Earlier this year, 13-year-old Shannon Sullivan was socializing in the same way as dozens of her classmates. She maintained a personalized page on a website that contained her photograph and details about what makes her unique.But then her mother found out.And now her site and those of her friends—once lovingly adorned with everything from sound bites to video clips—are fast disappearing at the insistence of their safety-minded parents.
" They’re not aware how easily something predatory can happen over the Internet, " says Shannon’s mother, Margaret, " Maybe when they’re older, in college or something, but it’s just not safe before that. " Internet stalkers have killed at least four minors in the past three years, and law enforcement authorities count about 5,000 reports of attempted sexual predation over the Internet in the past year, according to ParryArab, executive director of an Internet safety organization. Given such statistics, parents need to get over the feeling that they’re invading their children’s privacy by reading their blogs, Ms.Aftab says. She believes that parents must bring their judgment to bear on the content of what’s posteD、 Others fear, however, that certain precautions could amount to swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, and could take a hefty toll on family life. The likelihood of tragedy is far greater whenever a child rides in a car or goes swimming than when he or she posts his or her name, photograph, and other personal information on the Internet, says Laurence Steinberg, an expert in adolescent psychology at Temple University. " The downside of prohibiting it is worse than the downside of allowing it, " he says. " A、good parent-child relationship is based on trust. I think people do get especially worked up for some reason over the Internet.But snooping on what your child does on the Internet, to me in some ways, is no different from reading your child’s diary. " Though the value of pursuing a reasonable level of safety goes undisputed in this discussion, adults differ on the value of increasing a child’s freedom and privacy over time, especially in cyberspace.Aftab supports adolescent privacy with pen-and-paper diaries, for instance, because the content there is " between the child and the page, " whereas website content is " for the whole world to see. " Posting private Web content before age 16 only invites trouble, she says, yet many teens do it in a highly public bid for " attention, recognition, and affection. " Still, Steinberg says, while parents need to monitor Web usage by teens, they also should accept that they won’t always know everything about a child’s life, especially as children become older teens. " There are going to be lots of things that I don’t know about in my child’s life, and that’s OK, " Steinberg says. " It’s part of the development process. \ What are the attitudes ofAftab and Steinberg towards parents’ precautions A、The former is positive while the latter negative. B.The former is negative while the latter positive. C.Both are negative. D.Both are positive.