Friday, February 29, 2008

How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?

"How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?" Article by David Pogue, god love him.

"One woman, for example, told me that she became hysterical when her eight-year-old stumbled onto a pornographic photo. She told me that she literally dove for the computer, crashing over a chair, yanking out the power cord and then rushing her daughter outside.
"You know what? I think that far more damage was done to that child by her mother’s reaction than by the dirty picture."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's too bad more people aren't capable of being this rational about it. I looked at some of the comments, too, and I did not know there was a real life Troy McClure.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

You may know him from such articles as: "The Internet: fad or threat?" and "The hidden potholes of the Information Superhighway."

Bert said...

The Frontline show is excellent, just as Pogue's reporting.

I fully lived the PC revolution, but as much as computers were the center of my professional life for many years, I never could imagine letting computers invade my life like what appears to be the case today.

Damn, how are those kids ever going to learn to unplug and relax? Sure brings forward visions of hives & stuff, where the buzz never stops and everybody is defined by the hive as a whole. Wow.

I will admit, though, that seeing parents of the control freak type be so effectively "short-circuited" does have a sweet smell! ;-) Not that my parents were anything such (pretty much the opposite in fact), I never liked seeing friends I grew up with being kept on short leashes.

Anonymous said...

Damn, how are those kids ever going to learn to unplug and relax? Sure brings forward visions of hives & stuff, where the buzz never stops and everybody is defined by the hive as a whole. Wow.

I kind of wonder about that too. There's facebook and myspace but if they can't get to those there's texting. I thought it would be more chicks doing that but you seen tons of guys doing it too. I admit I recently got on facebook and it has allowed me to get back in touch with a lot of people, but I can't imagine using every day or several times a day like some people.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

"How dangerous are some parents for children?"
;-P

Cliff Prince said...

I can't imagine that, if a child were to accidentally experience via a computer pictures of grown ups doing grown up things to each other, it could possibly be more dangers than if the same child were to deliberately be subjected to the experience of real grown ups doing grown up things to him or her in real life.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Otherwise put, Final:
Ignorance is weakness.
Or, as I prefer to put the corollary, Knowledge is Power.

A child who knows about those things will also know what's right and what's definitely wrong. Thanks to my parents, I knew when I was five. (All that THEY knew, anyway. Already good enough.)
I love my parents. :-)

Anonymous said...

Where would we be without your great wisdom, final? You're like a hillbilly Mr. Miyagi.

Anonymous said...

"A hillbilly Mr. Miyagi"? Isn't that a redundant pleonasm of words repeating the same meaning twice in succession?

Anonymous said...

"A hillbilly Mr. Miyagi"? Isn't that a redundant pleonasm of words repeating the same meaning twice in succession?

How do you figure? Btw, be careful using a word like pleonasm. Only final is allowed to use a word like that. You, you're lucky your head didn't explode.