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Posted by: Lithuanian Jan 22 2008, 04:18 PM

So I'm writing an essay about children using the internet and I'm lacking for-and-against arguments so I thought of asking the people (GMC) what do THEY think

The internet is a great learning tool for children, but what about the problems and dangers if children are allowed to surf the net on their own?

Posted by: Muris Jan 22 2008, 04:24 PM

Restrictions to some areas of net,XXX stuff and such.
It's hard task,there are too many adult sites and kids love to use net.

Great learning tool indeed,parents have to be a bit more careful,dunno what else to add atm.

Posted by: Lithuanian Jan 22 2008, 04:27 PM

So far I have these points written:

1. The internet is a part of our world so the children need to use it (not sure about this one)
2. Many use it for playing, not for learning.
3. They can learn more about other countries and cultures.
4. They can meet people from all over the world.
5. Some web pages are not suitable for children.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Jan 22 2008, 05:27 PM

A few thoughts ...

Parents have to take responsibility for ther children - "I don't understand computers" is not a good answer.

The internet is like a city - good parts, bad parts. If you love your children you will make sure that they are only unaccompanied in the good parts. Letting your child surf wherever and whenever they want because you don't understand the net is like letting your child wander around the ghetto becuase you don't understand how to read maps - in either case they can come to harm.

However, just as you wouldn't want to keep your child at home all day and watch their every move, you probably wouldn't want to do the same with the internet, however you have a responsibility as a parent to know where they are going and what they are doing, just as in the real world.

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion Jan 22 2008, 05:30 PM

Myspace = BAD for kids. Make sure if they are on there you don't allow them to put certain information on like addresses, numbers and make sure to check who is in their friends lists that they are just the people they know. Check for dodgy comments that might be from fake friend profiles. Myspace is bad as it is easy to carry out identity theft. I give hardly any information on my account

Posted by: Smells Jan 22 2008, 05:51 PM

what a great way to put it, I`d never thought of it like that before but its spot on!

Posted by: mattacuk Jan 22 2008, 05:57 PM

Good topic!! I know my nephews have claimed for years they need internet access for doing homework - but they never use it for that and rather just spend all there time surfing than learning !! There not really interested in "learning" at all I find. Id be lying if i said i wanted to learn as a child either But I sure would be uncomfortable letting any children use the net unsupervised. Especially with so many "internet predators" on chat rooms and popular social networking sites. Not to mention some very unsavory content on XXX and "other" sites

Posted by: kyldeee Jan 22 2008, 06:04 PM

I read somewhere that there are some sort of parental advisor programs that protects your children from pornography or other dangers.....

Posted by: Smikey2006 Jan 22 2008, 06:30 PM

I never had any restrictions going online as a child and i turned out fine.....

On a serious note i agree that restrictions are good.. using those protection programs to keep children off of harmful chat rooms and more time in GMC! yay!

Posted by: stratman33 Jan 22 2008, 07:09 PM

hey i think myspace is fine for kids 12+ as long as you dont give out any info and only add people you know.i made my myspace at age 12 and nothings happened to me, it only happens to the idiots who give out phone numbers, addresses, etc.

My parents have never really cared when i go on the computer or what im doing except if its porn, etc(which i dont do)and since thats never happened with me, they trust me online.So i say kids on the net is fine.But i do agree with putting up blockers and stuff.

Posted by: Maximus Jan 22 2008, 07:14 PM

We'll be the judge of that!

Posted by: Owen Jan 22 2008, 07:20 PM

My parents are pretty relaxed about anything I do on the net, always have been, just told me never to be stupid with it as a child.

Infact as I recall, one time a few years ago I was in the PC in my living room browsing my emails, my Dad inquisitively asked "what are you looking at?"

I replied;

"Porn."

He walked over at this point and went;

"Give me a look! "



So anyway, as I said, never did me any harm, as long as the child using the net knows what not to do everything should be fine.

Posted by: Nick334 Jan 22 2008, 07:58 PM

There's loads of filters and stuff to stop anything unsuitable sits coming up. Just look at the Google filter.

Posted by: OrganisedConfusion Jan 23 2008, 02:45 PM

Internet was very young when I was growing up. We had Commodore 64 then

Posted by: Mark. Jan 23 2008, 03:43 PM

This is just my point of view ( I can be considered a child because I'm 15 ) :

1. Really true because in school teachers want you to get everything from the net ( which in most cases sucks cause I mostly end up geting info from GMC )
2. True and not True, most of my friends are MMORPG addicts ( which I've also been ) so I admit that most use it for games. But in my case, I use to internet everyday to learn from GMC and it has teached me more then I've learned in years from my guitar teacher.
3. Only true if you talk about learning and understanding english, but not if you talk about culture things like Turkish Kebab
4. True True True, just look at GMC
5. There are many pages not suitable for children but most childs are not gonna search those XXX pages.
The only problem is that some site's have Pop Ups or Links which in some cases get you to XXX pages
I'm really glad GMC hasn't got these Pop Ups

PS :Please dont mind any grammer or spelling mistakes, English is just like all other languages, not my strongest point

Mark.

Posted by: Tomotoms Jan 23 2008, 04:06 PM

I would take the essay off in the direction of arguments for and against http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship as a whole.

Typing anti-censorship into google gives quite a few interesting arguments.

Best of luck with the essay!

