Currently, Kids’ Time on Web is Harmless

By RICHARD J ALLEY

I had a high school teacher in 1988 who implored me to go into something mysteriously called “mass communications,” much as Benjamin Braddock’s trusted adviser made the enigmatic suggestion of “plastics” in “The Graduate” back in 1967.

I recently got in touch with that teacher, across the years and thousands of miles, on something called “Facebook,” via something called “the Internet.”

Plastics.

I never thought I would find myself on Facebook. I have enough friends with whom I keep in contact as much as I feel is appropriate. Recently, though, the curiosity became too much. I hear, too often, people invoking Facebook as though it’s some sort of sacred oracle.

So now I’m out there, having gulped the networking Kool-Aid, lost in that grid, hand-in-hand with close to 30 friends.

I was never so popular in high school.

The Quartet is allowed on the desktop computer at home. A couple of them have their very own log-ins and passwords, which I keep filed away with my own.

I have no compunction about invading their little bunker of privacy; there are too many freaks out there like parasites on a web.

It’s my responsibility to keep these kids safe and out of harm’s way, a full-time job in Memphis already. I don’t need to lie awake at night also worrying that they’ve come in contact with anything more insidious than Noggin on the Internet.

So far, they’re only interested in playing games involving SpongeBob, Sonic or Dora. And when the situation calls for it, Wikipedia has been dialed up.

Only 7-year-old Joshua is the type to spend hours online playing games if left unchecked. And he should be checked up on frequently, since he once attempted to open a Target charge account. No doubt to purchase a better, faster computer for game-playing.

We’re currently residing in that safe place where I know for a fact that they’re not on MySpace or in any chat rooms, but I know that one day in the not-too-distant future, the door into that bunker will slam shut on my parental foot and become, if not impossible, at least more difficult to nudge open.

That they will demand their privacy and come up with their own passwords, which they will keep from me.

And then I will keep things from them, like an evening with the family car. Or food.

My real fear, though, is that when that day comes, my own kids will appear on Facebook, and that my world will seep into theirs, and vice versa. That my friends will become their friends, and theirs mine.

I don’t want to be 43 years old and sign on to take care of my personal business but first having to answer the question, “‘sup, Mr. A?”

I won’t even know where to begin.

Until that time, I’ll keep exploring the wide world on the Web, making note of what to allow the kids into or hide from them, and keeping in virtual contact with you, Mrs. Robinson.

Richard J. Alley, the father of two boys and two girls, is owner of Memphis Tobacco Bowl. Read more about him and his family at uurrff.blogspot.com. Alley and Stacey Greenberg, the mother of two boys, take turns on Thursdays telling stories of parenting in Memphis. Read more from her at fertilegroundzine.com and diningwithmonkeys.blogspot.com.

Originally published by RICHARD J. ALLEY .

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