Reply To: High school girls with Internet access

rationalfrummie – my sentiments exactly, although pba you do have a point to some extent. I actually have been trying since the Citifield asifa to cut back on my use of the internet other than for banking, email, etc, specifically so that my children should not see hypocrisy in their parents – i.e. do as I say, not as I do. I try to impress on them that the internet can be a useful tool at times, but it is also very dangerous (especially for young, impressionable, and CURIOUS teenagers), and should only be used when necessary and with others around for shemira. Yeshiva world is one of the only “unnecessary” sites I now allow myself to go on (the others are Only Simchas and weight watchers – oops, that one IS necessary), and even that I go to much less often than I used to. I’ve only started going on recently to check out what people have to say about the different seminaries – so I guess you could say that’s for tachlis. But when all is said and done, I do believe there is a HUGE difference between a middle-aged mother and a 17 year old girl having internet access.

To be dan lechaf zechus, it could be that the girls posting are sitting with one of their parents as they are doing so, and do not have their own access. As I sometimes do with my daughter when she needs to look something up.

WIY, I don’t think you are correct. My daughter is not the rebellious type at all. Although there are times she wishes she could have internet access, I believe she understands that I am trying to protect her, not stifle her. I do not think I am “treating” her badly – I am just trying to impress on her and all my other children how dangerous the internet can be, and how careful we must be when using it, so that when she eventually does need to use it (for work or college after seminary), she will have it ingrained in her psyche how careful she must be when using it.

Bookworm – most parents of seminary girls that I know stay in touch with their daughters via telephone – there are pretty cheap cellphone plans for calling between US and Israel, or the sem has a dsl line – as I did with my older daughter and son. If I remember correctly, in my older daughter’s sem (it was a number of years ago) we were able to send an email to the school addressed to her, which they would print out and give to her, but the girls did not have access to send email back.