Posted by: Hisham Jan 23 2008, 11:20 PM

yes ... with familly responsebality

Posted by: fatb0t Jan 24 2008, 06:25 AM

I would say I'm a first generation internet junkie. At 21 I've learned everything I know from it. I've learned to play guitar, I've learned my trade from it (computers), I've figured out what college I want to go to because of it. My life would not be the same had I never had the internet.
I got on the internet kinda early at age 13 with a 14.4kbps dial up modem, I had no restrictions but a good up bringing.
I knew who to talk to and not to talk to.

You need to enstill morality, boundaries, and intelligence in your offspring and they can be suprisingly independent.

The internet is unbelieveable resource that shouldn't be restricted..

Often filters will knock out the naughty sites but will also knock out the good ones too.

I may be wrong though, I have no kiddies of my own running around =) So I cannot speak from experience.

Posted by: MickeM Jan 24 2008, 09:34 AM

From my experience Intenet in most cases is positive. Sometimes in the past I felt that chat programs like MSN, ICQ, Yahoo were huge time thieves that stole the focus from my work. So what I did was just to exclude them.
I did notice the same problem with the a kids cousine who's staying with us, she was chatting more and more and I noticed her grades fall and she seemed to always be chatting and there were a lot of this Alt+Tab as soon as I came close to the computer. So to get her focus back on school and knowing from my own experience that chat programs generally will steal focus from what you're doing I shut it off for her.
Tough call but it was worth it, I think she can appreciate it too now (or soon if she will ever relaize the connection) that her grades rapidly increased and now I'd estimate they to be one notch up in all subjects except for the practical ones. If she needs to talk to someone she picks up the phone. It's as simple as that.

I'm going to keep supervising her and I will with my own kids too as they grow up. To get to use Internet for their own benefit and enjoyment but not to the extent any important matters will suffer - that would be themselves, school or family.

I have a friend who's a techer from class 1 through 6. He decided to teach his students a little lesson in how to be aware of the back sides with chatprograms. The guys were online and he appeared as a girl their own age and had a chat with the boys.
The day after he asked them if they had been chatting to which they said yes. He told them there had been a new girl online and if they had been chatting with her... a bit puzzled they said yes. - It was me
They refused to belive that at first, the nick said Angelica so there really was a girl they had been talking too...
His morale was that they should be really careful with whom they speak with and not hand out phone numbers, address etc. "Angelica" could appear to be a real perv, as all of us know but kids can be very trusting.

So while Internet has a lot of pros there are some pit falls we don't want our kids to fall into. I would not, as said earlier by someone else leave it up to the kid to be the judge of what to do and what not to. Sure, in 99,99% of the cases all is fine but 0,01% (randomly grabbed figure) get in real trouble after handing our dads credit card number to this betrusted new friend, or shows up at the decided meeting place only to get beaten up or raped, the 14 yr old girl appears at old guys hotel room since she wants to fulfill her dreams of becoming a photo model and so forth. So parental supervising all the way for me, I'll do everything I can to not have my kids fall into that poor 0,01 (or whatever) that get into real deep trouble.

...and I'm not a tyrant, I just care

Posted by: JCJXXL Jan 25 2008, 03:23 PM

Like many of the GMC members here, I work in tech. I've been working on computers for over 20 years ( I started really young) and I have owned a computer business for about 10 years now. The reason I mention those numbers is to give everyone an idea of just how much I have seen.

One of the things my company does is provide onsite computer repair/support. The number one mistake I see with our residential clients is that the computer is usually in a corner of the child's room and the parents don't dare get involved. Parents are intimidated by the computer so they want nothing to do with it. It's those computers that usually have some of the worst stuff on them. It's those children who usually end up having a very bad experience with someone they've met online. I'm not talking about just one or two incidents I've seen, I'm talking about A LOT. I have plenty of disturbing stories I could share.

The computer is just like anything else in your child's life....GET INVOLVED!!!!

You wouldn't let your child walk out of the house to go meet new "friends" everyday without knowing where they were going and who these "friends" are. Why would engaging in conversation and online activities be any different?

My recommendation:

1) The computer should NEVER EVER be in the child's room. A child who sits on the computer in the privacy of his/her room will be tempted to explore things they shouldn't. It's curiousity getting the best of them.
Alot of parents will say "Well I don't want my child to think I don't trust them.". I believe you never trust your child 100%. We all did things we shouldn't have done as kids and we lied to cover our tracks. Why would our own children be any different? We're all human. But it's not so much about not trusting your children as it is not trusting the OTHER PEOPLE online. I believe the computer should be located in a not so private area... Maybe in a family room or family office,etc.

2) PARENTS GET INVOLVED! Know what your kids are doing, who they are talking to, the things they're into,etc. You never hear about the parent who regrets about caring too much for their child. Or paying too much attention to the well being of their child. But what you do hear about are the parents who were not invovled enough in their child's life to help prevent a bad experience. Being a parent is about more than just giving birth. It's about getting involved in the development and safety of your child.

The internet is a great tool. BUt like so many other great things in life someone will come along and find a way to pervert it. So parents get involved, get the computer into a more central location than the kids room and of course there are so many safegaurds that can be put in place. There is monitoring software, software to block inappropriate material, even the most basic router has some type of filtering/scheduling that can be enabled.

Whew! I really didn't plan on writing so much. If you read the whole post, thanks!

Posted by: MickeM Jan 25 2008, 03:31 PM

Well put, all read and agreed upon.