Jeff Gostin says:
jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk (Jim Dixon) writes:
The Internet is a wild and exciting place. You want your children to get to know it. But you would also like a way to build little fences between them and some things that they are just too young to deal with. How do you do it?
In my eyes, it's really quite easy: Don't let your children use Internet UNTIL AND UNLESS you feel they are emotionally stable and mature enough to handle any kind of message that comes across the net.
There are other simple strategies, like using a service like Prodigy that censors its messages, or starting a service for like minded parents that censors the material children can access. You don't need change the whole world to alter what a small minority read. I'm not a believer in the notion of keeping your children "protected" because the world is a dangerous place and I feel that you produce children unable to cope with the world if they don't know what is in it. At the same time, I feel Mr. Zooks has the right to raise his children as hot house flowers if he likes, and he can accomplish his goals perfectly well without censoring us, which I feel would be unacceptable even if Mr. Zooks could not raise his children unexposed to the world without censorship. Luckily, both sets of goals are achievable. Perry