What age should child get email access?

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My daughter is 11 and has had an email account for a year or so. She also recently got a facebook page (which was setup and is closely monitored by me). We have family and friends out of state and it’s a nice way for her to keep in touch. I look at it like the modern form of letter-writing. Every kid likes to get mail in the mailbox that is just for them, from an aunt or cousin. Nowadays, most aunts and cousins aren’t going to write a snail mail letter. They use email for their daily correspondences, not written mail. So, allowing my daughter to have email has allowed her to have that connection with her family and friends she might not get to hear from otherwise. I do have access to her account and I check it daily. I trust her, I know who she corresponds with, and I stay on top of things.
 
Wow. I was not expecting so many responses! Thanks everyone.

I think the family email idea where we control the password is a really good one. My wife and I are going to discuss it more today before she gets home. It gives us full control while still allowing her to email her friends. It will also send a message to the friends that this is the family account and not just my daughters so it will help keep in check anything they send as well.

I do standby my conviction that an 8 year old does not need an email account, but if its a family account that we can let her send email to her friends on then I think that is ok. Its not much different from when my wife lets her send me an email at work on my wife’s account.

We’ve been successful with her and the computer. We set up a folder on the desktop with links in it to the websites that she is allowed to visit and those are the only ones she goes to.

I think that is a great solution. Oh and we are trying to get her start hanging out with other kids with parents more like us. Its hard when they have been this close for a few years now though but we are working on it.

Thanks again everyone for all your (name removed by moderator)ut. This really helped!
 
I got my first e-mail account when I was 8 (I’m only 18). I really just wanted one because of the novelty of being an adult. My mom used to send me e-mails, even though we lived together, and she had access to the account. While it is unnecessary, it is also kind of fun to be able to feel like an adult. I would say as long as you regulate the account, or at least tell your daughter you are going to, she will be fine.
 
raindogg said:
I do standby my conviction that an 8 year old does not need an email account, but if its a family account that we can let her send email to her friends on then I think that is ok.
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Thing is rain dog, no one needs anything, but in the scheme of things things like e-mail, cellphones and facebook will be part of parent’s decisions for younger and younger children.

I have a friend who’s about 20 years older than me and we’ve done some real, honest talking about life and society that I’ve never done with my parents.
Things that existed in my childhood were unheard of or rare in his. They played in, had neighbors, wore the same clothes day in and day out, the bullies were always the big kids, the creppy men were more fables than anything and looked ugly, and a man married a women to have children.

By the time I was in school (and now this was 20 years ago). You weren’t allowed to walk to school alone. There were two kidnappings at different times within 40 miles of me; one girl 10 or 11 was murdered the other girl (a young teen) hasn’t been found to this day. Creeps didn’t have to be the guys who looked werrd and they could be women and they were just as interested in little boys as little girls. Most of my friend’s parent’s were divorced (the 50% rate being much higher were I lived) IF the kids had two parents at all. Although many had three or more. My friends and I vividly discussed homosexual ACTS (as a reason for divorce) when we were 7. I grew up on the cusp of Jonesboro and Columbine where kids who were taunted took their own lives as well as others.

The world has changed and e-mail is very much a part of how we communicate today, its how we express ourselves. No longer can a little girl express herself on the sidewalk with chalk without a parent hovering for saftey. (if it’s even allowed by the home society). No longer can a girl carry around a doll over the age of 5 for fear of harassment or extremely cruel bullying. No longer can a group of kids run around and be friends until mom calls them home for dinner. But our human hearts still long for this kind of companionship, especially as children. This world of moral deviance has driven us into isolation more than any trans-Atlantic immigration or migration out west ever did.
 
purplesunshine said:
The world has changed and e-mail is very much a part of how we communicate today, its how we express ourselves. No longer can a little girl express herself on the sidewalk with chalk without a parent hovering for saftey. (if it’s even allowed by the home society). No longer can a girl carry around a doll over the age of 5 for fear of harassment or extremely cruel bullying. No longer can a group of kids run around and be friends until mom calls them home for dinner. But our human hearts still long for this kind of companionship, especially as children. This world of moral deviance has driven us into isolation more than any trans-Atlantic immigration or migration out west ever did.
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I think I agree with your point about email being a part of who we are now. But not so much the rest. I think as a society we are very safe now. Maybe even safer with our mass communication means. But I also think those mass communication means have fostered a mass hysteria about many things and have caused parents in NJ to be afraid to let their kids play outside because they read a news story about a girl being kidnapped in California. Just a simplified example. And in turn that has a lot more kids sitting inside on the computer. Along with these great communication systems comes these other problems that if we don’t recognize them for what they were we let them rule our lives.

