Kids, and the Online World

As my kids get more proficient with computers and gaming, I've been wondering how to mitigate the randomness of the people they run into out there in the wild.

Then I wondered... maybe this should be a tad more organic than simply and completely cutting off contact with the outside world. Maybe there could be a safer approach at rubbing shoulders with the caustic and the refined?

I've always been reasonably protective of my personal information, but with the right attention, I unroll like a scroll. I know my kids have the same traits and have no real fear associated with it.

It was days earlier that I thought about how I would warn my daughter off from predatory people. I have to keep firmly in mind that not everyone is bad, but you also don't have to take unnecessary risks. I was preparing for the eventual dialogue.

A day later, my daughter explained to me that she had told this guy "everything" about herself in an innocuous free-to-play online game. I was a horrified... was I too late?

BriAnna sat her down and was fairly stern about the situation, but I realized that this isn't going to be the last time for engagements like this, it's about teaching the kids to be smart about who they talk to and what they tell them.

So, I asked her what she actually told him. (Because, hyperbole.) She told him her first and last name and the city she's in, but not the state. That was enough to get me worried, but I kept calm and had her show me the chat log. (Because, not everyone is evil.) If it was an adult, he was very good at being a 10 year old. She had just been overzealous in revealing information... perhaps this it could be a harmless teaching situation after all?

I had her delete the character she interacted with him on. She had just started, they were in the newbie area. And then I talked her through what the appropriate responses were in situations like that.

I explained the importance of an alias, which lets you be just anonymous enough to get by. Unfortunately, her current alias we gave her was a nickname that has her name in it. We're going to think of a new one.

It made me think of Art3mis from Ready Player One. The strong willed, tough-girl persona that shares very little information about herself. That gave me some ideas at how children, in general, should socialize online.

The final rule in all of this was: Always tell me when people are asking these sorts of questions. She should never be ashamed or afraid to talk to me about any friend, whether online or in person. She trusts me... which is something I've tried hard to nurture. That seems to be the best deterrent than hovering and getting in her business.

The situation wasn't real for her, but she sees how worried we got about it and it became real to her, too. Now she knows, in a very real sense, that she needs to be aware of how she interacts with people online.

And, as I love to say: "You don't know what you need to know until you need to know it." I hope that what she learned from this experience will help her keep her safe.