In Nancy Baym’s Personal Connections in the Digital Age, she briefly talks about parent’s fear of losing control over raising their children. This fear, inevitable in any parenting situation, has been projected onto the new technology of today’s day and age, blaming the internet for threatening the children of today. As a result, children’s access to technology is often limited, controlled, or banned altogether. But Baym argues that “Displacing our anxieties about children’s safety onto the internet and mobile phones makes our fear more manageable, but does little to protect children, and may keep the from realizing the benefits new technologies can offer them” (32). This misguided course of action has been a parenting trend lately, and has been applied to more than just the internet. For example, there are some parents who now ban their children from attending sleepovers, on the grounds that the world is now too dangerous for them to stay one night away from home. The article from blogger Tim Challies (http://www.challies.com/articles/why-my-family-doesnt-do-sleepovers) supports this idea, saying that pedophiles and cases of child molestation are “more pervasive than ever” in our society today. This follows the classic thought process of “this thing could be dangerous, so let’s cut it out all together.” It ignores other factors, such as the fact that the internet and its instant media makes news of molestation and other extremes more visible than it was before. This way of raising children can be dangerous; how are children supposed to learn how to fend for themselves in the real world if they are not allowed to experience it? What will they do when they move out of the house? In this age of information, we need to study not just how kids react to new technology, but how parents react as well. Parents are the ones who dictate children’s access to this information, and therefore impact children’s relationships with that information (Is it a good thing? Is it the forbidden fruit? Is it dangerous? Should I rebel and access it behind my parents’ backs?). This is why methods that teach fear such as the one above should be avoided, since it either holds children back from learning how to use technology wisely or leads to rebellion and thus poor online choices. Parents must have an open and honest conversation with their children about the good and the dangers of the internet, working together on building wise and safe habits.