Is the Internet safe for our children?

Young children being polluted with violence and pornography online. We should never underestimate its impact.

The table shows Internet pornography statistics. Notice the entries about youths. Source: Internet Filter Reviews

"Mark, 12, was surfing and chatting online with his friend. Suddenly, a pop-up appears and a naked woman is shown on screen. Out of curiosity, he clicks on the pop-up and is exposed to more pornographic materials. Mark became hooked."

Consider the situation above. The Internet has become a safe haven for the distribution of pornographic materials and these irresponsible people are targeting children. Erin Roach (2007) discussed about the discovery of the fact children are constantly being 'fed' information (pornography) they have never requested for from the Internet in the article 'Study finds children plagued by unwanted exposure to porn.'

According to Sharon Hirch, a University of Chicago psychiatrist, "They are seeing things that they are not really emotionally prepared to see yet."

Children are not emotionally prepared to view pornography.
Source: Google Images

Will the children understand that pornography is indeed a bad influence? Most probably not. Putnis and Petelin (2006) and Walsh (2006) argued that readers construct meanings based on their previous knowledge. As the child has no prior knowledge about pornography, he or she might think that it is something good.

If unsupervised or stopped, a child might create a schemata, or mental template towards a certain topic, (Putnis & Petelin 1996) of pornography being a good thing and becomes addicted to it. This is where the roles of parents come in.

Children must be educated to say 'NO' to pornography. Parents must help too.
Source: Google Images

As discussed in the article, parents need to play a major role in educating their children about the dangers which lurk in the Internet, especially pornography. The article also outlined steps which parents should take to protect their children from the negative influences of cyberspace.
There is a need for adults to supervise children's activities on the Internet. Filter programs such as NetNanny is effective only to a certain degree. Adult supervision still works best.

References:

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Roach, E 2007, Study finds children plagued by unwanted exposure to porn, Christian Examiner Online, viewed 30 October 2007, <http://www.christiantimesnewspaper.com/Articles/Articles%20Mar07/Art_Mar07_15.htm>

Walsh, M 2006, ‘“Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 24-37.