La Piazza

One of the more complex questions parents have to answer sooner or later is when to buy your kids a cell phone.

It’s a hard question to answer personally and a hard one for parents to agree on collectively.

Did you know there exist many phones marketed to children 3 to 8 years old? As an example you can have a look at the Teddyphone.

What is your very own opinion? Can you help us answering the “What’s the right age for a child to have a cell phone” question? Which of these ideas do you feel more identified with?

A- Kids need no cell phones until they have drivers’ licenses. Calling for a tow or in event of an accident is the only reason for kids to need their own personal phone.

B-  When it’s useful to you for them to have one so you’re not playing phone tag through school offices, friends’ moms, etc.

C-  When they get picked up and dropped off at activities and you may need to contact them to tell them you’re running late or Uncle Bob is picking them up.

D-   When  the child is responsible enough to not lose it.

E-   Whenever they can pay for it.

How many generations got along just fine without cell phones? Yeah… sure that as many as got along fine without seat belts or the internet or calculators. But you cannot struggle against progress…

So, honestly, we need your help!

Can you chose your option or send us your comments with your very own thoughts?

Last week, in Hooked on the Internet? we described the symptoms someone going through a so-called addiction to the Internet could experience. Today we continue discussing this issue, as, incidentally, a couple of days ago, several newspapers published the findings of a study on Internet addiction. The study was carried out in seven European countries selected by the European Commission and 2000 teens took part in each country.

Here goes an extract of the key findings regarding the use – or abuse – of the Internet by European teenagers:

• 12,7% of European teenagers are at risk of developing an addiction to the Internet.
• Spain tops the ranking with 21,3% of teenagers at risk of becoming addicted to the Internet.
• 1.5% of Spanish teens are already experiencing the symptoms of an Internet addiction.
• 27,8% of Spanish teens reported using the Internet to the point of neglecting other activities.
• Spanish teens are particularly fond of social networks and chatrooms. In actual fact, 91,6% of Spanish teens from 14 to 17 years old use social networks on a daily basis.
• 39,2% admits spending more than two hours a day on these type of sites.

Almost 3 out of 10 use the Internet and neglect other activities and they spend 2 hours a day online!! Why? Well, I think the Internet is just the perfect environment for teens to express themselves. But, why so long a day? Because teens who already show signs of addiction have no limits. Whose responsibility is that? In my opinion, it is the parents’.

This is my take on the issue. By the time working parents get home after a hard day at work, they also have to look after the household tasks, tidy up the house, cook meals, make sure their children do their homework. After all those activities, the little energy left is dedicated to winding down in front of the computer, TV or, if they can keep their eyes open, read a book. Or a combination of them all.

When the weekend arrives, little time is left for sitting down and chatting to the children to interact with them, exchange thoughts and give them the advice and guidelines they so much need.

My point is that we should reflect on the concept of quality time. Now, this is my personal opinion, don’t feel patronised. To me, it is not so much a question of how much time you spend with them but rather on the quality of the amount of time you dedicate talking to them. I am also a busy working mom and my energy levels in the evening are at its lowest ebb. But I try to make a conscious effort with my child.

I suggest even if only for 20 minutes a day, save this slot for you and your children. Switch off the computer; turn off the TV and the mobile phone. That will be your time, no interference from Whatsapp or whatnot. Chat in a natural way, do not resort to (tempting)  one-way interrogations. Don’t take advantage of the new information they provide just to grill them.

Keep calm and actively listen. Find out what they worry about, what they enjoy, what they think of their friends, what they expect from you. Tell them about your worries as a parent but relate to them, you were a teenager yourself once – a long, long time ago -.  Explain that enjoying playing games online or having a good time on social networks is OK, tell them that you also think that technology is fantastic, but in moderation. Make sure they understand the dangers of the networks. Do not alarm them, but make sure they know what could happen if they are not reasonably cautious.

In my humble opinion, if parents and children dialogue from an early age, children will naturally understand and accept the need for limits without kicking up a fuss or rebelling. I think this could be a positive and worthy experience! Well, I hope so, anyway. What do you think?

Related posts

• Hooked on the Internet – Part I
• How come Lady Gaga is a bigger influence on them than me?
• Spying on kids: not yes or no, but how much?
• Mom, were you spying on me?

A new post on the parenting and teenagers struggle.

I am an advocate of communication between parents and children. I think it is essential for parents to be informed and to strive to make communication with children smooth and close.

Having made this statement, I regret to say that I have serious doubts about its utility.

At La Piazza we are continually giving advice on how to help our children protect themselves from the dangers of the Internet. Again and again we emphasize how we must talk to them, we try to make them see that the network can magnify any nonsense and multiply it by “n” turning something insignificant into a real tragedy. And unfortunately, there are dramatic cases to prove so.

