Responsible Surfing

On the earliest days of the world wide web people started to use the internet for self help and helping others. Website, newsgroups, chat rooms, social community groups and blogs have always been a place for people that share the same problems could help each other. People are sharing solution and motivating each other in hard times. At the same time has the web also been a community people become a victim of harassments and people are getting bullied. I recently came a across a talk on experience that women had online. These were women using the internet for various self help issues, sharing similar ideas on e.g. Women’s rights and etc.. Most felt the internet was great place to share ideas, motivate each other, get women organized in groups all over the world. They felt the internet got the women’s voice out from countries that freedom of speech was limited.. At the same time many of those women who used the net to chat and blog about this women’s subject felt that there was too much harassment going on that interrupted they’re chat. They were getting sexual harassed, just because they were women on women’s websites.

The other day I was listening to the BBC on the way home from work. There was an interesting discussion going on, on the good side and the bad side of the internet. I am sorry to say I forgot the names of those who were speaking but remember an interesting story for this subject. One of the speaker told a story of an experience some women had that managed an website for health and beauty. A self help site that was closed because even though it was extremely useful, they just did not „get the pro-ana girls to shut up“ (Pro Ana A pro-ana is someone which promotes anorexia nervosa as noble and good way of living). The internet is similar to all other things it has both positive and negative sides. People in this virtual world will relate to other people on the internet, trust them and open up often more than they would to in real world. The internet makes it possible for anyone to be part of a discussion, but still remain anonymous. This possibility of hiding behind the screen makes us more open and honest about our feelings and problems. At the same time people that have negative agenda can also hide behind the screen, harass people, bully them and almost do what they like to anyone. Also self help sometimes can refer to not just helping people get well but also help people not get well as the pro-Ana’s do.

We cannot close down the internet and we probably do not want to do that even though it has these bad sides, because luckily the good sides are more than the bad ones. Therefore we just need to be more alert for negative sides of the internet so we can find knowledge, solutions, parental control software’s and tools and other ways to get more informed and spread the good word out

Bjorn Hardarson
Clinical psychologist
Director of Responsible Surfing

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More pressure has been put in that Internet addiction should be be addedd to DSM the official psychiatry guideline of mental disorder.  Now The American Journal of Psychiatry has said it should be approved as a common compulsive disorder with excessive gaming, gambling, compulsion to pornography, auction chat and etc. According to the story on sky news Internet addicts according to D. Jerald Block psychiatrist are loosing track of time, forgetting to sleep and isolating themselves socially, develop depression, anger problems and etc..  The report in the journal also describes the Multiplayer games as a „heorinware“.  Block points that in Korea at least 7 people were killed in a internet cafe from cardiopulmonary related deaths due too online gaming.  Block also mention internet addicted are resistant to treatment and there are high relapse rate.

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According to juneau empire new bill was passed by the house of state affairs committee that would cut funding for libraries that are not blocking, filtering or monitoring kinds online so they will not be looking at pornography and other offensive material at the library. According to the bill sponsor rep. Wes Keller the bill is a way to protect kids online and therefore create safer surfing environment in libraries. So now libraries need to use parental control software to block filter and or monitor children online so they are not looking at sexual and other offensive website.
Parents have responsibility to block and filter home computers and this bill is set to have libraries to protect children as well and use the parental control software on the market.

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Parental control can probably be defined in many ways. Most important for me as a parent and a psychologist is that in all family parents needs to be in control. I think it is always important for all families to allow children to feel some control have room for their opinion heard but in the end it is important parent gives they’re children the boundaries they need. Children need to know from their parents the rules of the home and the rules of the world. Be polite; eat healthy, respect older people, study to get good grades and so on. They also need to know the safety of the street, watch out for cars on the street, were safety belts and so on. Now there is a new danger zone many parents do not know much about, they are worried about their kid’s safety online. The internet is often considered to be a huge city without any police around. Parents also are getting to know that they are not always there to be this police or help their children in need so to help parents get more control of this new online community and avoiding danger parental control software can be a good option to help them manage their children safely.

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It will always be a difficult job for couples to rebuilt relationships after affair. The trust is gone and it will take a lot of time to gain that trust again. If the affair happens during a special kind of situation like e.g business trip of one partner, the anxiety of the other during business trips will be terrible. Many will agree not to go on those or stop being in those situations the affair started or took place. Affairs on the internet have become a huge problem and theinternet is the new dangers zone for affairs. It can be hard to stop using the internet at home after a cyber affair. Like the anxiety is tremendous during the partners business trips, the anxiety will also be bad during surfing of the partners who had affair on the internet. The problem is it is most of the time not so easy to stop using a computer or the internet. As a therapist working with couples after an affair I often felt a badly needed a helpful tool to manage the internet use and reduce the anxiety around computer usage at home. Since launching Responsible Surfing it has become a valuable to for people to use during the phase of developing trust again. Let me give some points on what has been successful in reducing the anxiety after a affair on the internet, reducing the risk of relapse and building trust. 1. Taking a computer break: It is not necessary but can be good starting point for one or two weeks to stop using the computer at home 2. Make a contract on what is allowed and what is not, See examples of contracts on http://www.responsiblesurfing.com/internet_Contracts/ 3. Blocking dating sites. Responsible Surfing offers a blocking list of pages that you can build yourself. Take time to set up list of dating sites to be blocked (admin list) for the spouse that had the affair and choose yourself if you want to block other sites as well. 4. Monitoring word: Set up a list of words to monitor. You can choose words like “sex”, or other flirting relating words. SO every time those words are written the other spouse will get an email or SMS alert that this word has been typed. You can also block the user for typing those words 5. Block chat programs Sometimes it can be important to block all chat programs or special chat programs that was used in the affair 6. Monitor chat: If you do not want to block chat you can monitor all keywords written so you can see how you spouse is chatting to and what is said. 7. If you want to see better how the computer is used you can take screenshot on time interval or just of the special sites you want to watch closely or when the word of the list mentioned above is used 8. Weekly meeting: It is good practice the set up a weekly meeting to discuss how you are doing and look at the report on computer use. Just look at the necessary things and try always do this together. You can say you should not use software to monitor your spouse internet use. But after an affair the trust has been broken and it is not so easy just to start trusting. At the same time I would not recommend anyone to spy on their spouse. Using Responsible Surfing helps couples overcome anxiety of another affair on the computer and at the same time build the trust again slowly. Use the tool but do not overuse it or misuse it. Bjorn Hardarson Clinical Psychologist www.responsiblesurfing.com

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