The Digitally Aware Parent (DAP): A Battle We Can’t Win Alone
I like to think of myself as web and social media savvy. I do it for a living. I keep track of new innovation and technology that affects my marketing and public relations (social media) work. In this, I feel I do a fairly effective job. When it comes to my kids’ use of these tools however, I feel like I’m always playing catch-up. I know I’m not alone and with the help of my friends at Enough Is Enough, who tirelessly try and set the standard for Internet and social media accountability and education, we have decided to launch this blog column to help those, like me, who are trying to become Digitally Aware Parents (DAP).
I have five kids from the ages of 27 down to 11 and I’ve seen a lot over the years. Some I’d like to forget. I’ve witnessed how the Internet has segued from a vital and exciting educational tool to a landing strip (excuse the pun) for predators and pornographers. I’ve watched as kids have stumbled into instant access to some of the most hardened and graphic images we could have ever imagined. I’ve watch online predators pray on their short term naivety. Short-termed because once they’ve been exposed they become savvy in a world we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. Sodom used to be a city. Now it’s available visually on our laptops, our tablets, our netbooks and our kids’ phones. From streaming porn to sexting, trying to raise a child today in a world devoid of their exposure to adult and unseemly content has become nearly impossible. If you think you’ve conquered this – and I’ve been there – you’re wrong. But I refuse to give up.
Summer Cyber Safety Made Simple
Because kids are not in school during the summer, they have more time to use the computer. Consequently, you need to make sure your kids’ summertime cyber experiences are positive. To help you, we’ve created a simple acronym as a guidepost for steps you can take and tactics you can implement to protect your children from online dangers.
And what acronym did we pick? Well, we picked SUMMER. Go figure!
New York Public Library: Out of Touch with the Public and the Law
A fistfight between an impatient person and a porn-viewing patron at the Brooklyn Public Library has reignited an old debate regarding whether adults should have free and easy access to hardcore pornography, or illegal adult pornography, known under the law as obscenity, at their local public library. A spokesperson for the library has explained that the library is complying with patrons’ First Amendment rights, and thus provides Internet access to pornography to adult patrons.
While libraries do not stock obscene videos of “Where the Girls Sweat” or “Fetish Fanatic 8″, patrons at the New York Public Library has easy access to this hardcore content through taxpayer-funded Internet access. Why? Because this particular library doesn’t understand the laws pertaining to this issue.
What is Morally Wrong Cannot be Politically Correct
Abe Lincoln said it best, “What is morally wrong cannot be politically correct.” Yet the exponential pornification of our culture is contributing both directly and indirectly to the epidemic of child sexual abuse, and unfortunately, certain segments of our government are turning a blind eye.
The U.S. spends trillions in military engagements overseas to prevent, protect and defend, and yet, research indicates that in our own country, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood (the majority are victimized by family members or someone whom they know and trust). Illegal adult pornography (i.e. obscenity) remains unprosecuted, and every child with unrestricted Internet access is just one click away from viewing this material. In a recent study, 53% of boys and 28% of girls, ages 12-15, reported using hard-core, adult illegal pornography. Additionally, law enforcement is grossly underfunded to prosecute predators, and the $3 billion child pornography industry remains one of the fastest growing businesses online. Over 200,000 rape kits remain unprocessed, and over 100,000 registered sex offenders are “lost in the system”, allowing rapists and child molesters to repeatedly abuse and expand their wake of exploitation.
New Film by David Schwimmer Highlights that No Child Is Immune to Online Dangers
Jane Silk, David Schwimmer, Donna Rice Hughes and Hemanshu Nigam at the DC Advanced Screening of Trust. Photo courtesy of Bill Guthrie, www.bguthriephotos.com.
If you’re like me, you know David Schwimmer best for his role as the lovable paleontologist Ross in the hit NBC sitcom “Friends”. Suffice it to say, I was a bit surprised when we were approached about a new film, Directed by Schwimmer called “Trust”. The film is no comedy. Instead, “Trust” documents the raw social and emotional toll on 14-year-old Annie Cameron (Liana Liberato) as she is groomed and victimized by Charlie, whom she initially believes to be a 16-year-old boy.
Like many of the parents we work with at Enough Is Enough (EIE), Annie’s parents, Will and Lynn Cameron (played by Clive Owen and Catherine Keener), find comfort in the fact that they have raised their children to be thoughtful and responsible—their kids are “good kids”. With their alarm system on and their doors locked, the Camerons believe their children are safe. As a result, Annie’s parents are shocked and devastated when they learn their daughter has been manipulated by an online predator.
MTV: An unlikely, but welcomed voice in the battle to protect youth online
Since it’s premier on the entertainment stage in 1981, MTV has become one of the most recognized networks by young adults in America. Unfortunately, today MTV is no longer known for Music Television, but rather as a home to reality shows geared towards teenagers and young adults. Shows including Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, Skins, The Hills, Parental Control, and numerous others grab the attention of millions of teens and pre-teens each and every day, in many ways promoting underage drinking, teen pregnancy, drug use, and other youth risky behaviors.
Making Your Internet Safety 101 Training a Success
As a community or school leader responsible for marketing an Internet Safety 101 training event the work can seem overwhelming and leave you uncertain about who will attend. The best-attended and most successful events, however, all share certain characteristics. Effective marketing about the program will also provide an additional benefit—you have an opportunity to get plugged into your children’s school or your community more deeply and build stronger relationships with school administrators and other community leaders.
Unlikely Suspects: Predators in Disguise
One year ago, Daniel A. Woolverton, 35, was known as a father, a husband, a U.S. Army Lawyer, and a West Point Graduate. Today, he is known among his neighbors, peers and kin as a pedophile, receiving a 37-year sentence for forcible sodomy with an infant. When the FBI executed a search warrant, they uncovered more than 30,000 images of child pornography and more than 1,000 videos, mostly of toddlers and infants, being sexually abused. Woolverton also made and distributed child pornography, videotaping, uploading and sharing his abuse of a several month-old boy. His wife, another US Army lawyer claims to have no knowledge of these events of her husband’s huge collection of child sexual abuse images.
Every week, a new case emerges of a lawyer, doctor, clergyman, teacher or other “outstanding” citizen who has secretly been engaging in outrageous and horrific acts of child sexual abuse. In the vast majority of these cases, the individual has had easy and anonymous access to a smorgasbord of child sexual abuse images (child pornography) through the Internet, images and videos depicting abused children ranging in age from infants to teens. This material merely whets the appetite and fuels the desire to act out sexually against an actual child.
Our Culture Today: Drowning in Porn
This month’s New York Magazine included several articles under the banner “Drowning in Porn”, examining, in part, the impact the web-porn “tsunami” is having on the pornography industry, adults and children.
As the series explains, the Internet served as “a distribution chute liberating [pornography] from the trench-coat ghetto of brown paper wrappers and seedy adult bookstores, an E-Z Pass to a vast untapped bedroom audience.” What many of the early pornographers failed to foresee, however, was that the Internet would not only provide new avenues to distribute pay-to-watch content, but that the Internet would lead to an explosion of cyber-porn vendors, user-generated and amateur porn, and free porn sites. As one pornography industry executive noted, “ten years ago, total daily adult-site traffic averaged less than 1 million unique visitors—on the entire Internet. Today, [one of the popular user-generated sites] alone gets 42 million unique viewers daily.”
Cris Clapp Logan
Donna Rice Hughes
Robert Flores Esq.
Lauren Gaulin
Meghan Morgan
Mark Gilman
