Should you spy on your kids’ computer use?

Your kids use the internet too much and you want them to stop.

What do you do? Do you secretly spy on them? Provide friendly guidance? Or do nothing until the predators come knocking? And is there any research on this?

Yes there is, but we had to go all the way to Israel to find it.

Sociologist Gustavo Mesch at the University of Haifa surveyed the cases of 500 teenagers, who engaged in risky online behavior.

It’s not just dirty pictures.

“We are talking about making contact with strangers and making relations with strangers, and even meeting with strangers,” said Mesch.

This is every parent’s nightmare.

So he looked at three different strategies: The guidance approach, where you explain the risks, the tough-guy approach where you make them turn it off or use spy software, and finally – doing nothing.

Guess which one had the strongest effect? The tough-guy approach.

But not in the way you might expect. “The more the parents get really tough, it actually increased the involvement of the kids in risky behavior.”

It made things worse.

But as it turns out, the biggest factor in whether or not kids take risks online isn’t what the parents do. It’s the example set by their friends.

“The more the peers perceive these risky activities are OK, the more the kids think it is OK to do these things,” said Mesch.

What Professor Mesch’s research seems to be saying is that instead of busying yourself trying to figure out what websites your kids visit, it’s more important to figure out who their friends are.