30 years ago if something happened to a kid it was local news. You didn’t hear about it everyday all over the world. So parents weren’t as paranoid about it. Now all those things make national if not global news that we are bombarded with all day long on the internet, TV and radio. Its created a sad situation where parents are afraid to let their kids outside. We have friends who don’t even let their kids in the backyard because of the type of thing you are saying because their yard backs up to woods that people walk around in.

I feel 100% safe in letting my kids play outside. There are no more creeps lurking out there than when I was a kid 25 years ago and my parents would let me ride my bike to the lake 5 miles away from the house.

Anyway, this was about email and I agree that maybe we can’t ignore it. But even that being said, not sure why an 8 year old would NEED email. And I’m not sure you point about kidnappings and stuff makes it.
 
Kids have been kidnapped since time began, the difference now is we hear about with 24X7 nineteen channels of cable news.

Kids here still walk to school. If I lived where that was not safe, I’d move 🙂
 
kage_ar said:
Kids have been kidnapped since time began, the difference now is we hear about with 24X7 nineteen channels of cable news.

Kids here still walk to school. If I lived where that was not safe, I’d move 🙂
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AMEN! Its refreshing to hear someone else say that too.
 
What’s the difference between e-mail and the kids just talking amongst themselves on a school bus? It seems like a bias against modern technology on your part.

In fact, e-mail is even better in terms of conservative parenting because you can read what they’re talking about, whereas when they’re talking on the school yard you have no way to know what’s going on.
 
I stated my case as the kidnappings both happening within 40 miles of my home. One wasn’t heard about as much because it involved a “parental” kidnapping where all the players (parents and child) were minorities. There are MANY parental or familial kindappings…I think 1 out of every 100 kidnapping cases make it to the evening news. If you’re a minority, forget it. Just look at all the “major” kidnapping cases that have been publicized in the past few years…almost all involved young white girls almost exclusively blonde.

I’d forgotton about this until now. When I was teen not very far away from me there was a basment bunker unearthed where a man kidnapped women and girls (between the ages of 15 and 25), held them for months or years. Many never told their families…in the end about 40 women came forward and 10 were found dead and buried. They were almost all minorities or straight out of the foster system. It never made the nationil news as far as I know, although I think one of the women appeared on Oprah.

So “hysteria” is people in NJ being upset about a kidnapping in California. But NJ’ers only have to look to their own neighborhoods to find just as disturbing (though not publicated) things.
kage_ar said:
Kids have been kidnapped since time began, the difference now is we hear about with 24X7 nineteen channels of cable news.
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As my brother once noted me “the face of perversion” has changed. With a million scandals involving priests, teachers, mothers and social workers. You could right, it isn’t more frequent, we’re just more aware. However, sexual deviance IS more frequent in this society. I mean could you immagine MNBLA having success 50 years ago? (for those of you who don’t know that’s the man-boy love association, and it’s VERY real and very engraned especally in large cities)

As a part time nanny I took my own time so that a practicing open homosexual with many partners would not be able to babysit my precious charge. (Her mother loved homosexuals and concieved her child with a bisexual). Even if you know your neighbors you never know who their friends or adult children are bringing around.

The danger is greater today. There IS more deviance. Parents have good reason to want to keep their children safe inside and it comes down to more than just preditiors. As I mentioned before…many home-owner societies have banned SIDE WALK CHALK!!! Children cannot play outside in the sprinkler and Heaven forbid they leave a toy on the lawn.

And things like haloween candy? forget it. Everything has to come pre-wrapped…strangers can’t give kids nomemade treats because so often there IS malaiace.

