Managing the Online Teenager?

Parenting Pains asks: "I've got two teenagers, whose peer group have 'discovered' the Internet over the course of this year. We've gone from two bright happy lively teenagers at the start of the year, to now having two people who rarely venture outdoors except under duress and are close to unbearable unless they're ensconced online with 'friends' on MSN for hours at a time. Over recent months, this has gone from mildly amusing to out of hand, with them spending up to 10-12 hours a day on weekends online with friends. Many Slashdot readers must have confronted this situation; how have you dealt with it, and what were the outcomes of what you did? Do you just let the kids stay online till they got sick of it, and how long did it take? Do you ban them from using MSN? Do you limit the number of hours they can be online?"

"When they're not online, they're grumpy, demanding, constantly nagging, etc. (i.e. normal teenagers) - frankly it's easier for us when they are online, but not for that many hours at a sitting.

We made a decision up front to trust their judgement and not monitor who they talk to and what they talk about, but I'm starting to question the wisdom of this right about now. Not for any specific reason; there's just a little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me there's something wrong with this."

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Re:Where are the computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That might work fine for 'normal' teens, but I would strongly recommend against it if they're of the 'geeky variety' (which he didn't say they were..)
If I had no computer in my room when I was growing up, I have no idea where I would be today.
Sure, sometimes I spent 7+ hours a day on it during the summer, but I'm also not out of highschool yet and am proficient in Perl, PHP, MySQL, and C++. I run Gentoo Linux servers, and make good money with technical jobs.
Without a computer of my own, I would have never been able to install GNU/Linux and discover all the possibilities that it brings.

Re:Where are the computers?

[LouCifer]

Why is this a bad idea for 'geeky' teens? So what if the computers are in a common area? Its not like he'll be telling them not to code or study.

Having the computers in a common area isn't going to keep the teens from using them for something other than chatting and could keep them from chatting too much.

Re:Who cares?

[the morgawr]

Also was a teenager who spent a lot of time in my room and around the house (online, video games, reading). Once I got a car, I had no curfew. My folks just expected me to do the right thing and keep them informed about my life. Since they respected me, we never went throught some rebelious phase.

My parents and I talked about school but doing schoolwork was my responsibility and I got decent grades.

My parent's attitude was that as long as I acted responsibly, they let me have wide freedom.

To the OP, if your kids are being responsible with their life, I'd say no worries, they're better off then 90% of the people out there. OTOH, if they are being generally irresponsible by measureable means (failing classes, perpetually getting in late at night, not doing important housework), you should talk to them and figure out why they arn't living up to your expectations. Assuming the computer causes the problems is unproductive and may result in adressing the symptom instead of the cause. In general, trust your kids until they give you reason not to.

Re:I went thru this myself (teenager point of view

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't take the PCs out of their bedrooms. As a 16 year old kid, I know how important it is to have a private place where I child can go to relax- and talk to their friends in private. You don't expect me to be able to hear everything you say; don't expect that you can hear whatever I say. If you don't trust me enough to give me my privacy, I'll take it. Whether I spend all my time sending encrypted e-mail from school, an internet cafe, or wherever; I WILL speak in private.
Parents have to trust their children.

I truly pity your children.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your job as a parent is not to be your child's friend. Your job as a parent is to raise these children to be productive, successful, responsible adults

Who said it was someone's *JOB* to be their child's friend?

Whyise being their friend and fulfilling your "job" of raising them mutually exclusive?

Most importantly, why do you think that you can't be a responsible parent without antagonizing your child?

Re:Look in the mirror

[An Onerous Coward]

Thank you for providing an "in" for one of my longwinded rants.

It's certainly obvious that there is some estrangement between this guy and his teens, and it's possible that some of the blame is his, but I think you're a little quick to place the blame.

Kids in our society are messed up. Not surprising, since this messing up has been the goal of many elements in our society for years. Look at the TV kids are watching, and the way the corporate powers seek to advertise to them. The adult world is portrayed as stale and boring. Adults are hapless morons of varying levels of vindictiveness, while kids are smart, powerful, and hip.

The corporate message is, "By using our products to define your identity, you can become cool and save yourself from the small-minded rules of your adult oppressors." Real power and independence comes from hard work, healthy living, and deep knowledge of important subjects. But if the advertisers have their way (and they do), kids are raised believing it comes from owning the latest and greatest, by mastering expensive but trivial pursuits like Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh, and by defying authority for no good reason.

Having been browbeaten with these messages practically since birth, what chance does a teenager have of becoming someone who is good company for an adult?

I think adults have a responsibility to maintain a good relationship with their kids. They should be interested in our lives and we should be interested in theirs. Reducing the amount of "trivial" media that children consume shields them from a lot of messages which can erode their interest in the adult world and their respect for their parents.

Priviliges are Earned

[jazman_777]

By being able to shoulder the responsibilities. If they can't handle the responsibilities of being part of a family ("participate in civilized social interaction with your family"), you pull the privileges.

Re:Who cares?

[Reapy]

Same boat here except slightly forward. 24 here, married, had a study job for the last 2 years after getting out of college. Never went through a rebellious phase, but did have an older sibling who did that.

Basically I never talked to people till I got online. I found kali for gameing online in dos and pretty much did that with all my free time. I got a job around 16 years old, worked there part time for 2 1/2 years during highscool and quit when I went to college.

Every free second of time outside of work went to getting online and playing war2 on kali and chatting with people. During the summer I was up until almost 6 or 7 am everynight playing. I made a few good online buddies I still talk to now, almost 10 years later.

During that time I also had a gf I met at work and we dated till about college.

So being online is just one more way to waste your time. I didn't do parties, and I didn't do after school activities, but I got my homework done, worked part time, and managed to have my fun with my gf. I also put in an insane amout of time chatting online, and it really helpped me start to develop socially, sad as that my sound.

So just make sure they take care of responsabilities, then let them do what they want in their free time, well minus all the illegal stuff they could be doing :)

Porn and kids

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I'll be spending most of tomorrow doing a favor for a dear friend. Her and her two boys(12 and 16) will be on a cruise and I'll be going over their computers with a fine-toothed comb.

Two months ago, both their machines were unusable because of mounds of malware. The older boy had a lousy porn collection but it was clear he'd been massively deleting stuff because he knew I was coming over. The stuff I did find was disturbing enough that I had a long talk with Mom. She, however, didn't want to believe her precious darlings would willingly download the sort of content that could get them thrown in jail. I reached an agreement with her that I'd do this one more time if she agreed not to warn the boys the next time it was going to happen. I rebuilt both machines from scratch - Win2K, ZA, Ad-Aware, AVG, Firefox, and all the updates. Now, one machine is again inoperative and the other is so slow Mom wants to just go buy a new one.

So, without the boys knowing, I'm going to audit the state of their computers and prepare a report for mom. I have pretty good suspicions about why they wanted the digital cameras and webcams that don't leave their rooms. I have pretty good suspicions about what was in those directories with the names I won't print here. But delivering the report to Mom isn't something I'm looking forward to.

The original poster is questioning the decision he made to allow computers in the bedrooms of his teens. Based on what I've seen, if I ever have kids there is no freakin' way they'll have access to any computer behind a closed door until they're at least of legal age to do in person the things they'll be tempted to do on cam.

I have a feeling that if he'd just move the computers to a common area, half his problems would disappear.

Oh, and btw, when I finish I'm wiping both machines and installing some barebones flavor of linux that I'll strip of pretty much everything except a web browser and an office suite. I want them to be able to do basic schoolwork in their bedrooms but Mom can buy them another Windows machine for games and other assorted diversions.