Orland Evangelical Free Church | New York Times Readers and Dolls

The photo is an affront to our sentimentality. A nine-year-old girl slouches on a couch with her delighted face basking in the white glow of a laptop screen. Shouldn't she have a Barbie instead?

Matt Richtel and Brad Stone wrote a technology article published yesterday (June 6^th) called, "Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play." Jumping onto the Times most e-mailed list, the piece expresses our anxiety when children interact with adult commerce.

In many people's opinion, advertising to children is only slightly higher in status than running for congress. There's something disreputable about tantalizing a child's wow-lust in order to get cash. Schools are criticized for using educational TV that carries ads, and for selling Coke and Pepsi on campus. Parents groan at the multilevel marketing of new movies through toys and fast food.

This loathing is compounded when the commercialism is entangled in a new medium. Crass consumerism was the problem with newspapers, with radio, and with TV. Now the Internet is teaching kids to spend, spend, spend.

The little girl in the photo plays at a website that "lets her chat with her friends and dress up virtual dolls, by placing blouses, hair styles and accessories on them. ‘With Barbie, if you want clothes, it costs money,' she said. ‘You can do it on the Internet for free.'" Lots of children and teens fall prey to the same enticement: visits to sites aimed at this age-group "grew 68 percent in the year ended April 28."

But, says one CEO in the adult world of commerce, "people think they are going to make a killing."

Cartoon Doll Emporium charges nothing for many activities but asks "$8 a month for access to more dolls to dress up." At another site, cartoon characters can carry bags of Skittles candy, and other advertisers are lining up. Still another site allows users to augment their dolls' wardrobes "by buying credits over their cellphones."

"Even Barbie herself is getting into the online act. Mattel is introducing BarbieGirls.com, another dress-up site with chat features."

The parental view enters this article in the person of Sherry Turkle of M.I.T., "who studies the social aspects of technology." She says, "For young people, there is rather a kind of fluid boundary between the real and virtual world, and they can easily pass through it."

Exactly! The Internet encourages fantasy and escapism in the young. Parents of the world, unite!

Except my son doesn't need to be encouraged in fantasy. For him, the boundary between the virtual and the real is not fluid; the boundary is non-existent. And he spends next to no time on the Internet.

To be sure, the Internet is a sophisticated enticement to coveting. It poses many dangers.

But in the past evangelicals have too often preached to their kids, "This is the world we live in. These are the influences that dominate society. Now just ignore them." Teaching kids to disengage from the medium of the Internet will not be any more effective than past nagging to reject radio, movies, and TV.

Our job is to teach children how a godly person uses the things of the world: media, money, and the pleasures both offer. If they grow up thinking of themselves as consumers, it will be because we showed no wise path through the temptations. We cannot succeed at making the things of the world disappear, and we cannot expect our children to embrace our sentimental pictures of childhood.

If we try, we end up like Ms. Turkle, who recommends kids play with other kids instead of sitting "at the computer." As any kid knows, the computer is no longer a location.