One of the challenges in upbringing is the “red lines“. Depending on culture, social conventions, norms, and customs, there are behaviors that parents:
– Consider them immodest and don’t want their child to engage in.
– Prefer their child to remain unaware of until a certain age, keeping these secrets behind the curtain.
– Find it difficult and perhaps embarrassing to discuss with their child.
Most of these behaviors relate to sexual matters. For our generation, it was clear that we shouldn’t ask about sexual ambiguities and questions, nor was it necessary for parents to talk about them. It was better for such secrets to remain hidden, only to be understood eventually through accident and experience.
Times have changed. The boundaries of decency, modesty, shame, and caution have shifted. Children have surpassed us in sexual knowledge to the point where they can answer our questions and clear our doubts!
And we, the adults, are still caught up in catching the kids, keeping them from deviating, reminding them not to cross the red lines, and still keeping everything hidden behind the curtain.
The internet has disrupted all our educational equations. The curtains have fallen, the red lines have faded, censors and unspeakables have become public, and the lever of secrecy, which was always in the hands of parents, has lost its effectiveness. The internet has easily done what we didn’t want to or couldn’t do.
We can still curse the internet’s misguidance, talk about the necessity of limitation, present analyses of “what was and what has become”, make declarations and condemnations, but does it help?
I don’t mean to say all the impacts and changes of the internet are positive, but we must accept that the internet is changing the concepts of life, culture, and education, and we are still running behind it, only cursing!
