March 2003
March 12
Dear parents among my readers,
Please don't let your children play around online unsupervised. Okay, I'm not talking to those of you whose children have reached legal age. But I've spent a lot too much time the last several days dealing with the frantically written pleas of, "write to me right now if you're my friend!" that I've been getting from a little girl, age 10.
She's a total stranger to me. She found me by using a search engine (no, not the "G" one this time) to check the term, "write to me." Since that's the phrase I use on my contact page, and it happens that the page is fairly high in that search engine's rank for the phrase, she found it easily. And has come back, several times.
From the notes she sent, I was pretty sure I was dealing with a child, so I carefully wrote and thanked her for her notes, and (answering her question as to my age) told her I was an adult. She finally told me how old she was, and asked if we could be friends anyway. That prompted me to write to her and tell her that the only way I would write to her again was if she had her parents get in touch and tell me it was all right with them for their daughter to have an adult pen pal. I said if that happened, I would be glad to write occasionally.
She's only written once today, to apologize for not divulging her age earlier. No mention of having her parents get in touch. Since they didn't, I won't answer the note. I suspect they don't have a clue what the child has been doing the last several evenings. And I suspect she's fairly scared that I'll find out who they are and will tell on her.
It bothers me that I don't feel okay about writing to remind her of the rules. It bothers me that there are predatory people online whose behavior has sullied something that I think might be fun---I remember being a kid and having grown-ups with whom I exchanged mail (I have always loved writing letters, but these days it's more likely I'll use e-mail to do so). It bothers me that this child put some faith in me that I would respond, but I don't feel, in this day and age, that I can do so.
And it bothers me most of all that she may well have written to someone else whose intentions toward her would not be good, and whose scruples may not prohibit at all taking advantage of her naivete.
I know you can't watch children all the time. I know you can't anticipate everything a child might do. But if your children are working on the computer, please take a minute every now and again to check to see what they're doing. If they mention wanting pen pals, well, there are organizations set up to match people in that role, and you can help your child find such. I suspect this girl had heard of the notion of pen pals, and didn't really know a better way to get one than to do a search.
For her sake, I hope she goes about finding a reliable pen pal in a safe way. For mine, I hope I don't have to disappoint another child. That really and truly sucks.