Sometimes we have resorted to lists to advise parents and children: Top 10 tips on Internet safety that every parent should know, The 3 basic ways to prevent sexting, The 6 golden rules for children to use technology safely. Anyway, lists, lists and more lists which in addition to help us structure the post, rank well in terms of search engines, but.. are they at all useful?

Last week the local Police Computer Crime squad gave a talk at my children’s school. They explained in great detail and with real examples the dangers children face on the network. My children returned home surprised and shocked. As if they had never heard their father and I talk about these issues. Well, I guess a uniform can be more imposing yet not imposing enough, because a few days later, several of my middle child (12 years old) classmates were expelled from school for uploading pictures of their teachers to Facebook, obviously without their authorization. My big girl (15 years) changed her Twitter profile picture to one displaying half her body only covered by a small bikini top. Well, I guess it is a quick way to get followers. To top it all, both girls tweet nonstop about every detail of their daily lives, where they are, who with, where they will be going next, upload pictures of themselves, of their brothers …

Friends of mine have a 11 year-old child who blatantly lied to their parents when they caught him bragging on Facebook about the amount of alcohol he had drunk the day before. Despite trying to convince his parents that his Facebook account had been hacked, they began to watch it closely. Result: the child created a second profile where he could publish things “unfit” for parents …

Let’s do a memory exercise. All of us, parents of teens, were teenagers not so long ago. What crossed our then young and reckless heads? The same thing as it crosses their minds. The thing is that parents are not aware of anything. Teens know exactly what they need. No one understands them. They found the love of their lives and they will love him/her forever. And above all, what really matters are friends. Best friends. True. Those to whom they tell everything and the only ones who understand.

Therefore, what is the point of insisting that not everything on the Internet is true, that they have to be careful, that it is not good to give their location coordinates with great detail, that they should not upload photos from home – geolocation enabled of course, who ever remembers to disable it? -, and so on to complete a list of 10, 20, 30 points pointing out the infinite dangers of the network.

Parents have to resign and be aware that those who really influence their children are others. If Stephanie Meyer, famous for her Twilight books or any other writer popular among teenagers and young adults wrote a novel in which the central character was a teenager who was bullied in the network and driven to suicide, tragically like Amanda Todd’s trance, the impact and exemplary positive consequences would probably be vastly superior to any maternal / paternal advice to prevent them from sending “sexy” pictures  to their current “boyfriends”. Or imagine any of the characters in Glee going through something like what Tim Ribberink  – the poor old Dutch boy who committed suicide after years enduring jokes online about his sexuality – experienced. If the actor or actress managed the problem correctly, the beneficial effect for many teens scared of their sexuality would be awesome.

As parents, one thing must be clear, our children will not tell us anything until it’s too late and therefore, they will not follow any of our tips, as these are intended to restrict what they see as their own freedom.

What is left then? Using spying programs?

My position is always the same. This type of software should only be used as a last resort when there is reasonable suspicion that something serious may be happening. All there is left for us parents is to be very alert to any changes in behavior and never lower our guard. We must explain that these issues constitute a crime and must be denounced. And if in spite of all, they are already in trouble, we will give them all the understanding, help and support they need, both to get out of the mess and to teach them how to make it in this complicated cyber world we live in.

On Wednesday, Amanda Todd, aged 15, was found dead at his home in Port Coquitlam, Canada. Last month she released a video on YouTube in which she denounced her tragic experience  as victim of a cyber stalker, with the following messages: “My story: fighting, bullying, loneliness, suicide, self-harm.”

The sad story of the teenager began at the age of 12 when a stranger with whom she contacted online asked to see her breasts. Since then, she suffered extortion to no end, until one day he made his threats true and spread her images amongst her teachers, friends and family. It was the beginning of the end: a tormented life which culminated in the suicide of the young Amanda.

Again, we would like to remind parents that prevention is the best cure:

• Talk to your children.
• Alert them of how dangerous it is to have virtual friends whom they do not know in real life.
• Persuade them of how risky it is to display provocative or exhibitionistic images on the web.
• Urge them to protect their personal data.

We will not get tired of remembering the safety tips that, once and again, we repeat in La Piazza’s blog posts: Online grooming, Teenage sexting the thin line between fun and shame, Spying on kids, not yes or no but how much?

Amanda’s case may seem extreme, but we must never forget that bullies take advantage precisely of the innocence of their victims; children who are growing up and, in many cases, are completely unaware of the dangers that certain behaviors pose.

So parents, please, try to be more attentive and always talk openly with your children; teach them real cases like Amanda’s or others that unfortunately do exist, so that they are never tempted to expose their privacy to complete strangers. The suffering is not worth it.

The internet is just part of life but sometimes it is not so obvious who you are talking to. We need to make sure our children are staying safe because there are some evil people out there, looking for vulnerable, innocent people…

And always remember that boys are just as vulnerable as girls.

