My older children’s initial foray into the wilds of the internet came via our first family computer. A shared device the size of a microwave oven, it was too bulky to be moved and sat in the middle of the house. So, my husband and I easily spotted a search for “naked pictures of Paris Hilton” during an eighth-grade sleepover.
A decade later, that attempt seemed almost quaint compared to what my younger children and their classmates encountered on the internet, including an email circulated to dozens of middle-school students containing a video of graphic sex. By that point, my children had their own laptops, and it was only by chance that I happened to see the email.
When I was growing up, classmates pilfered Playboy magazines from their dads or stole peeks of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition at the drugstore. My Catholic school never included “The Catcher in the Rye” on its summer reading lists due to its teenage angst over sex; most of us read it anyway.
Across America…
