Internet Kill Switch

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We’ve got to give Daddy Obama props trying to invoke an “Internet Kill Switch”.

With the my two teenage daughters constantly doing something online, I’ve occasionally implemented the “Internet Kill Switch” at home. The talented and beautiful older daugher is not able to turn in most of her school projects on time during “Show Choir Hell Week”. Mom has to call in to report the kid “unable to come to school”. But then, even after a week that had 20 hours of extra practices,  between text messages and facebook, yet another rehearsal appointment got pulled together in the matter of a minutes. These kids also had video of last Saturday’s performance online by last Sunday afternoon! (footage link here). There’s no end to the uses these young-uns find for their networking.

Unfortunately, many of these uses are less than productive. When the slope slips from “research” to “entertainment” and those distracted minutes turn to hours, then action must be taken.  What parent isn’t tempted to provide external forces to persuade their progeny to stay on task? The problem is, where to draw that line in the sand.

Balance Facts and Fun

We want our information to be accurate, educational, engaging, and entertaining. The problem is finding the strike point. How do we meld the parameters to keep reality in the picture. Not the “reality” of reality TV. Not the reality of a political force (Fox News vs PBS or CNBC). Reality that keeps perspective.

There are a couple of ways to go about doing this. It might be that there’s a place for yet another web search engine (or a parameter in someone’s search engine). A parameter that manages the amount of accuracy vs entertainment is involved in a particular piece of web content. It could balance things out for us so that if one search is really fun to read, then the next one steers toward the middle and has more facts and less fluff.

Until we’ve got something like that we could have the kids get up a bit earlier and spend a little time focusing their minds. Start the day with a little yoga, religious study, meditation, quiet preparation. Even something as slight as a few purposeful breaths at the breakfast counter could help. Anything that gets the mind set on the bigger picture and what is really important for each day ahead.

At one point the external forces will be available, but for now, we really need to help our kids stay on task.

What Do We Do For Now?

It goes back to “make it a little easier for someone to do the right thing than the wrong thing and they’ll probably do the right thing”. That’s what we’re trying to do when we threaten to use network censorship on our kids. But it might throw the baby out with the bathwater. Or it might instigate higher levels of revolt. Each of us should think a bit about how we want to respond, not just react.

And back to Obama’s kill switch – here’s an article on what the experts think of the idea.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/what-the-experts-think-about-the-viability-of-an-internet-kill-switch/5034?tag=nl.e101

I wonder how the First Daddy focuses his mind for each day ahead?