Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004 | 8:51 a.m.
LIFE USED TO BE so much simpler. And saner.
When my daughter was young, I remember one of the big, new issues of parenting was how much television our kids should watch, whether they should view it in the presence of a parent, whether they should or could have a television in their own room, and what kind of programming was suitable.
Finding the answers to those questions -- some of which were found and most of which have remained elusive -- consumed most of our time. In the end, though, most parents in my generation found the right mix of answers so that our kids weren't traumatized by sex or violence. What appears obvious to me, though, is that a goodly number of the parents were not so unaffected.
Many have become so obsessed with the lesson they tried to teach their kids that they have determined that teaching the rest of us is their purpose in life. How else might one explain the gross over-reaction by some in government to Janet Jackson's gross attempt at shock and awe during the half time show of the Super Bowl.
Two things about that ridiculous and over-the-top -- if you will pardon the pun -- display are obvious to me. Janet missed something vital in her growing-up period when she was supposed to have learned responsible behavior and Michael Powell of the FCC and others who have crowed so loudly, way out of proportion to the boob tube offense, didn't miss the growing-up lesson about the perceived evils of sex.
The real lesson here is that sex still sells -- to the public that wants to see and experience it and to the public that wants to hide it from the gaze of others and, perhaps, even from their own eyes. And what that tells me is that as long as there are hormones raging, those that have raged and those that would like to rage again, the balancing act of sex in America will continue.
All this is child's play, if you will, compared to the real deadly sin that lurks around our children, in their homes, in their rooms and in their lives. And all the parental training we have lived through trying to balance television time with reality, seems for naught.
I am talking about the Internet. You know, the savior of modern man, which it can be, but which, if left unchecked and unsupervised, has proven to be a weapon of destruction of masses of our young children.
Since I have been out of the parental loop for awhile, the deadly nature of Internet chat rooms may be more of a surprise to me than to this generation's parents who must deal with the computer literacy of their 3-year-olds. But I doubt it.
Where we once thought that watching too much sex and violence on the passive TV set was not healthy for our kids, that adventure was downright tame and uneventful compared to the dangers of the Internet.
Today our kids are being abducted, raped and murdered at an alarming rate all across this country by the worst kinds of child molesters. And they don't "reach" our kids in the malls, on the street or in other public places over which we can exert some control. They reach them, hook them and corrupt them in the privacy of our own homes. Right under our noses. Out from under any control we might exert. And it is getting worse, not better.
The FBI has a pamphlet designed to educate parents called "A Parents Guide to Internet Safety" which answers many questions about the dangers of child pornographers and sexual predators. It is scary reading, not because of what it says but because of what it means.
What it means is that our children, at their most vulnerable time in life -- when they are questioning parental authority, experimenting with what life might be like on their own, trying to satisfy the curiosity of teenage life, and trying to deal with the advent of the raging hormones -- when they need our protection the most, are not getting it.
And that is not because we don't want to protect them but, more likely, because we don't know how. We haven't got a clue how that computer works, what the Internet is and where to find a chat room. And, in spite of our acknowledged ignorance on the subject, we allow our kids to spend hours online, in the privacy of their own rooms or at other times when we are not paying attention to what they are doing.
And that is exactly what these adult predators are counting on. They know how to take advantage of a young mind, how to shower them with gifts, entice them with promises of security and encourage them with the kind of pictures that even adults wrap in plain brown paper.
What all that means is that there are tens of thousands of these sick and evil people lurking around our children, reaching them through their computers and luring them into deadly situations because our children act like -- let's face it -- children.
The FBI is hard at work trying to capture these predators but, beyond the difficult investigative process, for every arrest made there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who never get caught. And they have your kids in their sights.
According to the FBI, there are some tell-tale signs that might suggest your child is at risk. Some of them include the fact that your child is spending large amounts of time on the Internet, especially at night; that you find pornography on your kid's computer; that there are unexplained phone calls from men, local or long distance; and that your child quickly turns the computer off when you enter the room.
There are other signs and some good advice about what to do if you suspect that this kind of activity is taking place. The common denominator, though, is the parent.
Being a parent of a young person today is far more difficult than it was when it was my turn. All we had to do was worry about some bad language, perhaps too much sex and some hard-to-explain violence that came at us from the television set.
Today, a parent has to worry about two-way computer-driven conversations between a child and a sick adult whose sole desire is to hurt or kill them. It takes place out of ear shot, it is usually beyond our comprehension and it is almost always done in a manner designed to deceive the innocent and protect the guilty.
In short, if you want to worry about something really important -- not that Janet Jackson's breast is not worthy of note and concern, because it is -- worry about what your kids know that you don't.
Because, nowadays, what they know can and, unfortunately, often does kill them.
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