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Fri 5 Mar, 2010 09:00 am
Like most kids I was always told "don't talk to strangers" . My parents never gave me particularly good details on this issue, but I filled in my own blanks from stories other kids told me about alien abductions, goblin sacrifices, kid slavery, and crazy cat ladies who locked would lock you in a basement. I didn't talk to strangers growing up and would never have started up conversations with adults I didn't know. This advice is apparently now moot. Over the last few weeks practically every adolescent I have interacted with on the internet has PM'd me, a couple of times it was appropriate, but mostly it was to see if I wanted to be their friend. My grammar might not be flawless, but I do not think I write like a teen. I would dope slap any kid in my care who started contacting adults on the internet in this way for any reason, although I admit I have no idea how I would prevent it.
The real clincher for me was the other day my husband and I went to a local mall to have lunch and I went into a store while he sat on one of those plastic benches reading some brochure he picked up. When I came out of the store two t'weens (@13) were standing in front of him holding out their hands. Now my husband is not a particularly intimidating looking man, my mother describes him as looking like "a lumberjack who reads", but these girls didn't know him and he didn't know them. It turns out they had just come from getting their nails done and they wanted him to judge who had gotten the best manicure (like the guy wearing wire framed glasses, a plaid jacket and steel toed boots would know). It wasn't a flirt thing, the girls were obviously having a little competition over their nails and wanted an impartial judge. I found this disturbing that two young girls would go up to a strange man and start chatting like this. Is this the result of Facebook and Twitter? The world is your friend, let them all in! Anyone else noticing this almost fearless social tromping through the world by younger kids? Anyone else alarmed by this trend? How do you parents not gnaw your nails to the quick over it? Eva talked about kids driving off in a car by themselves for the first time, but what about the first time your child logs on to the internet? Is this concern just a sign that I'm getting old, like dropping more food on my chest?
@Green Witch,
ummm. greenie....
you got a crumb of... something. yeah, right there....
the kid that helps me out spends a lot of time on the net.
he is very forward. if that makes sense...
Dropping more food?
You ought to realize how ironic it is for you to start this thread in a venue where you are essentially addressing a host of strangers.
Stop staring at my muffin crumbs.
I'm a grown-up, Set, I'm a 48 year old woman not a thirteen year old girl. It doesn't mean I can't fall victim to someone who means me harm, but I think I have a better chance of figuring it out than a young teen. I would never have approached a strange man for any reason when I was 13, unless perhaps he was wearing a police uniform.
I was just taking note of the irony in the thread title, given the situation. I was approached by several strange men at age 13 and afterward. Fortunately, i was over six feet tall by then, and none of them attempted to force me.
@Setanta,
Did you approach any of them first? I was first flashed by a pervert when I was 14, but I in no way instigated it. I ran like my hair was on fire when I realized what he was doing.
No, i didn't approach them. Whaddayathink, i was some kind of adolescent perv ? ! ? ! ?
No, these were rather sad, middle-aged men who tried to pick me up in train or bus stations. The first time it happened, i was sufficiently naive as to get in a car with this joker, but not so stupid that i closed my door. He then offered me five dollars (which was a not inconsiderable sum in those days) to look at my weenie--and began immediately to vociferously protest that he wouldn't touch "it." I just got up out of the car in disgust and walked back to the station--and he burned rubber getting out of there as fast as he could.
"Don't talk to strangers" is actually not very good advice to give kids for operating in the real world. (Read all about it:
http://www.saferchild.org/gavindeb.htm)
And teaching them to approach a uniformed person isn't a real good idea either. There's a pretty long list of security guards who were killers.
I think the internet offers kids a sense of security because they're sitting right there in their own home. Most people who they meet on the internet aren't dangerous.
I think the better rule is "don't talk to strangers who approach you first".
@Setanta,
Quote:No, i didn't approach them. Whaddayathink, i was some kind of adolescent perv ? ! ? ! ?
