As the father of two young children, I've felt compelled to examine how to teach them about the proper way to use technology. In this series, I will explore five areas: the web, email / instant messaging, social media, mobile technology, and video games / content consumption.
We begin the series with a look at the world wide web.
Prior to the mid-90's the Internet was navigable only via text, and was used primarily for educational, research, and reference applications. The functionality of the Internet as a multimedia transport that we take for granted today did not yet exist.
In 1993, Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty launched the first known commercial website, Global Network Navigator (GNN)1which was later purchased by America Online in 1995. This marked a paradigm-shift in how the usefulness of the Internet was seen by the public. The World Wide Web was born. After the benefits of graphical navigation of the Internet were realized, existing and new businesses began to appear at a blistering pace.
Today, we visit the web daily. Many of us consider it to be our primary destination for all forms of information and entertainment. Those of us with children have realized that as a result of the incredible prevalence of the web, the way in which information is sought out, researched, and processed is drastically different than what we experienced as children. Our children visit the websites of their favorite television shows, search for photos to use in crafts and school projects, and turn to Google and other search engines to learn more about any topic that they are curious about.
There is a wealth of quality information and useful content on the web. There is also a lot of content and information that could be deemed offensive, vulgar, violent, mean-spirited, perverted, and pornographic. As a parent, I do not want my children exposed to objectionable content on the web. I'm not naive enough to think that sheltering my kids from the existence of bad things in this world is the proper way.
One problem with the Internet is, on many occasions, I have visited websites that I would consider traditionally free of objectionable content, as well as done searches on terms that are not objectionable in nature, and have been presented with content or search results that could be considered pornography. Pop-up ads, spyware, etc has made this issue more prevalent for many.
How can we harness usefulness of the web for our children's benefit, providing only the results that they intend to have presented to them?
How prevalent is pornography on the web? Here are some statistics2:
The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion
Every second - $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography.
Every second - 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography.
Every second - 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines.
Every 39 minutes: a new pornographic video is being created in the United States.
How do we keep our kids from happening upon pornography and other undesirable content?
Content filtering software has been around for decades. It works by blocking content in several objectionable areas. Is that the solution parents are looking for? Personally, I don't think so. However, even if we work with our children so that they adopt what would be considered "safe" web surfing habits, objectionable content still on many occasions appears as I mentioned previously.
I've had good success with a combination of filtering and household discussion. Symantec offers a free product called Norton Family Online that provides parents with the ability to filter content on a variety of subject matters, set up time limits for web surfing, and email reports to parents of search terms entered. The service also provides many resources on how to discuss online safety with children. Like I said before, I'm not fan of filtering, but Symantec has done a great job so far with this service, combining filtering and discussion resources.
As a technology professional, I'll be continuously searching for the right solution for my kids. I believe that with dedication, cooperation, and honesty, parents can provide their children the benefits of the web, without the drawbacks.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.
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Sources:
1Dale Dougherty - Biography at O'Reilly Media
2Internet Pornography Statistics at TopTenReviews.com
Other posts in this series:
