Parents must set online boundaries

Not long ago, a local girl of 14 began an e-mail exchange with a man just over twice her age. The man lived 100 miles away and was an acquaintance of the family.

During a routine check of her e-mail, which the parents warned her they reserved the right to do, they discovered their online conversations and became concerned.

The man had not yet broken any laws but it was clear to the parents that while their daughter was engaging in innocent, perhaps even flattering conversations, the man had other ideas.

The short story is that the father put an end to the relationship and the man will not be heard from again.

Before you draw any conclusions about the girl, her parents or the man, here’s what you need to know: The girl is a straight-A student, is involved in community service and respects her parents.

The girl’s parents are not divorced, they have a strong marriage and put their family first.

The man is a teacher and he is not someone you would initially suspect of hitting on underage girls.

In other words, all of the characters in this drama look and act a lot like you, our neighbors and me. They look and act like “regular folk.”

I thought of this episode as I read the developments of the online threats involving about 20 students at TeWinkle Middle School. The threats were directed against another student.

I thought of this episode as I read about 13 men who were arrested this week in Laguna Beach as part of a sting. The men had gone to a home there expecting to have sex with 12- and 13-year-old girls with whom they had been conversing online.

One has to wonder how many times those men were successful before they got busted.

Many parents trust their kids to do the right thing. And most kids do the right thing most of the time. When they mean well but fail, it is almost always because they do not have the life experience to understand that they may be getting themselves into a whole lot of trouble.

That 14-year-old girl who opened this story is a perfect example. To her, the offer to help her find a summer job in his area was exciting. To him, it was reaching out with a long net.

The Internet is not to be trusted in a home with children except when adults are closely supervising the activity. Further, kids should be told in advance that any activity they conduct will be monitored and that there is no right to online privacy in the home.

Actually, that should apply to the things in their bedrooms as well.

Informing your kids that you reserve the right to inspect anything in your home at any time does not mean that you will conduct routine inspections or even conduct a drill with drug and explosive-sniffing dogs as they did recently at Newport Harbor High School.

Kids deserve some space and some privacy, but it must be earned, and it is always revocable.

And for what it’s worth, I commend the administration for conducting that drill at Newport Harbor. Nearly all of the students there are still minor children in care of the district and the message that was sent to them that day was important.

It told them, as parents should tell their kids at home, that until they are grown and gone, you have to live by the house rules.

But talk is cheap and action is everything. The action of that drill said more than any spoken words or written policy ever could. It said that the school means business.

We need not just more drills, but some actual, full-blown inspections from time to time.

The world has changed a lot in the last 10 years. In 1994, I bought my first computer and a year later I was online. The world was at my feet but because I was in my 40s, I had some history of what can happen when you overindulge in something.

Kids do not have that perspective and need adults to set the appropriate boundaries.

The disciplinary precedent for violence and threats of violence has been set. It was set years ago at Columbine High School in Colorado and in other schools where kids were not being watched closely enough by parents, teachers and administrators.

As we have seen time after time, there is no shortage of online activity that turns ugly. How would it have looked if just one of the 20 students took the online conversations to the next level and carried out some violence? Could anyone have guaranteed that would not have happened happen?

Unfortunately for the “TeWinkle 20,” they are going to school in a district that has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, alcohol and weapons. And Though I don’t support zero-tolerance policies, they must be enforced if they are in place ? otherwise they will do more harm than good.

The threats these kids made are worse than the kid who brings a metal butter knife to school to spread mayonnaise on his sandwich at lunch, worse than the kid who brings a prescription drug to school without the proper authorization, even worse than the high school senior who sneaks a little drink in a limousine outside the senior prom.

But by conducting any one of those activities, a student would be considered for expulsion under the district’s zero-tolerance rules.

In for a penny, in for a pound.