Children Unlimited Access to Internet

Introduction

The Internet has developed into a vast and complex network that has had great impact and become essential to businesses, schools, government agencies and various information systems in organizations. There is no doubt that the Internet has become an indispensable part of life for many people. Innovative avenues of communication chat rooms, e-mail, download and information searches are among the Internets greatest assets. This paper discusses the Internet in correlation to its usage by children both for academic and social activities. It explores the dangers associated with unsupervised Internet access. Chat rooms and instant messaging are the mediums that facilitate some of the key issues and problems within this topic. The unlimited and pervasive use of the Internet by young people raises many concerns about child safety. What solutions are available and why aren't they being used?

Analysis

Despite all the development in technology and applications associated with the Internet, the question of how to legislate the Internet has made small movement in comparison to its growth. This is partially due to the question of ownership. The Internet does not belong to any governing body. As a result there are struggles to control the content that it provides. It has given aid to new types of crime and unethical abuse. Child safety is amongst the highest profile issues concerning the Internet and its volatile state (Trotter, pp 22-181).

A child or teenager having unsupervised access to the Internet is open to a world of harmful risks that can be both psychologically damaging and/or physically abusive. Chat rooms have been the area of focus and research in Internet safety for children. In recent months, cases of abduction and/or murder of children have awakened society to the realities of promiscuous matters such as paedophilia. The Internet has been found to facilitate such conditions. Several arrests have been made recently, including celebrities who visit sites and download indecent pictures. Chat rooms are used to lure children into offline meetings, which are extremely dangerous. The victims of this type of abuse are usually tricked into these meetings by building up a false sense of security with the offender through online conversation (Peace, pp 35-47).

Children that have grown up using computers will naturally be more susceptible to getting hooked on the internet. Many children spend more time on the computer than they spend watching television. Most of the time children spend on the computer can be attributed to the internet. This computer overuse results in less time for children to study, do homework, read, exercise, or participate in any out of school organizations. Such a pattern will eventually affect the child s grades, health, and social life (Griffith, pp 10-14).

Spending too much time on the internet isn t the only problem that children can encounter. The content which children access on the internet can be harmful as well. There is no regulation of the content on the internet. Children can access information about pornography, racism, anarchy, and more. Many criminals have been ...