Grooming, another word related to the internet and children we must learn. Unfortunately, nothing good comes out of it. Grooming is a tactical approach from an adult to a child, mostly with a sexual purpose. It is about insinuation, seduction and manipulation. It’s abuse. It’s a crime.

So far, in the offline world, this type of offenders used to spend months trying to gain the trust of his prey, even to the point of making contact with the family in order not to raise suspicions. But the Internet has accelerated everything.

Pedophiles move in those chat rooms which are most popular among children. They are aware of the latest trends in fashion, music and sport, to be able to present themselves as another child, or someone who is in tune with the interests of the child. The offender may be particularly adept at identifying younger children, more naive and vulnerable in a chat room, and go for it. They try to become his “special friend”.

Slowly he will obtain the child’s personal and contact information. Using tactics such as seduction, provocation, sending pornographic images, the criminal will finally persuade the child to undress, or to perform acts of a sexual nature in front of the webcam, or to send photos of the same type. Then starts cyberbullying, by blackmailing the victim to obtain increasingly pornographic material or to have a physical encounter with the child to sexually abuse him.

The step from the virtual world to the real world is gradual. Initial contact can quickly switch from an open chat room, public or semi-public, to a private chat room, then to email, SMS text messaging via mobile phones, instant messaging, and then to direct contact direct through a mobile or phone, or even by voice via the Internet.

There have been cases where the predator has sent the child a mobile phone to ensure that the child’s parents have no way of knowing, or of controlling the contact between the two.

Therefore, usually these are the steps:

1. Friendship

He will persuade the child into speaking in a private chat room so that no one else can access the child. Often, he will ask the child for a non sexual picture of himself.

2. Establishing friendship bonds

He will show interest and concern over the child’s problems in order to create the illusion in him that he is his best friend.

3. Risk Assessment

He will ask the child about the location of his computer and about who else has access to it in order to assess the risk of being detected.

4. Exclusivity

He will build a relationship based on mutual love and trust and he will suggest that with him, the child can talk about “anything”.

5. Sex talk

He will involve the child in explicit conversations and will ask him for sexually explicit images of him. At this stage, the pedophile will try to arrange a meeting with the child.

How to Prevent Grooming

1. Prevent the predator to have elements of blackmail. If there’s no element of force, no blackmail is possible.

2. It is very important to preserve the security and confidentiality of passwords of the computer. If someone steals our photos, we could be blackmailed as much as if we had sent the photos ourselves.

3. It is essential that the computer children use is well protected with a good antivirus with a firewall. Also, it is important to make sure the antivirus is always updated. Otherwise, criminals could obtain access credentials and steal blackmail material.

4. Last but not least, as parents, it is your job to convince your children that they should never download files from people they do not know well.

As a complement to our last post, we want to show you this self explanatory video by the U.K. CEOP . It lasts about 10 minutes but it is well worth watching it.

Published by Ana Etxebarria, 26th July 2012

A few days ago I experienced a situation that most parents will probably face, especially when children become teenagers. One of my nephews boasted on a social network of having taken his first alcoholic drink and smoked his first cigarette. He is 12 years old. I still do not know, and doubt that I will ever know, if it was a big boy bravado or fact. But nevertheless, this led to a family dilemma with a complex solution.

Should we spy on them or not?

In a world where six year old kids play with strangers online, 10 year olds already have smartphones and 13 year olds (or younger) have profiles on Facebook, it may seem tempting to think that the best weapon parent have to defend our children from any potential danger is spying. Now to be fair, children should always know that we are watching their moves. That is, we would have to be those uncomfortable and unwanted “friends” whose invitation they have no choice but to accept. As discussed here a few months ago, Mom, were you spying on me?, if it were our case, at least we should not forget the “etiquette” with them.

How much should we spy our kids?

Asking to be his “friends” on Facebook is a truly subtle and honest way of espionage. A step beyond, there are  programs which will allow us to know exactly the content of SMS exchanges with friends, the exact pages they are browsing and the time they spend in each one of them or in chat conversations.

Yet this attitude is at odds with the concept of a father who naturally trusts his son, who teaches him to be a responsible adult and that, without reasons for it, nothing can justify an intrusion of this kind in the private life of anyone, let alone their children’s. The objective of this somewhat unrealistic group, is not to ignore the habits of their children when they are online but to limit the use of all electronic devices as much possible and postpone the purchase of smartphones for as long as possible. Encouraging outdoor activities is certainly a healthy lifestyle and the time spent on the Internet is decreased and therefore the risks associated with the network are reduced.

But then, Who is right? Who is wrong?

I believe that, as in any other aspect of life, common sense is the only tool to be applied. In order to raise confident and self-sufficient children, which deep down is the main desire of any parent, you must be able to mix all the ingredients properly. Basically a father is not very different from a cook and a tasty dish must have a liuttle bit of everything and everything in the right amount. You have to watch the cooking time but also let it cook at its pace. And of course every cook has his tricks and no dish is always the same.

