Subject: Sunday Washington Post *text* (fwd)

From: "Arthur R. McGee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 22:34:09 -0800

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 15:30:53 -0500
From: janice <[email-masked]>
Subject: [COSNDISC:136] Sunday Washington Post *text*

CoSN folks..

For those of you in the cyberworld, distant from DC, I thought it would be
nice to post this FYI. -- it is the text of the Sunday Post article..

-janice

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 DAY SUNDAY SECTION A SECTION
  PAGE a01
  STORY TYPE SERIES; NEWS NATL

  DATE 11/28/93
         
  HEADLINE CAUTION: CHILDREN AT PLAY ON INFORMATION HIGHWAY;
  ACCESS TO ADULT NETWORKS HOLDS HAZARDS 
         
  SERIES NAME           INFORMATION HIGHWAY                            
  SERIES NUMBER         1/2                                            
  BYLINE                John Schwartz                                  
  CREDIT                Washington Post Staff                          

ACCESS TO ADULT NETWORKS HOLDS HAZARDS 

Genevieve Kazdin, a self-appointed crossing guard on the information
highway, remembered the day last September when she found an 8- year-old
girl attempting computer conversations with a group of transvestites.
Seemingly safe at home, the child was playing with her favorite $2,000 toy,
using her computer and modem to make new friends through a service called
America Online.

The name of the electronic discussion group the girl had discovered was
called, confusingly enough, "TV chat" -- the TV being shorthand for
transvestite. Kazdin said the girl had read it differently: "She was
thinking in all innocence, 'We're going to talk about Barney.' "  Kazdin
recognized the girl's "screen name" because the Massachusetts grandmother
helps run America Online's programs for children. Kazdin chatted with her
little friend via keyboard, gently steering her to a more appropriate part
of the service -- and preventing one of a growing number of daily culture
shocks as users wander into rowdy neighborhoods found in the new online
community.

Just when parents and schools are urging children to play with computers,
the nature of their use is changing. Increasingly, computers are linked by
networks to other computers -- and those networks are connected to other
networks worldwide. As a result, users are exposed to an astonishing
variety of information, including some of the raunchier aspects of human
life.

To its denizens, that diversity is one of the most valuable features of
"cyberspace," as the online world is known.  But the inevitable mixing of
adults and children online has raised questions of parental supervision,
moral education, free speech and license. Vice President Gore's vision of a
"national information superhighway" where every schoolchild can tap the
resources of the Library of Congress could be threatened by a darker
vision.

Elizabeth Churchill Hamill, a 39-year-old landscape architect in Oakland,
said that her telecomputing 13-year-old son "started getting messages full
of sexual innuendo from adult women." Hamill was engaged in a running
discussion of children and computing earlier this year on the Whole Earth
'Lectronic Link (WELL), a Sausalito, Calif.-based online service that lets
users post and read messages on thousands of topics.  "I would be thinking,
how nice that he's spending so much time developing his writing and typing
skills, when suddenly he would ask, 'Hey, Mom, what does '69' mean?' "

Finding one's way around the varieties of online experiences is often as
easy as clicking the computer's "mouse."  Each system offers a menu of
options, from computer tips to news, games and encyclopedias.  Users
communicate with each other either by electronically posting messages
(e-mail) or by "chatting" -- that is, typing their remarks back and forth
on the screen in the print equivalent of a live conversation.

The amount of information available about each user depends on the network:
Some services offer full "profiles" of each subscriber; other services
allow users to identify themselves only by name or by their online
"handles."

On America Online, users who want to communicate with others connected to
the service at the same time simply click on a cartoon of a man and a woman
talking that bears the title "People Connection." They can then choose from
any number of "chat rooms" available at the moment with names like "Bible
chat" or "The Flirts Nook" or "Gay and Lesbian."

Letting Youngsters Cruise the E-Mall Dropping children in front of the
computer is a little like letting them cruise the mall for the
afternoon. But when parents drop their sons or daughters off at a real
mall, they generally set ground rules: Don't talk to strangers, don't go
into Victoria's Secret, and here's the amount of money you'll be able to
spend. At the electronic mall, few parents are setting the rules -- or even
have a clue about how to set them.  "We call it the IUD syndrome," said Jim
Thomas, a University of Illinois sociology professor who studies the
computer underground.  "Parents are ignorant, technology is ubiquitous, and
some of the information is deleterious."

