T A B L E__T A L K

How can parents and teachers revive the imagination of young women? Share ideas in the Mother's section of Table Talk.

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R E C E N T L Y

Outing your mom
By Kate Moses
The recent spate of mad mother memoirs
(12/08/97)

Boyfriend-In-A-Box
By Lori Leibovich
Men: Can't live with 'em, can't stuff 'em in a drawer
(12/05/97)

The grace of klutz
By Anne Lamott
The night I humiliated myself onstage with Grace Paley
(12/04/97)

The good doctor
By Caroline Leavitt
Why I love my OB
(12/03/97)

Time for one thing
By Kate Moses
If you've been drinking my eggnog, you better not drive
(12/02/97)

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BROWSE THE
MOTHERS ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

BY DAWN MacKEEN | To keep kids away from potentially dangerous situations, parents install safety devices -- they put tabs on cupboards and gates at the tops of staircases. Now, the Internet industry would like parents to apply this kiddie-proofing principle to their home computers too. Bowing to growing pressure from the Clinton administration to make the Internet more "family friendly," computer industry leaders, legislators and members of the media met last week at The Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children, held in Washington, D.C., and proposed filtering software as the best way to keep children from encountering smut online.

"These tools promote a family-friendly Internet by giving parents the tools they need to provide their children with a safe educational and entertaining experience online," Vice President Al Gore said during the three-day conference.

Other intiatives they discussed included a ratings system for the Internet and launching a series of public awareness campaigns to teach parents more about the online risks for children. Internet service providers and companies such as America Online and the Walt Disney Co. also promised to work with law enforcement officials to track down online pedophiles.

The software solution sounds simple in principle, but the conference offered no sure-fire plan on how to implement such a system effectively. In the wake of last summer's Supreme Court decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act -- which would have made it illegal to transmit "indecent" material to children online -- conservative groups such as the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition continue to push for laws, not technology, to restrict children online. And civil libertarians still oppose infringements on free expression -- and point out that software filters often screen out a great deal of non-pornographic material in their quest to "clean up" the Net.

Salon spoke with conference speaker Lawrence Magid, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, about the problems with filtering software. Magid, the author of two guides on children's online safety, is a proponent of shifting responsibility back to parents -- and away from technology and government.

Does making the Internet more "family friendly" infringe on First Amendment rights?

The Internet is already family friendly. I heard that only 2.5 percent of the Web sites are actually pornographic, the rest of it is basically positive. I think making the Internet so that it is only suitable for children, to basically homogenize the Internet, would be a terrible tragedy. It would be like if every TV channel were the Disney channel or Nickelodeon. The Internet ought to reflect the diversity of our society -- a wide range of opinions, beliefs and aesthetics. To try to boil it down so it is only suitable for 7-year-olds would destroy it.

Will the use of filtering software keep kids safe online?

If your primary worry is to keep pornography out of the hands of kids, filtering can do that, but I don't think it can protect you from predators. The only way a filter can do that is to lock kids out of the Internet completely, or lock them out of chat or e-mail. By the way, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has documented only 60 cases of children who have been abducted or molested or abused as a result of an encounter online. That is 60 too many, but when put in the context of millions and millions of kids who go online, you really have to realize that your chances of being physically hurt as a result of what you do online is relatively slim.

Who is to blame for those 60 cases?

The Internet is just a network. It is just a bunch of servers and connections. You can't blame it for anything. You can blame the way people use the Internet. There are parents who exercise poor judgment, which sometimes results in their child being victimized, but ultimately the criminals are the ones who are responsible for the criminal acts.

Was the focus of the conference really on the safety of children, or was it simply a debate between talking heads?

There was genuine dialogue. The debate was mainly between people for whom civil liberties is their No. 1 priority vs. those who are trying to balance civil liberties with protecting children.

Certainly there were some participants at the summit who would censor the Internet. But the issue is, nobody, including the ACLU, thinks there is anything inherently wrong with giving parents the choice to filter. Everybody says that if a parent chooses to use a product, that's fine. Where the policy debate comes in is regarding schools and libraries. I think that anybody who thinks that pornography is likely to be a major problem in public schools and in public areas of schools and libraries doesn't understand pornography -- it is primarily used in private. That is, what people do with pornography, they are not likely to do in a room full of people. That is not to say that there aren't teenage boys who might not snicker at a screen and go, "Look, augh, gee, goo."

Vice President Gore said at the conference that selective blocking isn't censoring, it's parenting. Is "parenting" using software that you can install, or is it talking to your kids directly and taking your own steps to make sure they avoid inappropriate material?

Parenting is ultimately about developing a relationship with your child, where you're helping your child make good decisions. Parenting to me is not throwing a piece of software on the computer, walking out the door and saying, "OK, Johnny's safe. Now I can go to my bridge club." Parenting is also not standing in front of the computer 24 hours a day, watching Johnny, making sure he doesn't do the wrong thing. Parenting is having the right and responsibility to monitor your children's behavior.

I have to be sympathetic to these people who say, "We can't watch our kid 24 hours a day. We need some help." That is the argument for filtering and for blocking. If we are not going to do it through legislation, then we have to do it through technology. Give parents the ability to use software that does the equivalent of watching their kids online. I am not opposed to that, but if that is how you are doing it, by blocking through Surfwatch, or NetNanny, how is that helping your child deal with problems throughout life? We don't have cops following us around all day, telling us not to do this, not to do that. Hopefully, most of us are decent, law-abiding citizens because we have a set of values, instilled in us by our parents.

N E X T+P A G E: "Fantasizing about normal sexual activities is not the end of the world"