As online culture settles in the home, new family rules and roles take shape

Like many parents, Donna Nguyen is concerned about the dangers her children face on the Internet — unsolicited porn, identity theft and child predators, to name a few.

By Sam Diaz and Lori Aratani
Mercury News

But policing their usage has been on the back burner in recent months, as the family works to solve a more immediate problem — the bickering between Rosa, 17, and Richard, 15, over who gets to use the Internet at home, and when.

Now, there’s an Internet schedule on the refrigerator door: Rosa has her block of time — four hours in the afternoon — and Richard has his — the evening hours until he goes to bed.

Donna Nguyen hopes that will put an end to the squabbles. If not, she’s ready to take drastic action.

“They fight,” she said, “I take it away.”

For Silicon Valley families such as the Nguyens, the arrival of the Internet at home has brought a whole new set of rules. And that’s just the beginning of the impact on family life: The Net is changing the way kids communicate with parents and each other, perhaps even altering the balance of power — with children often the most tech-savvy members of the household.

A Mercury News and Kaiser Family Foundation survey of more than 800 residents ages 10 to 17 and their families found that 79 percent have Internet access at home. Among families with at least one parent in the tech industry, home access jumps to 94 percent. The survey also found many valley teens and preteens feel at home on the Net in ways their parents probably never will.

Today, the parent looking over a child’s shoulder at the computer may not be policing but rather getting a crash course in digital literacy.

“The kids go in and out of the Internet like I change the TV channels,” said Martin Agredano, who’s raising three boys, ages 6 to 17. He admits he’s still struggling with the Net and often turns to the boys for guidance.

Even in Silicon Valley, where so many parents work in tech, 67 percent of the children who go online consider themselves more savvy than their mothers, and 50 percent said they know more about technology than their fathers do.

“I’m learning from the kids,” said Dawn Newman, whose children, Monica, 14, and Mitchell, 12, are fearless when they sit at the computer. When it came time for Mom to learn how to burn a CD, she turned to Monica.

Parents maintain control

While parents may puzzle over the finer points of mp3 file-swapping or the ins and outs of instant messaging, that doesn’t mean they have ceded control.

In Dawn Newman’s Almaden Valley condominium, she has to know whom the kids are e-mailing and instant messaging. E-mail accounts are subject to surprise inspections. And the amount of time for social use is restricted.

“The computer is a great form of discipline,” she said, winking at Monica, a freshman at Branham High School in San Jose. “Internet access is a privilege that can be withdrawn. There is not unlimited usage.”

But, unlike a video-game console, a computer simply can’t be taken away — no matter how much havoc it creates.

Mitchell, a sixth-grader at the Harker School in San Jose, needs the Internet to do his homework.

“A lot of his assignments are Internet-only,” Dawn Newman said. “It’s like a requirement, really, that they have a computer in the home.”

At Harker, homework and grades are posted online. And Newman has found that e-mail is the easiest way for her to stay in touch with teachers and counselors.

There are other benefits to having the Internet at home, she said. After a day of working, commuting and shuttling the kids from one activity to another, there’s little time to squeeze in a trip to the library so they can research a term paper or look up a quick fact for an English essay.

“When you’re a working parent, there are a lot of other places you need to be,” Newman said. “Sometimes it’s much more convenient having that access at home.”

When things go wrong

But there are also potential minefields.

Dawn and Monica Newman still dispute exactly what happened a couple of years ago when Monica shared her America Online password with a friend.

But suddenly, the amount of spam increased and there was potential for others to log on in Monica’s name and assume her identity. Dawn Newman quickly canceled that account, and Monica was forced to abandon her screen name.

Monica says she didn’t think it would do any harm and insists her friend was trustworthy. Regardless, that was the end of password sharing for Monica.

Despite the potential problems the Net brings home, parents overwhelmingly believe the positives far outweigh the negatives. Of those surveyed, 94 percent said the Internet will be important to their children’s success later in life.

Agredano agrees.

Agredano, who owns a party-supply rental company in San Jose, never longed for a computer when he was growing up. But these days, he said, no child should be without one.

“Now everything is about computers,” he said. “I wanted one so they could learn, so they wouldn’t be so far behind, like me.”

Agredano and his wife, Maria, a travel agent, have two sons, Marco, 6, and Nicolas, 8. They also are raising their nephew Hector, 17.

“When Nicolas was in second grade and we didn’t have a computer, it was hard for him because he had a computer class and they would give him exercises to learn and practice, and he couldn’t do it,” Agredano said.

The machine has been in the household for a little more than a year, and already the boys are “20 to 30 years more advanced than me,” Agredano said.

The increasing demands of school make it likely that some parents will be on a steep learning curve for some time to come.

Students are designing Web pages in their English classes, filing homework from their laptops to the school server and even using PowerPoint in gym class to show the proper technique for spiking a volleyball.

Even in the most-wired Silicon Valley homes, parents who have played significant roles in the tech industry find there’s still plenty to learn from their offspring.

Learning from the kids

For years, Bill Heil Jr. was an executive with Tandem Computers and a key figure in the company when it was acquired by Compaq Computer in 1997.

And yet, he is amazed at how quickly his son Patrick, 17, can manipulate the keyboard to play Grand Theft Auto on one of the nine networked PCs in their San Jose home. The heavy hardware load is not uncommon in the valley: The survey found two-thirds of all families with a home computer had multiple machines — and 30 percent had three or more.

Bill’s wife, Barbara, became an aficionado of instant messaging a few years ago when she discovered it was the best way to communicate with her son Bill, 21, away at college on the East Coast.

Now, even if it’s only a few sentences, Mom, Dad, Patrick and sisters Katie, 16, Madeleine, 12, and Julia, 8, “talk” to Bill — and each other — via AOL’s IM program every day.

In fact, instant messaging has become such a prevalent method of communication for the Heil family that it has replaced yelling up and down the staircase.

“What’s really sick is, when it’s time for dinner, I have better luck IMing them to come and eat,” Barbara Heil said.

The Heil parents have invested a fair amount of trust in their children, expecting them to avoid Web sites that are inappropriate and generally not abuse their access to the computer.

Like many parents, they realize the rules should evolve as their children — and their children’s interests — change.

Kim and Steve Lafond of Campbell have taught 10-year-old Korie the basic rules: Don’t give out passwords, don’t give out e-mail addresses and call Mom or Dad if she finds something on the Net that makes her uncomfortable. So far, that’s been enough.

“She’s pretty self-policing right now,” Steve Lafond said. “We’ve worked hard to instill in her what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Contact Sam Diaz at [email protected] or (408) 920-5021. Contact Lori Aratani at [email protected] or (408) 920-5531.

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