Advocates for children frequently see the Internet as a danger zone for preteens and teens. When one considers the presence of online predators, online gambling, cyber bullying, and a host of other potential dangers it is easy to see how this view developed. Many adults also face problems on the Internet. According to a story in the July 25, 2006 edition of USA Today some colleges are even teaching about online safety during freshman orientation. Another side to the Internet, however, holds out hope for bringing up healthy kids while bringing the whole family together.
According to Davon Cannon of Family Lobby, which provides free family websites, "We think there's good reason to believe that services like ours may actually play an important role in helping to build healthy families in the Twenty-first century." Though there may not, as of yet, be any empirical studies that prove families coming together to build and maintain a website has a positive impact, one recent study on teens does give some important insights.
When researchers at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University released the findings of their tenth back to school study, they found four important factors in keeping teens off drugs. Characteristics of teens that had half the risk of substance abuse compared to average teens included: 1) teens who frequently ate meals with their families (five to seven times per week), 2) teens who had low levels of tension or stress among family members, 3) teens whose parents were proud of them and 4) teens who had a parent they could confide in.
Cannon suggests that, "An activity like building a family website together can give parents the opportunity to show pride in their children." He also points out that, "Parents can post pictures of their kids, talk about their children's accomplishments and generally praise them to other family members and friends. Children can show off their work and talk about what is important to them."
Time spent together offers kids an opportunity to confide in their parents. The families who will get the most out of an activity like building a family web site are the ones who sit down and co-create the site. Such an activity can promote important values such as cooperation and sharing. At the same time the family has the opportunity to explore its own identity on the pages of the site.
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