SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It is so complicated. I'm of a generation (31 y/o) that had no internet in early childhood, but witnessed the initial roll out of home intenet access. We went from don't talk to strangers/accept sweets/get into cars etc to don't talk to strangers on msn, don't open emails from people you don't know. Now we carry around so much information with us we need to add warnings about doxing.

To think when I was a kid the big worry was the trend for girls having those thick velvet hair bands with their names on. My neighbour was not allowed one and when I asked why (because I thought they were just the coolest look!) she said her mum would not allow them as that was how children got kidnapped. She couldn't explain to me why and I assumed her mum just didnt want to pay for it.

Yeah...I remember when the online world was a geeks-only combination of BBS boards and only a very few companies and software like Prodigy and Compuserve and Netscape and so on were the latest thing.

Even your average adult didn't hardly give such entities the time of day. Going online was a hobby like being a ham radio operator or something.

Times they are a changin'

Things have changed so much and continue to do so to a point that by the time you get home after buying say the latest computer it's already obsolete.

We need to go back to a simpler time. As much as technology has brought us together it's also separated us more now than ever.

An ex-colleague of mine shared a facebook post from Nottinghamshire police (post originates 27th Feb 6:48am). It shows a picture with some basics for making your kids' devices safer. It's not going to protect them from everything but it does cover some basic settings for things like youtube, itunes etc that are a good start. It also had some links providing privacy guides and parenting guides.

Although it's come through facebook guides put out by police services are probably a good place to start. Lots of local police have websites/fbook/twitter and many are currently putting out advice for concerned parents.

While I can make sure things are safe at home what about when my kids are out? At their friends home I can't control what they may be exposed to.

Also while DD has an old iPhone it doesn't have service BUT can still connect to wifi.

It's all so scary

While I can make sure things are safe at home what about when my kids are out?

You can't. But from what you've said here you've started a dialogue to ensure that they know they can come to you if they see something they don't like. If someone shows they something frightening they can tel you and they never have to keep a secret. All you can do is raise your kids right so that when the time comes to trust their judgement you know they have the information they need to make a good decision.

I guess if there are particular friends of their you could share the parent guidance/safeguarding information with said friend's parents.

Just read where two kids in Houston are missing and it's connected to this online thing.

I've been trying to read as much about this and other online stuff as I can. So many sites now saying it's all a hoax, others overseas (Scotland) said that "eggs" were hidden in the online stuff the kids were viewing so that if they clicked it the scary shit popped up.

At this point all I know is that I agree with the article that said, hoax or not.jts been a good way for parents to.open up communication with their kids about safety.

So sorry about the kids in Houston...

Several years ago my nephew was watching a Spongebob video on YouTube. Right in the middle of it was a porn clip. He didn’t know what was happening and luckily his dad was sitting nearby and got it from his hands. It was reported but nothing came back to them about YouTube’s findings. Sad world we live in.

These little girls are 12 and 13 and were last seen at their school bus stop this past Tuesday morning. They never made it to school. You can google the story. So very sad.

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HOUSTON, Texas -- The families of two Texas girls who have been missing ... The goal is for kids to disappear from social media and hide in real life. ... 'Momo Challenge,' a dangerous viral game, prompts warnings to parents.

I've said this before but the older I get, the more I mean it. If I was of child bearing age today, there's no way I'd have them. I worry about my youngest in ways I never worried about my oldest. The world she'll be going out into in a couple years just terrifies me.

I've felt that way for a long time (and no kids because of it). Kids born today (and some of us too, depending on your age) are going to see absolutely tectonic shifts in the world over their lifetime. Yes, there have been others, in fact, people alive this today have seen more change than anyone who died 5 years ago (the pace of change keeps accelerating), but what's happened so far is table stakes compared to what's coming. In 50 years, we may be living in a near utopia or we may be living in something out of a dystopian novel. We're on the "cusp" with several technologies with will completely alter the way the world works, self driving automobiles will make the world massively safer (good thing) but will also put about 10% of the world out of work, many forever. Artificial intelligence continues to climb the ladder, and, eventually, there's an inflection point where it starts to approach human level "G" (general intelligence) and can do many/most of the jobs we do today. We have no idea how to program creativity, so, those jobs are safe for the foreseeable future, but, only a tiny faction of jobs require that skill and, that skill isn't at all distributed evenly. Imagine if the "job requirement" in the future was to be 6'9" tall, you'll get an idea of the problem, very few people are that tall, and if you're not that tall, well... Too bad.

Perhaps we'll use this technology to give us all more free time, more resources (for all of us) and more self-actualization. I have my doubts though, ever technological advance we've ever had has lead in the other other direction, more work for those who have the skills and more concentration of wealth/power to those who control (or work on) the technology. Every projection that's espoused the "20 hour work week" or "more leisure time" has been wrong. Maybe, eventually, it won't be anymore and we'll move from a species of scarcity to one of abundance. I hope so, and I hope I'm here to see that, but, I have my doubts.

One of the ones that I think about a lot (well, because this is a site about affairs) is what does the future of male/female interaction look like? At some point, we're going to release a technology that's markedly "better than sex" for men. Porn on steroids, something that's so sexually appealing that "real sex" loses some of/all of its appeal. This could be utopia for both sexes, if a guy is pursuing you, it's obviously not for sex because, well.. Machines do that much better. But it could also be, and I think is more likely to be, far more destructive than it is helpful. There's a reason prostitution has been illegal for so long and it has little to do with protecting women and much more to do with protecting society. Allowing men to directly exchange money for "great" sexual experiences tears at the fabric of our social construct, but, as machines improve, eventually things are going to wind up this way, just with prostitutes replaced by "Cherry 2000". Will it be great for everyone, no more women forced into prostitution, no more wives having duty sex, no more men starving for affection? It could be, but, I doubt it.

I honestly feel we are headed towards the Terminator synario. Or any other movie that shows human destruction. Take the movie The Mist. An unexplained event happens and before long the people are turning against eachother.

Any world catastrophe and I would bet that humans would do nothing but turn into the monsters we truely are.