I have heard it said more than once that common sense is not so common anymore.
The more I think about it, the more depressing that sounds.
How busy are our lives that we can’t take five minutes to tell our loved ones not to use a phone while driving or that those pictures our kids are sending via private communication might not actually be so private?
What happened to knowing the difference between right and wrong, to knowing the difference between what is appropriate behaviour and what is not?
The truth is I’m not sure.
Our editorial last week mentioned that the Barrhead Leader was going to do a series of stories related to safety, whether in the home, on the Internet or on our highways and other roads.
I’ve spoken with Sgt. Bob Dodds and the founder of the Dare To Care anti-bullying program — I attempted to speak with Const. Robert Hynes as well but for whatever reason that conversation did not happen, and I’ve come away from it all with two things I think are important.
One, as a society, we need to update the dictionary definition of the term ‘common sense’ and two, unfortunately for those of you who are ‘too busy’, it seems the onus of responsibility lies on the shoulders of parents.
I say ‘you’ because I myself am not a parent.
I know what that sounds like and believe me, I’m not pointing fingers here but the point is that the most important aspect of safety, according to Sgt. Dodds and Lisa Dixon-Wells, Internet safety expert, is that it begins in the home.
Telling your kids to Google safety is not going to cut it.
We need to be more proactive than that.
We were all kids once and I’m sure plenty of you can hear yourselves paying lip service to your own parents once upon a time.
The truth is, as much as we like to say how mature they are for their age, kids are not always really thinking about the consequences of their actions all the way through.
Peer pressure is a powerful motivator.
We don’t give six-year-olds a pilot’s licence or entrust them with nuclear materials and we certainly don’t let them drive a car without proper instruction and testing, so why do we allow a four ounce device to have so much leeway.
I’m not saying privacy is not important but why do kids need Internet access in their bedrooms and more importantly, why do we feel like we are breaking a cardinal rule by keeping a protective eye on them?
A five minute conversation could save them and yourselves a lot of grief.
