Decision-making and Cybertraps

Congressman Anthony Weiner is not the first high-ranking man to make some bad decisions. Nor will he be the last. History and literature are full of stories of powerful men who have made very bad decisions-from Antony and his Cleopatra to Bill Clinton and his Monica. What makes the most recent debacle so memorable is that discovery occurred in an instant, as soon as Congressman Weiner hit the "send" button. The decision-making process is immediate when it comes to the Internet. So how do we teach our children to make good decisions on the spot, to hesitate before clicking send?

There is a growing literature on the cybertraps young children can fall into. It can be something as inadvertent and innocent as a ten-year-old proudly downloading material from the Internet and putting her name on the report. It can be as serious and consequential as what happened to one of the young men I work with, who, at age 19, hooked up on the Internet with a "married" couple with whom he had sex in the back of their van.

Parental guidance and oversight, clear rules and logical consequences for breaking the rules, and monitoring of time and activity are all concrete steps that parents can use to educate and protect their children. But eventually, the child will find himself alone, facing a monitor and an enticing keyboard. Eventually, the child will have to make a cyber-decision. How do we make sure he makes the right decision?

To address this, parents need to understand how we all make decisions. As evident in Mr. Weiner's case, all decisions and actions have consequences. There are two kinds of consequences: immediate and distant. Distant consequences are the most common strategy parents use to try to control their children's actions: "If you post inappropriate pictures on the Internet, you will have trouble getting into college." But distant consequences have little to no impact on controlling behavior.

Let me give you a personal example. I took some of my staff members out for coffee the other day. I ordered my usual non-fat latte, then stood staring at the coffee cake special prominently displayed on the counter. I knew that if I had that coffee cake, my blood sugar would go up, my cholesterol would go up, my blood pressure would go up...I would die of a heart attack! I had the coffee cake. The distant consequence of death had no impact on my decision. The immediate consequence of the soft, sugary, textured flavor (it had that wonderful crumb topping that gives it just the right crunch) easily won out.

Now, if the distant consequence of death cannot control the behavior of a fairly competent adult, how can we expect the threat of a college admissions officer's looking at a young person's Facebook page to control a hormone-ravaged adolescent's behavior? Even in the best of circumstances, typically developing adolescents are poor at decision-making, especially when risk is involved. The immediate consequence of pushing a button that can send information out to an individual or to a nation is a feeling of power and celebrity, an opportunity to control what others see; this is what drives the decision.

In parents' attempts to shape their children's behavior, it must be recognized that the immediate consequence will almost always overshadow the distant consequence. A group of Olympic-bound athletes were once asked the question, "If you were given the choice of winning a gold medal but dying in five years, or winning no medal but living a full life span, which would you choose?" Almost every athlete chose the immediate consequence, the gold medal. The key to behavioral intervention, then, is to address immediate consequences.

The infant's first recognition of immediate consequences is physical-he cries, his mother feeds him, his hunger is sated. As the child matures, consequences become developmentally more sophisticated. The physical consequences that signal relief of biologic drives give way to social consequences, i.e., the parents' approval and reinforcement of appropriate behaviors. The feelings of personal gratification that come with approval and reinforcement drive the child toward goal-oriented behavior, as the child seeks further approval and reinforcement. A teacher recognizing a student's appropriate use of citations and materials in the preparation of a research paper will reinforce that behavior. A parent's talking openly and praising an adolescent's refusal to participate in cyber gossip will instill a lifelong lesson. If a child's self-motivated behavior is consistently awarded with approval and reinforcement, the child internalizes a self-rewarding system grounded in feelings of self-esteem ("I'm OK!") and self-efficacy ("I can do it!"). Through this process these personal consequences grow in importance, and the child develops values and a sense of self-identify ("I am myself").

No child with feelings of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-identity will post inappropriate pictures or materials on the Internet. He does not have to seek that kind of power.