STRANGER DANGER

Don’t Give Your Kids Too Much Privacy

They see everything

When I was in middle school, the only porn we watched was the seventh-grade couple who hardcore made out in the hallways between classes. There was also that box of Playboys my friend’s dad kept stored in their basement. I’m not naive enough to think my dad and everybody else’s dad didn’t have their own stash.

But other than that, there was no porn in our lives.

When that prostitute movie Pretty Baby came out, I charged my friends five dollars to come in through the backdoor and watch it, but that was porn-lite. Other than the seventh-grade couple making out, the fathers’ Playboys and Pretty Baby, we were porn free.

Some kids found porn tapes in their parents' hiding places. Betamax tapes that were heavier on the narrative than some of the images that pop up on my screen today — when I click on the wrong word combination. But that’s it, nothing else.

There was that one guy standing naked in the window on my way to school but I think he was more of a hairy hippy than a pervert, but who knows? He was thirty feet away, give or take.

I know a lot of us think we have control over what our kids are seeing, but our parents didn’t know, so why would we?

Unless you live off the grid, have no neighbors, don’t own magazines, the internet, phones, your kid is not allowed to play with other children, you have no relatives, or no mailbox, your kids have been exposed. And it’s way worse than Playboys or Betas.

What our kids are being exposed to is in real-time with real people. Take that, centerfolds.

Have you ever heard of Omegle? If you haven’t, here is a description of it.

A website which is specifically designed to allow users to talk to strangers. It works by randomly matching users to talk one-to-one using either text or video. It is free and anonymous to use, with no account registration or age verification

Whether you think your kids are innocent or you know they’re not, they’ve seen some version of porn. Websites are preying on our children. And I’m not talking about streaming videos, though they’re seeing those too. I’m talking live humans, randomly being set up with our kids, who do not need to prove their age.

Imagine the potential exposure. Image the potential danger of out kids on video chats with adult strangers.

At a recent parent meeting, a mom said her kid is so innocent he has no idea about any sex stuff. Our kids are in middle school. I thought two things. A. Bad idea. B. Not true. I also thought about denial. I spent a great deal of my life in denial, so I know how it operates. I edited the manual.

Our grandparents and some of our parents also operated solely on denial and it wasn’t great, but it was also a different time. Children, in those days, were not constantly exposed to porn. They weren’t exposed to porn on their phones, on their school computers, or at their friend's houses.

You don’t have to be a genius kid hacker to dive into the adult world of porn or other age-inappropriate actions. You only need tech.

Take the site Omegle. Kids don’t have to prove they are old enough to be on that site talking to strangers ON VIDEO. Also, the age they say you have to be is at least 13. So, it’s okay to talk to strangers when you’re 13 — that’s still pretty young.

After the night, when the mom told me how innocent her kid was about sex, I went home wondering how willfully ignorant I was. Did I think my son was innocent? Did I think he was too sweet and too smart to be exposed? Did I think he wouldn’t know what he was looking at if he saw porn?

What the hell does innocent even mean? The word innocent makes me think of the word guilty — implying some of our kids are innocent and some are guilty. That some kids are seeing porn and some are not. Only the bad kids, the guilty ones, are being exposed. Our angels are immune. Even if they see porn or violence, they have no idea what they’re looking at, so it’s all good.

Who doesn’t want their kid to believe in unicorns, or better yet, be a unicorn?

Even if you live in a tech-free home, your kid is still not immune. Children are carrying tech with them everywhere. Your child’s virgin eyes are surrounded by the matrix of the internet. There are computers at school. Kids know how to bypass school security walls on school ipads. Kids are carrying porn around on their phones. And that’s not even the scariest part.

My acquaintance told me her son had seen a penis online with someone he was chatting with. I think the site was Omegle, but I didn’t know what Omegle was yet. It’s certainly not the only site like it.

Who was he chatting with? Who showed him the dick? I asked her.

I don’t know, she said. Some stranger. Non-plussed.

I thought about the time I saw a flasher on the bus. I was in my 20s and I was still shocked. I didn’t go home and say, Yeah. I turned around and there was some dick sticking out. No biggie.

I still remember it, decades later. I could describe the dick in a lineup. Of course, if there were similar dicks I might pick the wrong one, but my point is, it was shocking. But being shocked by a stranger's dick is a thing of the good old days.

I asked my friend what the site was. She shrugged.

They’re all on it, the mom said. I was taken back. I’m not a priss, but this new normal was nuts. Was this now acceptable? I thought. Strangers showing our kids their dicks?

The next morning, I asked my son about this dick site everyone was on. He said it was called Omegle.

I can’t believe you haven’t heard of it, he said.

What is it? I asked. Are you on it?

He said, Mom, don’t worry. I’m not on that site. It’s gross. Nothing good happens on Omegle— you either see a dick, see someone vaping, see some gang member hold up a gun and threaten you if you don’t tell them where you live. Why would I go on that site?

Why would anyone go on that site? I asked.

Because people are stupid, mom. You know that. I did know that.

I asked him if he’d seen porn. He said, Mom. I’m in middle school I don’t watch it, but I’ve seen is I don’t want you to see girls as objects. I don’t want you to miss out on seeing women as humans and not body parts.

Okay, he said, listening more now, less cocky about seeing it all. He was looking at me closely.

He said, Mom, I told you I knew about all this stuff a couple years ago but you said you didn’t believe me.

I told him, I don’t really know what I am doing because I’ve never had a middle school boy, but I am trying my best. I had no idea how ubiquitous porn was for your age group.

He said, It’s okay mom. You’re doing a good job. I don’t know what that other word means, but I get what you’re saying.

I thanked him.

He told me it embarrassed him to talk about this with me, but it was fine. He was okay with it.

I said, the more we talk about it, the easier it will get. He looked like he believed me.

We talked for about half an hour. I don’t remember everything we said because my brain was swelling, but I felt very close to him. I felt grateful he would open up at all — knowing he was not telling me everything. I don’t want him to feel shame in secrecy. I want to be able to share the little he feels comfortable with. Maybe one day, he’ll share more.

Mostly, I don’t want to be willfully ignorant. I don’t want to be someone who thinks my kid isn’t seeing what absolutely every other kid is seeing. No matter how I feel about the world now, I can’t pretend it’s not out there.

But parents, I warn you. It’s one thing when adults go to Vegas and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. It’s entirely another when our kids go on to Omegle and meet pedophiles, are threatened with guns, and expect to see a dick. We need to be vigilant. We also need to accept this is the world we live in, and stop pretending the dicks aren’t out there. And we need to talk to them about it.