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How much digital autonomy do your kids have?
A random question to those with children: how much autonomy do you (or do you plan to) give your kids over their digital identities and accounts - desktop files, email, social networks, et cetera? On the continuum between leaving them be entirely, and having full knowledge of all their accounts and passwords, where do you stand?
I recently blew up at a friend in email over learning that someone (not my friend) wanted to slip into their child's Facebook account so that they could use their friends-list to set up a surprise party. This struck a nerve with me, and I wrote an emotionally fueled reply. Today, in email apologizing for my outburst, I put into words, maybe for the first time, my conviction that one's digital spaces, both local and online, are very literally extensions of the mind. To me, access to your digital identity deserves the same level of sanctity as your personal one. Therefore, another person, no matter who they are or how kind and loving their intentions may be, has no more right to impinge on your digital spaces as they do to examine the thoughts in your head.
But: I didn't grow up in an internet-aware household, and I'm not involved with the raising of any of my friends' kids, so I have no experience in knowing how, or even if, this stance applies to children. I certainly accept that parents must have a great deal of direct control on the lives of their young children and teens, or they wouldn't be very effective parents. So, for my own education, I am genuinely curious how the smart and kid-enabled people I know treat this issue.
I recently blew up at a friend in email over learning that someone (not my friend) wanted to slip into their child's Facebook account so that they could use their friends-list to set up a surprise party. This struck a nerve with me, and I wrote an emotionally fueled reply. Today, in email apologizing for my outburst, I put into words, maybe for the first time, my conviction that one's digital spaces, both local and online, are very literally extensions of the mind. To me, access to your digital identity deserves the same level of sanctity as your personal one. Therefore, another person, no matter who they are or how kind and loving their intentions may be, has no more right to impinge on your digital spaces as they do to examine the thoughts in your head.
But: I didn't grow up in an internet-aware household, and I'm not involved with the raising of any of my friends' kids, so I have no experience in knowing how, or even if, this stance applies to children. I certainly accept that parents must have a great deal of direct control on the lives of their young children and teens, or they wouldn't be very effective parents. So, for my own education, I am genuinely curious how the smart and kid-enabled people I know treat this issue.
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Everything is a negotiation, but my kids didn't have e-mail until they had reached sufficiently close to the age of discretion--say 10 or 12--for me not to worry about it too much. They've had e-mail via school that is probably monitored by the school, and for the past couple of years they've had e-mail accounts on one of my servers that I treat as I would any user e-mail account on a machine I'm admin for: absolutely private.
But my kids are now 18 (legally an adult) and almost 16, close enough to adulthood that he could die for his country if he was that-way minded. If kids that age don't deserve the same respect for their privacy that an adult does, I don't know who does. And I think that parents who are concerned with monitoring the online activities of kids in their mid-teens have a screw loose.
I don't have quite the same "digital spaces are an extension of the mind" you do, but I can see where that's coming from.
When younger, my kids had little or no online access without a degree of oversight, in the sense that I was in the same room, generally. The family computers in my house have always been in public spaces and still are. My own desktop machine is in a semi-public space at the moment. The kids have had machines in their own rooms at their mothers for a few years, and I'm fine with that, if that works for them and her.
So I guess I'm comfortable with and understand the need for considerable parental oversight up to the age of 10 or 12, which includes lots of teaching on how to maintain their own privacy and safety online, with parental oversight tailing off pretty quickly over the age of 12.
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