Children and their Internet
“While media can enhance children's education, learning opportunities, curiosity, creativity, and communication, it can also teach negative life lessons, consume too much of their time, distract them from exercise, other physical play, and socialization, and sometimes make it easier for them to put themselves into dangerous situations."
-Angela Oswal, Community Counseling Services Inc.
-Angela Oswal, Community Counseling Services Inc.
Reactions
When thinking about children and media, the first thought that could come to mind may be the internet and social media. And this is one part of the media that children are exposed to every day as technology advances and they are exposed to it more and more. So what is the popular opinion in discourse (or the common opinion based on the websites I looked at while researching) about the internet and children? Negative reactions were common, mainly about the exposure children have
while on the internet and how they use the internet. This mostly has to do with
the problems children have been associated with after using media, as the
beginning quote explores. I do want to mention here that the website where the
quote comes from was one of two websites (the other being Hubpages) that
laid out any pros or benefits of the internet and other media forms. I will not say other sources of discourse I looked at didn’t mention the usefulness of the internet (like here), but the sources mainly focused on how to monitor the
negative aspects of the internet from children so they won’t happen if they are
cautious. And whose job is it to take care of that at the home level? The parents.
Responsibility
Much like other types of media, most if not all of the discourse that I found was directed at the parents and how they are the ones responsible for what their children are exposed to, as many of the students expressed in the video above. Is it just the parents’ responsibility? Based on a lot of the discourse I found I would conclude the majority is the parents’ job, but they are not fully alone. There are children protection laws for use of the internet and other media and based on all the discourse I looked at, there were a lot of tips on how to monitor and educate children about the internet and how to not be addicted to the internet, but how to find healthy limitations on their exposure to media.
The most common tips
As with television, many tips were provided for parents to fix what was wrong with a child’s intake of media. PBS was the first source I looked at that dealt with different age groups, providing six ways to “maximize digital screen time” for preschoolers while promoting teens to “make the most of online information” and the ages in between. Though when I first looked at PBS, I thought that it was mocking in the tips it gave, but looking back the source is trying to spin a positive attitude on how to manage a child’s use of the internet. Some of the biggest tips on safety I saw across multiple sources but pulled from healthychildren.org were:
NEVER give out personal information
NEVER share passwords
NEVER meet a friend you only know online in person
NEVER respond to messages that make you feel uncomfortable
NEVER share passwords
NEVER meet a friend you only know online in person
NEVER respond to messages that make you feel uncomfortable
Beyond that the most common “tips” for parents were the ones that the AAP (American Academy of
Pediatricians) developed with Microsoft on age-based guidance for children,
setting out some of the safety tips healthychildren.org lays out above.
In conclusion
Though most of the reactions that I saw came from a negative place, each source were presenting parents with help out of a place that will keep their children safe from the dangers that can be on the
internet while at the same time helping parents find the value in internet use
and media use. A question that comes to my mind is by providing these tips to
parents, are these sources and others I did not mention —in any form—helping
form a parent’s view on the internet and the effects it could have on their
child? Does it create an even bigger fear of what children can become or the
image they create if a child uses the internet too much?