Facebook isn’t to blame for divorces any more than guns are to blame for people being murdered.
But if you give somebody a tool when they have intent to commit the act anyways, then the tool becomes an important part of the story. Facebook does facilitate affairs.
I know of a couple that recently went through a divorce, just about every point made in the article linked here fits perfectly with the situation that I witnessed. They both worked, and their kids had grown up. Then they sold her business and she was out of work. He kept working. She didn’t find a job, but increasingly, she spent her time online. With a Facebook account, she started connecting with old friends from high school and her network started to grow.
Her husband is decidedly non-techy and doesn’t go online. So he’s oblivious to what goes on. But she kept busy with her new social life. Facebook made it easy to find out about high school reunions at local bars, and to connect with new friends made at these parties.
Over the past year or so, she pushes for a divorce and it ultimately happens. The family almost unanimously agrees that she’s not the same person anymore. It’s as if she’s reverting to her teenage years. She has nothing interesting to talk about anymore, because all she talks about are her connections and social events with her new friends. When she’s with her family and the friends that she’s known for so many years, people notice that she’s tuned out and constantly texting with her online social network about the next gathering or hearing about how one of her new friends wants to ask another friend out. It’s frustrating to her contemporaries who believe that a social gathering is for people to socialize with the other physically at the gathering, not with people across the messaging networks.
I’m not blaming Facebook, or any other technology for her divorce and for how she’s acting. To me, though, it is clear that social networking facilitates a lot of connections between people that might not otherwise connect. In addition, if you have a partner that is not technically savvy and doesn’t go online, then social networking can be an effective way to quietly connect with a new group of people under the radar. Technology and social networks opens doors that were not typically available in the past.
We’re used to saying that the best web filter is the watchful eye of a parent.
We believed that to be true, and that is why we didn’t tackle web filtering in ComputerTime. A number of filtering solutions already existed when we created ComputerTime, and none of them seemed to do the job adequately.
ComputerTime tackled the problem of monitoring kids’ time, and enforcing the limits that parents decided on. We advised moms and dads to keep the computer in a public place in their home. If they are concerned about what their kids view on the Internet, then having a direct line of sight to the screen when the kids are on it should work well enough.
I’m not sure that is the best advice anymore. We’re seeing laptops flourish, so it’s harder to keep those screens in a public part of the house and the screens don’t usually face outwards into the room when the kids are sitting on the couch.
So maybe it isn’t a bad idea to employ a web filter that does a good job of blocking the nasty stuff. While many were deemed inadequate a number of years back, I believe there is a solution that well enough for me to recommend it. It’s called OpenDNS.
Six Reasons Why You’ll Love OpenDNS
I’ve been using OpenDNS for a while now. I love it and recommend it all of the time. If you want to filter out inappropriate content, here are some reasons I think you’ll love it too.
It’s Free: In this economy, what’s not to love about free.
Easy Setup on Your Router: They provide really simple instructions, with screen shots, for most of the popular routers. All you have to type in are a handful of numbers into the fields that they tell you to. You really can’t screw this up. Click Save and you’re done.
Entire Network Protected: That one simple setup on your router means that every computer on your network should now be protected by the filter.
No Software To Install: The fact that you just change a setting in your network configuration, preferably on your router, means that there is nothing to conflict or degrade your computers performance.
Up-To-Date and Accurate Filter: New domains and websites come and go every day. This is what made it hard for so many of yester-years filtering solutions worthless. The databases of what to block would be out of date in a matter of days and weeks. OpenDNS has input from thousands of users who are constantly tagging websites into categories. With an OpenDNS account and a bookmarklet you can install on your browser toolbar, you can contribute too if you would like, or you can just rely on the wisdom of the crowds of others that do all the tagging. See a sight that you think should be blocked as inappropriate? You would click on the bookmarklet, check off the categories and submit.
Two Versions: Easy and Easier. Both are free. If you want control over what categories get filtered, choose the standard OpenDNS, set up a free account, and enter in the DNS server numbers they they instruct you to. Don’t want to get that involved, choose their new Family Shield, and simply punch in different DNS server numbers into your router and be done. Family Shield is configured to block “Adult Content”. I assume this means things like pornography, nudity, gambling, chat rooms, erotica, violence, guns, etc. Family Shield is OpenDNS, just without the finer control. Want to have more control, use their (still free) OpenDNS and create an account.
SoftwareTime, and myself personally, do not have any relationship whatsoever with OpenDNS. This is just a hearty recommendation from a satisfied user (me!) of their service.
I’ll add that I think that if you’re using ComputerTime, or thinking about using ComputerTime, OpenDNS or Family Shield really round out your parental control toolbox.
Can I get away with saying that ComputerTime now offers free web filtering? ;-) Probably not. But the net affect is the same. Go give OpenDNS or Family Shield a try.
An imam here expressed concern over the impact of computer games on children, saying the portrayal of gods as well as heaven and hell in these games could potentially confuse them about the concept of the hereafter.
Chief Imam of the Usamah bin Zahid Mosque in Wangsa Maju, Ustaz Murshidi Abdul Hamid, said although these were merely games, if left unchecked, it could negatively impact the minds of the young people.
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“Parents should prohibit their children from playing certain games if they contain elements which are against or derogatory to Islam,” he told Bernama.
While the rest of us are concerned about excessive gaming and it’s affects on our children, Imam Hamid is apparently mainly concerned about offense to Islam.
Meanwhile, a lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Communications and Media Studies Faculty, Ishak Abdul Hamid [A different "Abdul Hamid" than the Imam mentioned above], said exposure to negative elements in computer games could also affect the children’s psychological development.
“They become obsessed with playing computer games to the point of neglecting their studies,” he said.
Good thing they are taking these steps, because we wouldn’t want Muslim kids being exposed to anything that would affect their psychological development in a negative way!
Attempting to buy children’s affection with TVs and computer games… not a good idea.
Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said increasing numbers of children failed to respect authority or consider the needs of other pupils after leading “isolated lives” at home.
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“Often it’s the well-off middle classes that buy off their children through the computer and the TV,” she said. “That then isolates them within the home, and then they’re surprised when their child isn’t coming to school ready to learn.”
Last year, Dr Bousted raised concerns that families were leading separate lives under one roof instead of sitting down to dinner together, with youngsters spending hours watching TV alone in their rooms.
When my son was about half his age, he started to get online to play a few, fairly harmless online multi-player games. No big deal — except that these games included a “chat” feature where you can communicate with other players, which I hadn’t noticed.
I learned about the chat feature only after my son came to me frustrated that he couldn’t log into his account on the game anymore. Turns out that he got bored with the game, and decided to give away his earned points and skills to another player by giving the other player his password. Ugh.
We had a talk about sharing information with strangers online and we revisit the topic from time to time. Luckily, he didn’t give out much more personal information in the chat room.
You’re Not as Private as You Think, an article by Caroline Knorr at Common Sense Media, has a nice list of tips that you should consider and discuss with your kids. Especially with younger kids, they can be very naive about the risks of giving out personal information.
It’s getting harder to find clean television programming that doesn’t contain offensive language, according to the New York Times in the article More Than Ever, You Can Say That on Television. Ever since George Carlin laid out the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in 1972, television writers and broadcasters have been digging [...]
The concerns about Families and Technology extend beyond this blog. SoftwareTime is a company founded on the idea that technology affects families in many ways. Balance and responsible use of technologies is important. SoftwareTime's products will help.