Of course, cyberspace is little more than a new neighborhood, albeit a
virtual one. Longtime net dwellers say you're no more likely to encounter
the digital equivalent of a flasher there than, say, in any real-life
playground.  Yet the parents most concerned about what their children might
encounter online are the ones most familiar with the pleasures and perils
of cyberspace. Perhaps they have engaged in idle flirtation with people
they met online. They might have dallied with "cybersex," the practice of
typing sexually explicit fantasy scenarios back and forth, or "downloaded"
erotic photos to display on their computer screens. Or they could have
encountered discussions of the fine points of bomb-making or how to steal
credit card numbers.

But those parents with no online experience also should be preparing
themselves and their children, said Sherry Turkle of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, an expert on children and computing. "In two
years," she said, "everyone's going to have this problem."  Children's
access to the many varieties of online experiences is booming, and many are
now using Internet, a vast international network of networks that once was
used primarily by researchers but now connects millions of ordinary users.

Janice Abrahams, an Internet enthusiast who is writing a book about
students online, estimated there are 150,000 Internet accounts (each of
which can be shared by many people) for students, teachers and school
administrators in the 22 states she has surveyed. She expects to see 1.5
million accounts nationwide within 30 months.  As more schools rush to
explore online education, she said, the Internet "is going to go crazy with
the kid connections -- that's the area of explosive growth."

Online collaboration is one of the ways that computers truly add value to
schooling, said Gary Watts, executive director of the National Education
Association's National Center for Innovation here. Programs sponsored by
organizations from the National Science Foundation to the National
Geographic Society bring children from around the world online to meet and
learn. Some programs, such as the Bonita, Calif.-based FrEdMail Foundation,
put children directly on the Internet for research and
communication. Participating in a national science project -- comparing
acid rain data, for example, or checking out their school lunches for
nutritional value -- involves and excites students.

But there are even more opportunities to telecompute at home. About 4
million people now subscribe to commercial online services such as
CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online, most of which now offer some
programs for children and are beginning to offer Internet access besides.

As the range of a child's possible experiences widens, sex isn't the only
parental concern. A growing danger is computer addiction, said Turkle. She
has long counseled parents not to worry too much about children who develop
temporary near-obsessions with video games or solo computing. Given enough
time, she said, most develop a satisfying mastery and dial back to normal
use -- a pattern similar to young fans of chess and other pursuits.

But sometimes they don't. Turkle is studying people who spend endless hours
in the online fantasy and role-playing games known as Multi-User Dungeons,
or MUDs. Players enter the game by dialing into the appropriate computer
system. The remote computer sends text that describes a scene in a fantasy
setting -- say, an enchanted castle.  Players create an online persona and
then type in commands like "north" or "enter" to move from room to room,
where they might hunt for treasure or fight vicious monsters programmed
into the system. They also can converse with other players through their
keyboards; hundreds of players in different cities might be spread out
through a game at the same time.  Turkle finds that MUDs offer overly
seductive chances to withdraw from reality for people already inclined to
do so. "Kids disappear into imaginary relationships all the time" as a
normal and healthy part of growing up, she said, but "usually there's a
limit to how far that imaginary relationship can go, because it's all in
their head." In an online game, "those limits are taken off."

On MUDs, too, online meetings can quickly turn uncomfortable. Isaac Dziga,
12, of Berkeley, Calif., was wandering through the virtual halls of a game
castle recently. (In fact, he was roller skating; because players are free
to come up with their own characters, Dziga had written in a set of wheels
for himself.) Suddenly, another player began typing suggestive messages to
him, such as "Do you find me attractive?"  Before Dziga, whose online
character is named "Moonshadow," could come up with a coherent response,
the other player typed, "Moonshadow's skates are tenderly untied and
removed."  Isaac responded by typing: "Moonshadow grabs his skates and
disappears." He reported the incident to an adult who runs the computer
game system. The adult "nuked" the offender, removing her from the system.

Mike Godwin worries about a different kind of juvenile temptation: the lure
of antisocial and even criminal acts.  Godwin is an attorney with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Washington-based online civil liberties
and policy group -- and a new father. His organization sometimes aids the
legal efforts of people accused of computer crime whose cases raise
constitutional issues. "We already face a large number of young computer
users who have no scruples about computer intrusion, privacy violations,
and other computer-related misconduct," Godwin said.

