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Reception of religion and media 121

’Net. If they want to go on the ’Net, then they need to ask the parents
and I’ll navigate to show them where they need to be. They don’t need
to go on yet.

This sounds good, except they already go on the ’Net, and it turns out it is
not just shockwave.com that they know about. Referring to a site or sites
that the kids go to, Bonnie asks Dale, “What is that [site the kids go to]
Dale? Disney.com or bluesclues.com?” Don, the 6-year-old, responds for
him
Don: Disney.com.
Bonnie: It is Disney.com?
Don: There’s Nickjr.com.
Bonnie: Yes, that’s it. Thank you Don.
Dale: Yeah, and if they want to go on the computer, they ask us – for just
setting the ground rules, OK? Kids nowadays, they can log on to
computers and the parents have no clue as to what they’re doing.
“Oh, they’re on the computer? Well, let them go play on the
computer.” If they want to navigate on the Web to find something,
they’ll ask us and it’ll set precedent for the future. I’m interested,
Bonnie’s interested in, what our kids look at on a daily basis. So, right
now, they have no need for (the Web) unless they want to go to
Nickjr.com. But I don’t know why they’d want to since we don’t buy
anything from Nickjr.com or anything like that.
So, there is a bit of a contradictory picture presented here by Bonnie and
Dale. Early in the discussion, Bonnie says the boys never go online. She
also claims to not be a computer user. Then later we find that they use the
family computer to play video games, and in fact go online to websites, of
which five are named, and not all of these resources are things intended for
children. It is clear that Dale and Bonnie intend to be involved in the boys’
media use, and their knowledge of where they’ve been online can be read
as a testament to their vigilance in this. The boys are 6 and 5, though, and
are already getting started on their Internet journeys, with or without
Dale’s and Bonnie’s continuing intervention. It is hard to predict how this
will work out. What is clear, though, is that Dale and Bonnie mean to be –
and to be seen as – parents who are involved in this important aspect of
their boys’ lives, and that this is rooted in how they understand their reli-
gious identities as parents. They are concerned enough about the Internet
to contemplate denying the boys access at school, even though it is likely
that the uses they would put it to there would in fact be purposive. Dale
and Bonnie “read” the Internet primarily in terms of its entertainment, not
its educational value, and in fact have encouraged entertainment use of it
by means of the sites they allow – or facilitate – the boys’ access to.