My daughter and YouTube
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- July
- 24
So there I am: washing my face, getting ready for bed, when Sydney (my 12-year-old) calls to me: “Hey, Mom, check it out. Corey is on YouTube!” I come dashing (sprinting?) out of the bathroom and sure enough, there’s my adorable 14-year-old singing along with one of her friends in someone named Claire’s room in a short video that Syd thinks is hilarious and I think is scary.
Is this what Corey and her friends do when they’re “hanging out” at someone’s house till all hours? I could almost hear Corey saying “duh” to me as the words of a friend (with older kids) also popped into my head. She told me: Whatever you think your kids know about the Internet, you are already five paces behind them. In other words: they know a LOT! And are doing a lot online.
Plus: it doesn’t matter what you allow or do in your house—chances are, your kids are fiddling with their friend’s computer at their house where the rules may be different.
All of which makes me realize that I’ve got to get up to speed—fast! (in all those “spare” minutes I have, right?) because despite the fact that I have parental controls on our computers at home and despite the fact that I’ve told my kids countless times not to go to chat rooms and post their photos, and despite the fact that I’m trying as best as I can to “monitor” them, yada yada, etc. etc, the bottom line is that they are “out there” in WebLand.
And so: I plead to you all, my faithful blog friends for advice: Anyone out there have any internet safety stories? Stories to share about what I should/shouldn’t be doing? What I could be doing better? HELP!
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 10:41 am by Jeanne Muchnick.
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I started writing this 3 times and realize,I don`t know how to answer or give input on this.God bless all you parents with the insanity out there.
Use Parental control that comes with Nortons Internet Security.
Also, You can write to YouTube and have it pulled.
If your daughter is under 18, and you are her parent you definitely have a say about her visage being on TV without your consent.
I face the same problems and have no answers. My son and his friends post YouTube videos regularly. The videos are harmless, and there’s no way viewers could figure out where they live from watching them, so I allow it. I click on his site regularly to check what’s on there, but the only thing I ever made him pull was a video where my younger son made a small comment that I felt was insulting to homosexuals. Bigotry is banned, even if the word he used is a common insult in the 10-year-old crowd. I think we have to choose our battles, and YouTube is a fact of life for 14-year-olds.
Not in this house.
As Jeanne said, if they don’t do it in your house, they’ll do it in friends’ houses. And, if you they’re not allowed to do it, they may hide it from you. If you allow it, they’ll share it with you—and you can keep your eye on what they do.
I found out about a year ago that my then-14 year old son had a myspace page. I went to look at it and was shocked to find that he heeded none of my warnings about posting personal information on the site, exactly. When he created his page, he did it with the warnings in mind (no last name, sports team, jersey number, town, etc…) but as the page grew and his friends posted comments, etc. stuff started to emerge.
We sat down together, I pulled up his page and we went through each item so that he could see how perverts would be able to find him in 5 seconds flat if they wanted to. He didn’t even have to be asked – he deleted his myspace page immediately. That really scared him.
Good for you. Communication is everything.
Good to know that we’re not the only parents out there with this problem!! It’s interesting to note that MySpace is being outlawed from most work places…we have used that as ammunition with our kids…I took them to work and showed them what I see on my computer when I try to go to YouTube or MySpace…so they know that even we grown-ups get blocked sometimes! They laugh at me for it and joke around…and I explain WHY it gets blocked. I also have Watchdog installed on my computer, and have found it to be extremely effective.
I also blocked MySpace and YouTube on my 13-year old daughter’s account, and so she goes to this Flixster and registers there…it looked like a harmless website about movies and had posts which talked about movies, but after digging, I found that it was nothing more than another MySpace with a “Movie” theme. I banned it, as well. And, as far as keeping her from doing it at friends’ homes? Well, just like me when I was 12 and MTV actually played music videos, and my parents did not have cable, I went to my friends’ homes and watched Madonna or Dire Straits. All we can do is inform the parents of their friends what our kids are not allowed to do…most of the time, they appreciate it and are on the same page with us! Our teenagers will find a way, though, and we all know it. Rules and punishment for breaking the rules. We compromise, though, and she has her Yahoo messenger. And if we ever suspect something, we can go into Watchdog and see what she’s been up to. Believe it or not, lately, she’s only been online for about 20 minutes a day to talk to her cousin…she doesn’t gripe about her restrictions.
Hi again yeah we all know loads on the net from HTML and to uploading a video on youtube because corey most likely has facebook along with myspace and bebo i don’t want to like get her in trouble but these websites require FULL names so oneday you should just search her name in search boxes and may just find her i have all these things with my photos but its ok as my account is set to private so only friends can veiw these im not sure how you can block these from access maybe in your home but she can go to a internet cafe or just a friends home unfortunalty you can’t do much at all although you can show her like child saftey online and things like that bribe her not to visit these sites or just scare her about them
goodluck
I’d love to get that Watchdog two of you mentioned, but see more than one on line. Can you tell me the exact name of the one you use?