And child on child bullying to the degree that it occurs now (ignored or encouraged by adults) did not occur. YES children bullied, yes, children got the snot beat out of them, yes children fought…but guns existed for hundreds of years and school shootings have only occured in the past 15 years or so.
Kids here still walk to school. If I lived where that was not safe, I’d move
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you’re fortunate you have the resources to do that. I don’t think many Americans do.
 
kage_ar said:
Kids are far safer playing in the yard than surfing the internet!!!
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I’m not talking about “surfing” the internet.

I’m talking about them going around with their friends in their own neighborhood, which no longer happens for many reasons. One of them is the stranger danger concept and another is that like the OP people don’t just send their kids to the local school…they bus the kids far away so they can get a better education.
 
We are running the risk of hijacking the thread, so, do some research on ancient Greek pederasty if you think NAMBLA is new. Read the account of Sodom and Gamorrah.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Know your neighbors and teach your kids to run away/fight/leave if they are treated in an inappropriate manner. Your Parish gives free Virtus training, by taking it you will learn that predators look for kids who have not been armed with self confidence and knowledge, for kids who’s parents are not watching.

If you have the means to live somewhere with a HOA or POA, you have the means to move if they make rules that your kids can’t play outside OR to change the POA rules.
 
purplesunshine said:
I’m not talking about “surfing” the internet.

I’m talking about them going around with their friends in their own neighborhood, which no longer happens for many reasons. One of them is the stranger danger concept and another is that like the OP people don’t just send their kids to the local school…they bus the kids far away so they can get a better education.
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Kids NEED to play with other kids, to do it face to face. We are raising a nation of teens who would rather text than talk! They do not know how to have an actual interpersonal face to face friendship - they limit physical contact to sex!
 
kage_ar said:
Kids NEED to play with other kids, to do it face to face. We are raising a nation of teens who would rather text than talk! They do not know how to have an actual interpersonal face to face friendship - they limit physical contact to sex!
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Because they aren’t physically together!!! Kids aren’t allowed to just be friends with neighbor kids because they’re “bad influences”. They don’t get to just play. They don’t get to spend enough time together because EVERYTHING they do is structured. E-mail and text are probably the only unstructured things that kids are permitted to do.
 
kage_ar said:
We are running the risk of hijacking the thread, so, do some research on ancient Greek pederasty if you think NAMBLA is new. Read the account of Sodom and Gamorrah.
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God destroyed the entierty of Soddom and Gamorrah even the parents who thought they were doing a good job.
 
My 8 year old has email, but it is set up so it all incoming messages come to my inbox and all his outgoing mail comes to me and only I can actually send it.
 
Lutheranteach said:
My 8 year old has email, but it is set up so it all incoming messages come to my inbox and all his outgoing mail comes to me and only I can actually send it.
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I found a site that does something similar. Its called zilladog.com It was set up by mothers to provide a safe place for kids online.

They have an email program the parent sets up an account and then sets up emails for their kids. The kids can only get email from people the parents set up in the buddy list. All email they send out and recieve also gets forwarded to the parents email account. If an email is sent to them from an account not in the buddy list it goes to the parents first for approval. If you approve you can add that person to their list. Its all free as well. Pretty cool.

We are going to set up a family account for her to use. That way it will control somewhat what her friends send there and keep her in check a bit too so she knows it a family account that she is given the privelege of using.

I highly recommend the site. Its really cool
 
As one poster put it, you are highjacking my thread. Please go start your own thread and continue your arguement there. I will just delete your posts AND send a complaint to the moderator.

Thanks.

OP
 
raindogg said:
As one poster put it, you are highjacking my thread. Please go start your own thread and continue your arguement there. I will just delete your posts AND send a complaint to the moderator.

Thanks.

OP
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The idea of a child having an e-mail is intrinsically linked to safety…or else a kid having an e-mail wouldn’t be a issue at all, since I’m sure they have acess to pen, paper and a regular mail box.

And, BTW you do not have permission to delete posts, I believe you can ignore users but I’m not sure. Feel free to complain to the mod’s. It’s within your rights.
 
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