Dr. Sarada Diffenbaugh confronts moral issues with the Internet
in seminar today
By Jen Penkethman
Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – After years of experience with teens, Dr. Sarada Diffenbaugh has found that she has to contend with a new major player: the Internet.
“The Internet is not necessarily a bad thing,” said the head of Mt. Madonna School who earned a doctorate in education from Stanford. “There are positives even to MySpace. The question is, are we going to use it as a tool, and not as a victim?”
Dr. Diffenbaugh confronts these and other moral issues in a seminar called “Raising a Child in the MySpace Era” at the Gilroy Library today. She says she hopes to reach out to parents who might not know how to approach teenagers about a technology that often intimidates them. Recent years have created a gulf between parents, many of whom have just barely mastered the art of e-mailing, and children and teens who might spend an hour a day communicating with their peers online.
“We face, in parenting, hopes and dreams for our children,” said Diffenbaugh. “We want them to reach their potential, to be safe, to lead an intellectual and ethical life. How do we face all that, in the context of technology we ourselves don’t understand?”
The proliferation of message programs, online journal sites, and message boards is concurrent with their increasing relevance to teens’ lives. Almost all of the teens interviewed at Gilroy High have a profile on MySpace, the behemoth of the online social scene. There are millions of users on MySpace.com, each with an individual profile.
Having a profile on MySpace means that your name and picture are visible to anyone of the world’s 6 billion people, who can message you any time of day or night. That is, unless you make your profile private.
“My parents found out I was on MySpace, and my mom asked me to make my profile private,” said Carrie McGeehon, 17. Having her profile private means that other users cannot add her as a friend – referred to simply as “adding” someone – without her permission. Her name and photo, however, are still visible to anyone, which might be enough to get in a bad situation.
Dr. Diffenbaugh and the teenagers both agree that the key to online safety is just plain old common sense.
“It’s what you surround yourself with,” said Annie Cockerill, a senior. “If you set it on private and add only your friends, you’ll be fine. If you have revealing pictures of yourself, of course everyone’s going to add you and give you lots of attention.”
Other teenagers agree, adding that discretion in posting personal information is up to the user.
“You have to be careful, and choose your friends responsibly,” said Laurissa Gomez, 17. Part of being careful, she explained, was never giving out your address or cell phone number, or even your instant messaging handle. “Obviously they can’t really do anything with that except message you, but I still don’t like to give it to random people.”
“In the end it falls on personal responsibility,” said David Miller, also a senior. “It’s not fair to blame MySpace for stupid things that people do online.”
It might not be enough, Dr. Diffenbaugh says, to simply stay out of trouble.
“Most kids have common sense,” said Diffenbaugh. “What I stress is to be involved. Parents shouldn’t let their children be distant.”
Diffenbaugh encourages dialogue between parent and child, which, she says, should not be a lecture, “and not a ‘whatever.’ ”
“Ask your child, ‘do you have a MySpace? Let’s look at it.’ Set a time to do it, so they won’t be caught off-guard.”
Then, says Diffenbaugh, “You can say, ‘how neat,’ or ‘this makes me uncomfortable,’ or ‘this part with you in your undershirt, this looks unsafe.’ Being with the child in a dialogue, with values, speaking honestly, is what’s important. That approach can lead to awareness so that the child can even start dialogues with their friends, asking them, ‘Why are you doing posting these pictures of yourself? Why are you adding people you don’t know?’ ”
Greg Fault, 16, says he’s had a MySpace for several years, but that his parents are not concerned.
“My parents know, but they’re not worried,” said Fault. “I use it maybe half an hour a day, not as much as most people.”
He said he reconsidered his approach to the online world, going from “friending” anyone who showed him the slightest attention to messaging only his real-life friends.
“At one point I had about 400 friends,” said Fault, “but I took them all off. They didn’t even know me, so they didn’t care. Now I only have about 35 people on my friends list.”
In general, MySpace and other social Web sites present a strange and indefinable alternate reality that is both more personal and less authentic than real life. As the age group it targets pointed out, “it’s all about how you use it.” Nearly every teen said that he or she never added people they didn’t know, and blocked friend requests from anyone unfamiliar. In this way, the site becomes just another vehicle for normal socialization. Diffenbaugh says these positives are important to note.
But the aspect of anonymity often leads to people saying things over MySpace that they would never say face to face.
Diffenbaugh said this is part of “a generational phenomenon,” where kids are more comfortable when they’re a step removed from the world.
It’s new, and the parents can’t be part of it. As parents and educators, we need to keep that vital human connection, so that our children won’t grow up afraid and feel the need to constantly put a layer between us and themselves. The only way to do that is through relationships.”
She says the “MySpace generation” could be any child from 12 to 18, but that younger generations are already being introduced into the era of instant communication.
“My grandson is 8, and the backpack he bought for school is designed to hold a cell phone. I find that the younger parents I meet are the ones who know about the Internet, who know what’s out there, and who are more likely to simply cut the Internet from their children’s lives. I caution those parents – don’t cut them off, they’re learning from this.”