Exactly, you knew it could lead to trouble. You were a good boy.
@boomerang,
Quote: I think the better rule is "don't talk to strangers who approach you first".
I like that. Might not work on the internet, but for the physical world it makes sense. I think the uniform thing is a real tough one. I wouldn't know a real badge from a fake one nor would a kid, but sometimes it seems like the best bet.
I was always told that if i were lost, or frightened, i should find a policeman. In those days (1950s), you didn't see "security guards." There were night watchmen, but you weren't likely to see them in the day time, and they didn't necessarily wear uniforms.
@Green Witch,
Quote:Over the last few weeks practically every adolescent I have interacted with on the internet has PM'd me. . .
How, or through what, have you been interacting with adolescents on the internet?
I think internet stuff is something else completely and that the education has lagged. I'm definitely nervous as sozlet enters that demographic.
But in terms of face-to-face interaction, as boomer says, "don't talk to strangers" isn't really the main thing taught anymore, it's more about what the strangers are doing. Don't get in a car with strangers, don't accept gifts from strangers, etc.
@InfraBlue,
Here and on a book chat site. They ask questions and I answer them. We had a young girl asking about her future career in fashion and she PM'd me. We had a long back and forth via PM- no problem. Recently we had someone ask about a watch they bought and I answered their question only to immediately see a note in my PM box that said "hi there" and then another one asking about us becoming friends and if she could ask me questions. I told her my age and that I would be happy to answer her questions in public, but not via PM. She (I assume it was a she) disappeared.
On the book chat forum we were talking about a particular scene in a book that had to do with sex and I got a PM from one of the participants telling me she was 15 and her boyfriend was pressuring her to have sex and what should she do? She had been on the forum for just two days. I was a safe catch, but who knows who she might have started up a sex conversation with.
Do you really find it hard to believe I run into kids on the internet? What surprises me is how quick they are to try and speak in private and sometimes about matters they should be discussing with a parent.
@Green Witch,
well, after spending 25 years in child protection "strangers" aren't the problem and never have been (aside from the media coverage) "uncle Billie", neighbor Sam, known family friends, etc etc etc constitute like 90% of threats to children.
I have always thought the "don't talk to strangers" thing was stupid. I am glad there are other voices saying the same thing.
A thirteen year old is old enough to understand the difference between dangerous and not dangerous. It seems to me that approaching a man for his opinion in a crowded mall rates a zero on the dangerous scale.
My five year old daughter is always with an adult. We all understand that she is not anywhere near ready to make decisions on her own safety. The rule is simple, ask Daddy or Mommy first. I would be interested to see if she passes the Oprah test (I suspect she would).
With older children, the real risk is shame and silence (especially since the vast majority of abuse of children is from people they know and respect). The most important thing is to give pre-teens a comfortable and safe way for them to talk about what is going on in their lives.
Having responsible adults that kids can talk to about anything without fear they they will be held responsible is far more important than rules about strangers.
@Green Witch,
Quote:Do you really find it hard to believe I run into kids on the internet? What surprises me is how quick they are to try and speak in private and sometimes about matters they should be discussing with a parent.
Oh no, I don't find it hard to believe at all. I used to interact with teens all the time through p2p file sharing applications like soulseek when I used to download audio files a lot. Most of the time they'd PM me about the music, or request that I unban them from uploading from me. Even after having told them my age and gender, back when I was in my thirties, some would get very friendly and ask for my instant messaging username.
Once when I was in a mall arcade, this little boy no more than 7 came up to me and asked for some tokens. I looked around and couldn't see a potential parent near by. I proceeded to scold the child about not asking strangers for money or anything else, that he had no way of knowing what sort of person I was. I really wished I could have found that child's parent or they would have heard even more of mouthful.
@Green Witch,
I don't notice a lot of talking to strangers in real life...but I get the net worry.
Surely the kids wanting to be your friend are either desperate lonely little souls, or undercover police?
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