We now live in an age where
the availability and access to different types of technology is quite
widespread. This is only going to continue to increase in the years to come.
This increase will lead to many people, including kids, having access to these new
technologies, and ultimately the Internet. Kids’
presence on the Internet is already a controversial issue, especially among
parents, taking safety and other concerns into consideration. With these new
gadgets, it will be more difficult for parents to keep up and try to monitor what their kids are doing.
I understand the need for
parents to want to protect their kids because I know first hand about explicit
nature of what is available online.
For instance, you just gave
your child a desktop in her room with Internet access. She joins a chat room
and starts talking to this “boy” who she starts to become interested in. You
realize the dangers of the Internet and you try to tell her to be careful about
what she does online. She tells you (because she trusts you) that she met
someone in a chat room to whom she has been having many conversations with. You
tell her to stop talking to him and to stop going in the chat room because
she’s a child and she doesn’t know if this person is who he said he is, or if
anything that he said is the truth. She (the daughter) agrees after a short
debate. Shortly after that you start to monitor her online activity because of
what she told you, to find out that not only was she still entering the chat
room, she was still talking to him. You confront her and she denies it. Then
she becomes upset at the fact that you were spying on her. She is not really
talking to you anymore because she feels that you are being unfair. Secretly
she’s been messaging this boy on her phone (they switched mediums). She
confides in him, especially about you, who’s trying to keep them apart. He
tells her all the things she wants to hear to make her feel better. He suggests
that they meet and she agrees. She tells you that she’s going to her friend’s
house or that they’re going to the movies at that time. She meets him and it
turns out that he is, in fact, not who he said he was. You later find out that
your child wasn’t where she said she was going to be.
This long scenario was to
illustrate why parents try to be so intrusive when it comes to online activity.
As a parent you do your best to keep your child safe, teach him/her right from
wrong, and hope they make good choices. You might tell them to be careful and
not to go on certain sites but they will find a way if they have the desire to.
That’s why I believe in monitoring until you believe the child is capable of
not making stupid decisions.
I mentioned earlier about the
explicitness of the Internet. This brings me to my next topic of discussion, search engines and research. A search
engine is software that guides you in looking for information on the Internet,
such as Bing, Ask, or Google. We spoke in class about the bulk of information
that is available online and the credibility of the sources. Someone brought up
the fact that they don’t know how to do research any other way than over the
Internet through a search engine. Then I realized that I don’t know anymore how
to do research without a laptop. I grew up without access to computers and the
Internet so the library’s encyclopedias and other books were my sources of
information. This ignorance of other means of obtaining information is and will
be the same in the kids of today and of the future. What if for six months,
there was no Internet access all across the United States (the chances of that
happening are very slim)? Instead of getting info some other way, people would
probably try for the first three months to fix it, and then riot when there is
no success. By the time the sixth month rolled around, America looks like the
scene in I Am Legend after the
outbreak took over everyone. I know this view is a bit exaggerated but I’m just
saying, it’s something to think about.
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