What do you think?

Published by Leyre Velasco, 25th May 2012

In La Piazza, we insist that it is important to keep an eye on your teenager’s online practices despite how difficult it is sometimes to strike a balance between trust and authority, as explained in Mom, were you spying on me?

Well, sometimes, even the most cautious parents and kids get unpleasant surprises when simply searching for information on the Internet. Usually, search engines crawl for websites and then use advanced techniques to determine search results. The fact is that no human categorisation or intervention is involved, as web spidering is bot-based.

Safe search

Therefore when you are searching pages or images, for example, the most innocent keywords could return results related to explicit sexual matters, pornography, violence, drug use, gambling etc..

A friend of mine recently told me that this type of situation happened to her once when her 13 year-old daughter was doing her homework. She had to do a project on the food pyramid. In order to illustrate the subject, she decided to prepare a Power Point presentation containing images of the different types of foods. There she was googling words like cereal, vegetables, bread, fish, etc.. Fair enough, the basic nutrients.

However, when she went looking for specifics and typed in certain type of vegetables or fruits, the returned results were not, let’s say, as expected. Luckily, my friend was sitting next to her daughter and was quick to press the Back button. Although my friend told me she had the feeling this could have happened, deep down she was hoping for a filter of some kind to be applied by default. Wrong!! As far as I know, you do have to change the default configuration of the search engine or else opt for other alternatives, so here go some of them:

• Apply child filters in your usual search engine. If you use Google, check the SafeSearch Filtering section.
• Get your child to use search engines which offer child-friendly content only. They achieve this by filtering out inappropriate content which you, as a parent, would find offensive for your child. In general, this is done by using human beings to filter out the unsuitable sites. Check out article Which Search Engines are Safe for Kids? for further information.
• Install Parental Control applications on your computer. The 2012 Panda Security products which feature this type of protection.

And keep an eye on the Internet history, and temporary Internet files to ensure that only what you want seen is viewed on your home computer.

Please share your comments with us and tell us if you found this article useful!

Published by Leyre Velasco, 17th May 2012

If you don’t have the foggiest idea about what today’s title post means, all the more reason for reading it.

We recently published Kids and technology: 6 basic rules to bear in mind in order to emphasize how important it is to encourage your teen to trust you and to share with you who his online friends are, what personal data he has facilitated on his Internet profiles as well as various other safety tips.

But .. what good is it that your child shares with you his WhatsApp, Messenger, or Skype conversations if you do not understand half the things he or others write?

What is LOL? What do the symbols xD stand for? Why FAIL? Why is your son, who usually gets outstanding marks in English, all of the sudden making atrocious spelling mistakes in Facebook?

Relax, breathe deeply. Your child simply speaks the Internet slang, a language with its own communication rules, plagued by new terms, acronyms and symbols mainly used in forums, chats, blogs and social networks and rapidly spreading to other common places such as the email at the workplace.

LOL

And I am warning you .. the vast majority of users are fluent in it, so please, do learn some basics and please, please, please, do not ask your child to follow the formal written English rules or the BBC standard English rules because this simply is not cool therefore it just won’t happen. It is not about wrecking any language rule possible –Internet users do not appreciate this either – yet there are unwritten and written rules that have become common practice amongst Internet users.

So, if you not only want to belong to the community but also want to understand what is discussed here, you have no other choice but to learn some basic terms. And don’t forget to always use your wit! As a study by the University of Tasmania published by the BBC called Do not be 404, know techslang points out, while the use of Internet slang saves the writer time, it takes the reader twice to understand the message.

The list of terms is endless, but here you will find some of the most used terms. And stop feeling like a fish out of water!

Acronyms:

• AKA: Also Known As. Used to list aliases a person, movie, book, etc.. is known as.
• ASAP: As soon as possible.
• LOL: Acronym for Laughing Out Loud or the Lot Of Laughs, it means noisy or loud laughter.
• IMO / IMHO: Acronym for In My Opinion / In My Humble / Honest Opinion.
• BRB: Be right back.
• BTW: By the way.
• THX: Thanks!
• OMG: Oh my God
• WTF: What the fuck. Rude as it is, excuse us for including it here but it has become common practice.
• FAIL: Or sometimes, Epic Fail. Mistake of huge proportions, very often used to express disappointment at failure.

Symbols:

• xD: Small face representing the expression of a smile with your eyes closed and tight. Used when you want to share a joke.
• o_0: Face with eyes wide open. Indicates confusion.
• ^ ^ ^: Long laugh
• XOXO: If the person you like writes this, it means that they are sending kisses.
• XXX: Kissing.

Do you dare send a funny acronym you learnt with your teen?