I’ve covered this topic before, however I have recently watched Channel 4’s Sex education vs Pornography, a series which is confirming my fears that parents have no idea what is on the internet. What is worse is that I never realised the scale and impact that pornography is having. (This is in the UK by the way). If you live in the UK, and are a parent, or even anyone, age matters not, I suggest you watch it, simply since I find it fascinating to see how these things impact on people. It’s still available on channel 4’s website if you look for it.
I’m not a parent, if anything I’m the opposite end of the scale. I’m 20, and I can tell you right now that the internet is a shocking place. The internet brings with it an incredible level of freedom of information, you can find out anything, I mean anything, there are sites that describe death, explosives, guns, you name it I can tell you that there is information (some very in-depth) available online. The worse thing is, you don’t even have to look hard. If you do look hard then it gets pretty rough.
My nephew is five years old, he’s able to use a computer, he doesn’t know how to use a computer properly, but he can click and type, and knows how to get on the internet. Now all it would take would be for him to mistype a word into the address bar, and rather than a kid’s TV channel, he could end up anywhere. The thing is he’s too young to understand a lot of the stuff on the net, and he perhaps wouldn’t understand the warnings.
Now, many people are ignorant of the internet, I mean if you say to people what they use the internet for, most people would say Porn, or if they couldn’t give that answer perhaps online shopping or social networking. I’ll be honest, most male internet users know of porn, female internet users may not be so aware. That’s down to how we work, men do think of sex a lot, and do search for such things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an idea of what is on the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if you became quickly appalled.
The media distorts, they are very good at distorting the truth, they are terrible. However, to see TV programs like the above makes me realise that they can fix some of the problems they cause. You cannot cushion your children from life, you cannot cut them off from what is, undeniably, a brilliant thing – the internet. You can block and control their access at home, but you cannot control their phones or their friends computers. Schools do a lot, schools lock down anything questionable, so the computers at schools are safe, well they were at my school.
Technology is a blessing and a curse, however you need to remember a few things, the internet is not evil, it’s done many good things. It’s an almost totally unregulated means of sharing information, this is a good thing, and a bad thing. If you start regulating it then you hit problems.
So what can you do. It goes back to one of my philosophies I guess, that you need to discuss this. There is so much misinformation, that even I have trouble sometimes finding the truth in a sea of rubbish and lies, but that’s the internet. It’s important for parents to realise that anyone can get access to anything, even when they block it at home. Internet filtering software can be free or paid-for, and can block internet, or other programs as well. I would actively review them myself, but I don’t have a need for one right now. Saying that though, I am currently running Blue Coat K9 Web Protection (site here). It’s certainly not the most customisable, but it is free for home use, and quite easy to understand and set up. I’m currently using it to block explicit popups, which are finding ways around my already good defences, and it seems to be working. There are other programs out there, you might even already have one built into your internet security suite, or in the Operating System. Searching on the internet will turn up some helpful information about how to use them effectively.
If anything though, talk to your kids about the internet, the problems it poses, the content available, and make it clear that a lot of what is online is misleading and wrong, this in turn has it’s adverse effects, what can you really trust in the end?
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope it is of benefit to someone.