'Bulletin Boards' for Juvenile Crime?  Many young people come to computer
crime by a common route, Godwin said. They often meet similarly inclined
children on local "bulletin board" systems (private networks usually run
from home computers) devoted to breaking into other computer systems for
fun. As they get more involved, they seek out other bulletin boards and big
computer systems. They might begin paying for the many long-distance calls
needed to support their exploits with stolen telephone accounts.

Young people are especially vulnerable to the temptations of computer
crime, Godwin said, because many of them "don't really see the persons or
entities on the other end of a computer interaction as being totally real."
The computer offers anonymity, a kind of phosphor-dot mask. And as the boys
learned in "Lord of the Flies," a mask can give the wearer license to do
forbidden things. Not all children will succumb, of course. "It's not that
steep a slope -- but kids are more likely to slide down it than anyone,"
Godwin said.  Despite their worries, few parents want their children to
miss out on the online revolution, so parents and educators have begun to
provide innovative ways to deal with the more troubling aspects. Programs
such as Kids Only OnLine at America Online offer a wholesome haven, and
adults like Kazdin serve as chaperones.  America Online, CompuServe and
other services now let parents limit their children's access.

Skeptics say any attempt to put blinders on children is doomed to fail, and
the solution lies in that most daunting task: teaching values.  "In our
house we don't have any kind of information censorship -- we have a lot of
conversations about what to do with information when you get it," said John
R. Sumser, executive director of the Point Foundation (the Sausalito-based
nonprofit organization that publishes the Whole Earth Review and that
started the WELL). Steve Wozniak, who designed the original Apple computer
that helped kick off the personal computer revolution, said that while he
doesn't like everything he sees on the Net, "The way to steer :youngsters:
away from it . . . is setting good examples and letting the kid burn out"
on objectionable material.

School programs are beginning to teach the responsibilities that go with a
computer password. Mary Ellen Verona, who runs the computer science program
at the Montgomery Blair High School magnet program in Silver Spring,
requires both students and their parents to sign a form before the children
type their first command.  It outlines the responsibilities, purposes and
limits of school computer use. Those who violate the school rules -- say,
by breaking into other computer systems -- face a stiff penalty: They lose
their online privileges. "For many of them, it's a tremendous punishment,"
Verona said.

John Clement, an official at the National Science Foundation who deals with
issues of schoolchildren on the Internet, said once students get a sense of
right and wrong in cyberspace, "We don't believe in prior control. We do
believe in nailing someone when they do something wrong -- and nailing them
hard." Clement has made his teenage son pay off his own computer-related
long-distance bills.

The best way to keep children out of trouble might be to scout out
cyberspace with them. Noting that America Online now boasts 450,000
subscribers, Kazdin said, "You wouldn't let your kid walk the street alone
in a city that large -- and you shouldn't here, either." As with any city,
"We have the same collection of wonderful, good people -- and some real
weirdos," Kazdin said.  Hamill, the mother whose son received the numerical
proposition, agrees. She spends time online herself, and even met her
boyfriend on the WELL. "It gives me some authority when I talk to them,"
Hamill said.  As for the children themselves, many tend to think their
parents' concerns are lame.

One 15-year-old user of America Online who goes by the name "Stud 15"
admitted to occasionally engaging in cybersex, but said it's "just
something me and my friends do to show how smooth we are." The Los Angeles
boy said his parents don't know how raw some of his discussions get, but
said they shouldn't worry: "It is the safest sex around."

Noah Johnson, 15, of Berkeley, revels in the world of online discussion and
debate, and calls parents "irritatingly overprotective."  Johnson, whose
online name is "streak," said via electronic mail, "What their kids are
being exposed to is the real world. Real people, making real points, about
real ideas. If I had a kid, I'd be bloody thrilled if the kid was online
instead of watching 'Beverly Hills 90210' or some damn thing."

Children can fend for themselves online, Johnson said. And despite their
misgivings, some parents are finding that he's right. Hamill recounted with
pride what happened when her 11-year-old son was approached online recently
by a woman in her 30s who invited him to "do it," perhaps not knowing his
age. "He sent her a message back saying, 'Sure -- maybe in a couple of
decades.' "

======= end of ~/janice =====