subject: So You Think The Virtual Space Is A Safe Playground [print this page] So You Think The Virtual Space Is A Safe Playground
SO YOU THINK THE VIRTUAL SPACE IS A SAFE PLAYGROUND
I remember when I was a kid, I use to enjoy coming in from school, have a quick bite to eat and my mates would be calling at the door even before I had wolfed it all down. Today it'd be football, maybe even tomorrow and the day after but as much as I loved my football, what I really enjoyed was the times we took off to the children's playground at the bottom of my street. We'd meet there with all the other local kids and play games till the sun became a big red ball in the evening sky and the feel of darkness dropped on us like a big black cloak. We'd hear mum's calling and shout back "just a few more minutes", minutes that became long and unending with more games of He' and hopscotch, swings and roundabouts, and maybe us guys might even get lucky enough to have a game of kiss-chase thrown in for good measure. And so it went on right up until when we saw dad's long shadow lurking in the background, real or imagery. Home we went. Now this shadow of dad is the thing. How could we be sure it was dad? And yet, we always knew with a certainty, with never a thought that it might not be dad at all but the boogey man come to get us. The boogey man then was purely the stuff of fiction. Our playground was safe, a safe playground.
How things change. Now I'm dad of the long shadow, but there's no shadow cast because I don't have to lurk around in the half-darkness of some smelly, scruffy little open space at the end of the street with precious few little resources thrown together in the hope of keeping a thousand kids happy. For in truth, looking back, that's what that old playground really was. It was a scruffy old place and quite smelly too since it was the regular shortcut at pub closing time and the regular urinal for those who hadn't manage to unburden themselves before the bell tinkled and the raucous shout of "Time, gentlemen please". No, not only do those places, those safe playgrounds, no longer exist but the very thought of a safe playground is an anathema to modern life. So as a dad, there's no need to have my evening's solace disturbed with the call to "go get the kids". Why on earth would I do that, sending my kids out into a world that is now, at least in common perception, considered anything but a "safe playground"? Especially when my little ones have their very own safe playground right here in their own front room? That's right, isn't it? The virtual playground to which I give my children over for anything up to three hours every evening is a safe one, isn't it? I mean, what could possibly happen to them in the safety of their own front room, there's no bogey man there, is there? If we consider for a moment, the offline playground, wherever it exists, is no longer a safe one since the boogey man does indeed exists after all, but surely that's not the case with the online playground. That's safe, isn't it?
Let's straightaway cut to the chase, no, the online space is definitely not a safe playground. Far from it and the question is, why do so many of us turn a blind eye and pretend it is? Why do mums no longer call out in the near darkness and dads not lurk in the shadows to ensure their children are safe? It seems we've allowed ourselves to be lulled into the age-old axiom that the dark side of the WWW is something that happens to other people but that somehow, it can't touch us. Yes, we do have guardian angels but as sure as sure can be, we need to begin to exercise some wisdom when it comes to our children and the Internet. A friend recently said to me that this issue has already become an intractable ticking time-bomb and without wishing to indulge in scare-mongering, I have to say I agree with him. From the time I walked back into a classroom in the early ninety's as computers began to gain a foothold in education, and saw the way in which youngsters pointedly guarded what they did on the Internet as they swivelled their monitors away from the prying eyes of conscientious teachers, I knew we had a problem. That problem has now become an epidemic as computers stare blankly out at eager teens and pre-teens from classroom work-tops and bedroom desks the length and breadth of the country. And where are the parents in all this? In this series of articles, I'll be looking first at the growing concern of parents as we come to recognise that the virtual playground is not quite as safe as we might have liked to think it is, or at least pretended it was. Next I'll offer some insights on the pros and cons of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), today's by-word for education and finally, I want to offer some solutions to what my friend called an intractable ticking time-bomb. For now, let me finish with this paradox. So you know where your children are, yes you do. Why, they're safe at home, safe in the front-room or bedroom, or wherever they have access to the new man's best friend, the home computer or personal laptop. So you know where they are, but do you really know where they are? Are your children really in a safe playground?
