Children and the Net

[Perry E. Metzger]

Jeff Gostin says:
> jdd at 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