in the world. (No New Jersey jokes please . . . I live there, thank you.) That means in order to control what is accessible on the Internet, we have to regulate it globally. That involves setting global standards and being able to enforce the laws on a worldwide basis.
Unfortunately, U.S. constitutional standards don't cut it everywhere else in the world. What's acceptable and legal in the U.S. may be criminal elsewhere. Some countries, to protect their citizens from political information and opinions, censor everything. Everything that their residents can access from the Internet has to run through their central government servers for prescreening and filtering.
As we seek to find ways of controlling access to certain Internet content, we need to remember that we are only a small segment of the world. Even the most extensive U.S. legislation cannot reach international sites, unless we too are willing to censor the Net through government servers, as Singapore, China and Saudi Arabia do. But since giving the government control over what information we can access is inherently offensive to most Americans, we need to find other ways of protecting ourselves and our children. And whatever we come up with will have to work world wide. (Internet site ratings, using a standard known as PICS (the Platform for Internet Content Selection) probably has the most promise. I'll discuss that in the chapter Rating the Web . . . PICS, Platform for Internet Content Selection.)
That's what this book is all about: alternatives to censorship on a worldwide basis.