Antidotes to pop culture poison

Policy Review, Nov/Dec 1997 by Napier, Kristine

2. Place the computer in a well-traf ficked location and limit its usage. Just as you wouldn't put your kids alone in front of the television for any length of time, you shouldn't do that with the computer," says Internet specialist Bonnie Bruno, a co-author of Internet Family Fun. In fact, she says, kids are far more likely to find offensive and pornographic material on the Internet than on television. Placing the computer amidst household traffic allows parents to monitor what their children tap into.

3. Surf with your kids, ferreting out and steering them into fa Web sites. "If your kids are on the Internet, you need to be, too," says Bruno. Rely on the following books to locate good sites: Internet Family Fun by Bonnie Bruno with Joel Comm (no starch press, San Francisco), Learn To Discern by Robert G. DeMoss Jr. (see above), and Christian Cyberspace Companion by Jason Baker (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Mich.). Here are some good sites to explore:

World Village (www.worldvillage. com)-For a wide variety of games, activities and loads of family-friendly fun. Infoseek (www.infoseek.com)-A great way to search out topics for school projects.

Fido! (www.clark.net/pub/soh/fido. htm)-Links to more than 500 familydecent sites on the Internet.

Family Internet (www.familyinternet.com/index.html)-Offers cooking, travel, news, sports, pet information, and loads of other great stuff.

4. Investigate Internet access at school and the public library. Public libraries are becoming de facto pipelines for pornography on the Internet. Ask the library whether it blocks pornography with filtering software; if not, establish family rules about using computers with Internet access at the library.

5. Keep your kids out of most chat rooms. FBI Director Louis Freeh said recently in a statement to Congress, "Pedophiles often seek out young children by either participating in or monitoring activities in chat rooms. ... There is no easy way for the child to know if the person . . . is another 14year-old or is a 40-year-old sexual predator masquerading as a peer."

6. Support appropriate legislative efforts (that don't give content control to the government). SafeSurf, for example, is currently working on legislation that imposes penalties on people who seduce children on-line (www.safesurf. com).

7. Watch out for strangers trying to entice your children to enter chat rooms or give out inapropriate personal information. Obligation, Inc., a child-advocacy group based in Birmingham, Alabama, encourages schools to discontinue the in-class TV show called Channel One. This program urges schoolchildren to use its chat rooms, which encourage them to reveal personal information. Pat Ellis of Obligation, Inc. can be reached at 205-22-0080; the Web address is www.obligation.org.

Kristine Napier is a freelance writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of The Power of Abstinence.