The Internet… It has changed the way we live since its proliferation in the last decade or two. It had allowed us to do things that we had never thought of a little over a decade ago. It had granted us access to places we used to need to travel far and wide with a simple mouse click. It updates us with the latest news and information. It is the source of knowledge for many students who no longer need to get stuck in the library…
I was in the kitchen the other day, making lunch for my little boy who was in the den playing on the computer. Suddenly he came running into the kitchen with a smile on his face. Then he dragged me into the room telling me that he found something really funny. “Dad, look at them, this is so funny, is this a new sitcom coming out on TV?”… To my greatest surprise, the computer screen displayed a website with a pop-up ad showing a Couple fornicating while good doggy style. Can you imagine my horror?! I immediately closed the window, only to find more and more pop-ups showing ads with adults in various forms of nudity and doing things that you do in the state of undress. All with loud headlines screaming “WATCH IT LIVE NOW!” After hitting the mouse button several times at lightning speed (thanks to my years of counterstrike practice), I finally managed to close the web browser completely. Then it was time to give my 6 year old son a good interrogation as I interrogated criminals when he was a police officer. “How and why did you do what you did?” I asked in a “firm and stern” manner, “I was just looking for the latest LEGO TV show,” the seemingly innocent suspect replied.
It was at that moment that I realized how scary search engines are. My first suspicion was that he might have made an innocent typo in spelling Leg instead of Lego and proceeded to type Leg TV and hit the search button, then the list of search results and screen appeared and at the top of the listing reads “Legs Fetish TV, satisfy your long-legged desires with live streaming of our best leggy models!” At that very moment, I just dropped into my chair and my mind began to think about the possibilities and dangers that not only my children, but all children in the world, are exposed to.
I then went into research mode and did some checking and searching for the remedies for such unwanted exposure on the net. That’s when I realized that stumbling onto a porn site is just the tip of the iceberg of things my toddler can get into. It seems that the tool that is touted as the best teacher for students because of its vast and limitless information, resources, and help is the exact medium that can actually expose children to pornography, cyberbullying, pedophiles, and sexual predators. (I’m breaking out in a cold sweat just typing the last sentence.) It still gives me chills every time I remember that very day when I finally opened my eyes and realized that something so useful can also be so dangerous when not applied. properly.