My Turn Online: Leave Kids Alone on the Web

To pry or not to pry? That is the question. As a child psychologist who consults to schools, I am constantly asked questions about what goes on in the minds of children. Parents in particular seem to think that it is always a good thing to know everything about what their kids think and what they do. Recently, I received a phone call from a middle-school principal who told me that the parents of his students had become concerned about their children’s online activities. They were clueless about what their kids were doing online, and too naive to do anything about it. They told him that they feared the popular social-networking Web site MySpace and they worried that their kids could be victims of online bullying, or worse. The principal asked if I would visit the school to address these concerns, and I agreed to go.

Just minutes later, I received an e-mail from the head of an elementary school who took another point of view. “When we were growing up,” he wrote, “Most of us had a lot of time on our own that we as children filled on our own. I am wondering if one of the reasons that kids spend a great deal of time instant messaging and making websites on MySpace is to create a sense of privacy or a world apart from their parents. We tend to know what the negatives of instant messaging and personal websites might be, but what might the positives be? Maybe we are missing something that we need to keep in mind. Do they need privacy from their parents and, if so, why do they?”

My answer was simple: yes, children do need privacy. How do you know who you are and what you can do really do unless you actually have a chance to be on your own? The most treasured memories of my childhood are walking around the streets of New York City accompanied by my friends, with that precious ticket to freedom—the bus pass—in my pocket.

Other sweet memories were from July and August, when I spent hours away from my parents near a lake in southern Massachusetts accompanied by friends and cousins. We played for hours; we built forts and fought imaginary enemies. Did we do some bad things? Sure, I guess so. My friends and I blew up some bullfrogs with firecrackers. We tried smoking cigarettes; we made some illicit campfires. We even talked some girls into playing “doctor.” All of this before I was 11 years old.

Would my parents have been upset if they had known what we were doing? Without a doubt. Did we take some risks? Certainly. I don’t know whether I’d be better or worse off had I taken less risks as a child, but I do know that I cannot imagine my childhood without those times. I cannot conceive of my adult personality without those memories.

Kids today spend almost no time “in the woods,” and their moments spent away from their parents’ watchful gaze are precious and few. In our middle and upper-middle-class neighborhoods, children are largely indoors, taking lessons doing homework and getting ready to go to town sports. They are endlessly supervised and monitored. How many parents today are willing to do what our parents did: shovel us out the door at noon, saying “Don’t come back until 6 o’clock?”