I am blessed to be the mother of four wonderful boys. Three of them are teenagers. If you know me, you know that I am plugged into technology 24/6. I am online all the time, even when I sleep. The boys know well enough to specify – “please don’t put that on Facebook, you’re not tweeting that are you? Did you blog about me?†However, my work is online. My paid job is online. I need to have a presence.
That being said, my boys have NO online presence. I find that it is totally unnecessary for them to waste hours of valuable time connecting with friends through online interfaces. My sixteen year old has stopped asking for permission to set up a Facebook profile – he knows that he has to wait until he is 18, and has his own computer. The boys have a joint email account that they check every so often – with me sitting next to them.
See, by me being online all the time I know what’s out there. I know how shark-infested the internet waters are. I know how easy it is to get sucked into things you don’t understand. One wrong click and the computer downloads a virus. One wrong click and a predator has all your information. One wrong Google search term and your child is looking at images that would curl your hair.
But it isn’t just about protecting them. It’s also about protecting their childhoods and teaching them to occupy themselves in other ways. My kids love to curl up with a good book and lose themselves in a good story. My 9 year old can spend hours building with Lego and weaving a fantasy land around himself. They go bike riding and play basket-ball outside – they would be less motivated to do this if they were online all the time. They actually talk to their friends face to face – what a concept!! When children are too plugged in, they lose this ability, or it doesn’t get well developed.
My boys do have computer skills. They learn in school, and when they need to do research for papers, I am there to help them navigate. If they have to type up papers, it’s my computer they use. It’s not about me being a control freak – it’s about making sure I know what’s going on. As a mother it’s my duty to protect them in every way that I can.
I am not anti-technology completely for the children. The oldest two have cellphones – off during school time – so they do text friends. They have iPods and Gameboys – but without the internet ability.  I don’t want to raise them as technophobes. But I want to be able to give them an understanding of balance. I struggle with this, because I don’t have it. But I am hoping that they will learn what I am trying to teach them and not be as plugged in as their mother.
How do you control online usage in your home? Do your children have limits as to how long they can be online? Do you monitor the sites they visit? Do you use one of the “kosher†filters?
