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It's More Than Just the Web
The Internet allows people to meet each other like never before. Your child can now communicate with a child in Europe. It's a great chance for people around the world to become even closer and more informed. The drawback is that there is a small minority of people who do things that could wreck the experience for everybody.
If you've never used e-mail before, you'll find that people interact online in three basic ways. Each has its own rules of behavior, sometimes called "netiquette". It's a good idea to talk about the ethics that apply to each.
Bulletin Boards, sometimes called newsgroups, are places - just like a real bulletin board - where someone writes a note or message then posts it where other people can see it, react or add notes of their own. Bulletin boards cover almost every imaginable topic - shortwave radio, sea lions, quilting and skateboarding, to name a few. A major Internet Service Provider (ISP) will have hundreds of them. On bulletin boards, you usually cannot communicate live with another person; you just read his notes. Anyone who gains access to a bulletin board can read the notes that everyone else has posted. People who use bulletin boards may not use their real names, but their e-mail addresses are sometimes found in their notes.
Since bulletin boards typically offer an exchange of ideas, there's plenty of room for disagreement. It's tempting to heap abuse on people who disagree with you. After all, you'll never see or encounter them in person. If you are using a pseudonym, being abusive can be even more tempting. Getting hostile, especially in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, is considered "shouting" and is generally frowned upon.
Bulletin boards fall into several categories, and the letters at the beginning can give you a clue to their contents.
- Alt means "alternative" and includes the most controversial newsgroups, sexual sites, places that discuss how to construct bombs and the like. Not every bulletin board marked "alt" is a bad one, but it is a good idea to check out any "alt" places that your child wants to visit.
- Biz stands for business.
- Rec includes recreation topics, hobbies and arts.
- Sci means "scientific".
- Soc means "social activities".
- Talk refers to debates.
E-mail is much like regular mail (or "snail mail"), only faster. You write someone a note, paste on his electronic address, and "mail" it to him. When he gets it, he can read it, click "reply", and send a note back. By and large, this type of communication is not seen by anyone else, although, as discussed before, some companies regularly monitor their employees' e-mail. Whether at home or at work, it is a good idea to assume e-mail is not private. Bulk e-mail, much like the junk mail you get in your regular mail, is called "spam", and is generally concluded with an e-mail address where you can write to unsubscribe.
Have One E-mail Address:
Sure, once your kids start getting e-mail from all of their friends, this could be an annoyance, but having one e-mail address in the household will enable you to log on and read every message that your children get. If you are receiving mail that you might not want your kids to see, then have two e-mail addresses, and have ready access to them both. Another alternative is to have one address, but route e-mail to folders named for each person. Either way, you as a parent should have control of the household e-mail account. Your kids should understand that e-mail is NOT personal. Better for them to learn now what employees all over the world have been learning recently: that e-mail is a piece of cake for others to get into. Like company owners, parents own the equipment and it is perfectly acceptable for them to monitor the e-mail that takes place on their equipment.
Chat Rooms and Instant Messaging:
Chat rooms are the most wide-open form of Internet communication. They are exciting, yet sometimes very strange places. Chat rooms are communication in real time: you type a message, usually just a line or two, hit a key, and it's on a screen where everyone else in the "room" can see it. Some chat rooms have 30 or 40 people in them with several people typing at once. Watching the messages and trying to keep up with them can make for a lively session. Much like at a noisy party, two or more people can decide to go out of the chat room into a "private room" for some one-on-one conversation. These can be a lot of fun, a way of meeting and communicating with interesting people. Some people have even met in chat rooms and eventually gotten married.
Chat rooms can also be among the more dangerous places on the Internet. When someone posts a message in a chat room, other users have no way of knowing who that person really is.
This anonymity can be very liberating to some people. The person who is shy in real life can assume the online persona of a party animal. The boy or girl who is pushed around at school can become a bully, and the lonely soul who cannot seem to make friends in face-to-face encounters can reach out and have friends all over the world.
One of the odder manifestations of this is "cybersex", where two or more people have various sexual activities back and forth with each other. While this kind of role-playing might be all right for some adults, it causes problems when kids are involved. Some individuals, children or adults, become so caught up in their fantasy world that they begin to ignore the real world, spending hours and hours hunched in front of a screen.
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