One thing I love about Colleen Hannon is her incredibly detailed MomGamer columns. They provide loads of details to any and all questions you have about a subject. Take her look at XBOX360 Parental Controls, for example, as well as the follow-up dealing with specifics based on a user question. If all parents who want to be involved while also allowing their kids access to XBOX Live would read those articles, there would be less for hysterical journalists to use to make peoples’ heads burst into flames.

Which brings me to the case of ‘Jennifer’, a Lansing MI mom whose two kids were on XBOX Live and using the camera and headset features and apparently were flashed nude pictures. The article is here, and there is a video link to watch the report. The mother reacted immediately, turning off the system and ‘banning’ them from XBOX Live. She says that she fears for their safety (the well written article says ‘she fears their safety’ but that is just too easy of a target).

I don’t have an XBOX, but based on my reading of Colleen’s articles I can immediately see some issues:

• The sad reality is that in any online experience is replete with immature jerks who love to foist this stuff on others. I used to have a colleague who did that at work many years ago, and it finally took reporting it to his boss to get him to quit. In this case, Microsoft wants these sorts of folks *gone* – they take it seriously – so instead of shutting off the system, block the user and report them!
• The XBOX360 has a tremendously robust set of parental controls, as well as the ability to simply block users from using features completely. Any parent allowing their kids access to a console with online capabilities should make it their responsibility to make sure that the filters are in place. Same with computers, for that matter – I wonder what this mom has for blocking on her PC … or does she just assume that her angels never Googled ‘boobies’?
• The game featured in the report is Halo 3. If that was the game in question, then she is already allowing her underage kids to play an M game and therefore experience content intended for audiences 17+.

The whole thing bothers me because it is alarmist and lacking in real content. It is a quick sell – the sort of thing where a few years ago it was big news that someone who bought a returned memory stick for a PSP found that it was full of ‘naught videos’ … and that was big news for a day.

But I really wonder about the whole thing – a couple of years ago I started letting my kids use an old laptop of mine, before I installed monitoring software, and found that they had searched MS Word Clip Art for some … um … inappropriate items.  I didn’t blame Microsoft or Dell – it was my kids who got themselves into the mess.  Somehow I am hard pressed to believe that these kids were just minding their own business and got this stuff tossed at them – it is possible, but I wouldn’t bet with those odds.

Responsible parenting means taking responsibility for being ‘The Parent’: the one who sets the rules and boundaries and consequences for actions.  If your kids are innocent and are assaulted and you have done everything possible to protect them, then you have every right to get majorly upset when someone manages to get to them.  But if you are sending them on city streets with dollar bills hanging out of their pockets, don’t get self-righteous when they end up mugged.  If you want to avoid ‘fearing for their safety’, then take *preventative* actions, because being reactive is the same as being too late.

Tags: Misc