My 11-year old son would still be happiest with hour upon hour of unfettered PC time. We have limits in our house, especially on a school day, which is our attempt to keep him focused on school work. And though it's a constant battle, for the most part we've kept the PC and gaming to a minimum. And when he picks up a book to read in bed, he makes my day!
It has helped that our family computers are in our den. There is such pressure at this time of year to get laptops for your children (you've seen the ads in your Sunday paper, I'm sure.) And our 13-year old daughter is waging a serious marketing campaign to sway me that it will help her for high school. Thus far, we've managed to keep the computers out of our children's bedrooms, and that makes it hard for them to use the computer without our knowledge. I do check the pc history about once a week, just to see which sites are getting visited. And I think if any of my children suddenly had thousands or even millions of dollars in "pocket money", I would notice.
So it is with some amazement I read of the recent FBI BotRoast II arrests of teenagers and young adults for their roles in cybercrime syndicates, operating at a global level. We at Symantec/Norton have long been discussing our findings that the black market of cybercriminals has matured to the point where anyone can purchase an online kit to begin sending out spam and phishing attacks. No real technical knowledge is required. A good example is the MPack toolkit, costing about $1500 and available with online reporting. (If this topic interests you, I recommend you read the Symantec Security Response Internet Security Threat Report XII. )
If your somewhat "shy" 18-year old son was found to be the mastermind of a $20 million cybercrime syndicate, I wonder what possible excuse you might find for not having noticed up to that point that something was "amiss". I'm sure the most interesting part of this developing story would be (at least for me) what his parents were doing while all of this was going on.