Issue 14.07 - July 2006
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Son, Call Me Big Brother 

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START|mr. know-it-all

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I’m worried about what my teenager is doing online. Should I monitor his surfing?

Mr. Know-It-All remembers when all his parents had to worry about was his pen-and-paper diary. It would have been tough to read in any case – it was hidden under a stack of Green Lantern comics and written in secret code. But that was a gentler time.

Now things are more complicated. Odds are you’re worried about the public implications of your kid’s behavior online – such as whether your tween is passing herself off as a sultry 19-year-old on MySpace, or he’s nursing an outta-control Internet poker and porn habit. Or maybe you’re concerned that Google’s cache will cough up their explicit blog to a prospective employer in 2016. “In a teenage brain, impulse control is still under construction,” psychologist David Walsh says. “The job of the parent is to act as the surrogate prefrontal cortex.”

So by all means, yes – monitor their online behavior. It’s your duty. But there are degrees of onitoring, and you should go only as far as you need to. The first step is over-the-shoulder surfing. Put Johnny’s Mac out in the open so you can see what’s onscreen. While you’re at it, you old Luddite, educate yourself. Get MySpace, Flickr, and IM accounts. If your kid has a Web page, read it. The more genuinely informed pow-wows you have with them, the more they’ll grok your values.

But let’s say that despite your best Orwellian efforts, your kid seems seriously troubled, spends every minute online, and won’t or can’t talk about it. If you believe you have no option but to snoop, you can go high tech. Keylogging software such as the spooktastic Spector Pro can track their activity and automatically email you reports. Before you rush off to play Spy vs. Spy, though, here are a few caveats: First, don’t be clandestine. To preserve what trust you still have, you absolutely must tell your kids that you’re watching (and if they know you’re watching, they may begin to self-regulate). What’s more, even if you don’t like what they’re doing, don’t threaten to take away the Net permanently. One recent study showed this threat actually made teenage girls less candid about their online lives.

By the way, don’t bother with software that blocks illicit sites. Any half-competent teenager can easily subvert it.

My friends complain when I email them massive video files. I’m just trying to share the latest “This Week in God.” But how big is too big?

Unfortunately, just by looking at people, you can’t tell how well-endowed their inboxes are (unless they’re using Gmail). Some inboxes are capped at a few megs to quash annoying “Dude, Check This Out!” attachments; that Daily Show clip might max out your friend’s account. Use this simple rule: If an attachment is 1 meg or less, send away. If it’s bigger, ask permission first.

- Clive Thompson

Need some help navigating life in the 21st century? Email mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.

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