Please, Internet (and its billions of users), don’t steal away my kids’ innocence

Welcome back to Thursday, as Jodi at The Noise of Boys and I take turns with our True Tales from the Pink & Blue Trenches series. We’re going to change things up here at True Tales, as we begin to focus on the good, the bad, and the ugly side of parenting. With two toddlers each, we are both “newbies” on this journey, and we’re going to chronicle it for you as we go, learning, loving and laughing.

This week, it’s my turn here at Home on Deranged, and I’ve had Internet security on my mind for the last few days. With or without celebrity nude photo hacking, the reality is, nothing we do online is secret. So how do we protect our kids? Please, Internet, don’t steal away my kids’ innocence.

The beauty of having children in your life is the constant reminder that there is still good in the world. There is still innocence to behold, and wonder to be found in a ladybug crawling on a leaf. There’s still a million belly laughs to be had from playing in the sprinkler in your underwear.

The reality of becoming a parent, however, is that you are suddenly acutely aware of all the danger lurking around you. Every sharp corner, every stranger at the store, every blanket in the bed: all of them hold a danger that you never realized was there before.

And then there’s the Internet. Or rather, all the millions (billions?) of people contributing to the ever-growing, nonstop machine that is the World Wide Web. Just like me, sitting here, sharing my thoughts with you. I could just as easily share porn, recipes, tips to cheat the IRS, fashion trends, or bullying advice, but here at Home on Deranged, we’re a proud family lifestyle blog, and I don’t want to let my kids lose their innocence.

We protect them. We shelter them. We teach them manners, how to be kind to others, how to express anger in a constructive way. But in the end, they have to go out into the world. Eventually, you won’t be there beside them. Eventually, they will discover the Internet.

That’s what bothers me about the celebrity nude photo business – whether you think taking those kind of pictures is okay or not, I hope you believe that stealing them from someone who didn’t give you permission is NOT okay. To take it to the extreme: if you do online banking, and you are working under the assumption your privacy is protected, maybe it’s not. Your password might be secret, but someone can get your account number. Does that give them permission to steal from your bank account? I know, it’s an extreme example, but it’s not that far removed.

We monitor usage around here. It’s not hard when they’re only 2 and 3, but even if you let them borrow your tablet or smartphone occasionally, there’s still a chance they’ll stumble across something. And it’s not just about what the kids will be looking for; it’s also about who is looking for your kid.

If the celebrity nude photo scandal teaches us anything, it’s that someone else can get access to your personal details, whether you know they exist on the planet or not. We’ve seen the stories in the news of teenagers creating fake Facebook accounts to bully fellow students. Or figuring out their passwords and simply writing terrible things on their wall. It’s not that far removed.

In addition to setting up parental controls and installing privacy/protection apps, can we just change our way of thinking? I want to know that my kids are going to be free to make bad choices. I want my kids to do stupid stuff. That’s what growing up is about. But nowadays, as a very popular meme going around notes, “I’m so glad there weren’t camera phones when I was young.” Amen.

I’m not perky Pollyanna over here. Some people like to show off half-naked/full-naked pictures of themselves. That’s why Playboy is still around. And some people love to spew venom and bile on any possible topic. It’s the way of the world. It’s the nature of human beings.

It just feels like kids are expected to know more, be better, faster, funnier, more fashionable these days, AND be smarter somehow about the ways of the world. If I had been given a camera phone when I was 11, I might not have taken nude pictures, but I would have taken pictures of everything else, including tons of selfies. And I wouldn’t have possibly understood that there might have been a weirdo guy somewhere in a basement in North Dakota who was crawling all over my Google cloud to find it.

Please, Internet (and all of us who use it), don’t steal away my kids’ innocence.

What do you think? Are you afraid the Internet is changing how we grow up? How we live our formative years? Share your thoughts/tips/advice with me in the comments!

Be sure to go visit Jodi at The Noise of Boys and see what’s going on at her place. And if you ever have a topic or question you’d like to see covered here, drop me a line at ourhomeonderanged {at} gmail {dot} com.