Webupon

Why Can’t we Ignore the Importance of the “WWW”

In this competitive and progressive time, children need to be internet literate. The gravity of this notion can be judged by a survey result which says that the amount of new technical information is doubling after every 2 years; this means that for a student starting a 4 years technical degree, half of what they learn in their first year will be outdated by their third year of study! (Ref: Did_you_know?)

What’s the Problem?

Cyberspace for children brings some unwanted results as well. Child pornography, dating violence and harassment, violent feeds to mind, child black-mailing etc to name a few. Recently the worst face of internet flashed on Indian news channels when teenager Adnan Patrawala of Mumbai was suspected to be murdered by some unknown Orkut friends of his (Ref: merinews).

Moreover, studies have shown that over 60% of the websites have explicit sexual content. The worst affected by these sites are children who not only become addicted to such sites but are also easily vulnerable to internet stalkers and pedophiles. In 2003, the NSPCC reported that for the six weeks that its researchers monitored the Internet, 20 children were estimated to have been abused for the first time, and more than 1000 of each child created. They also found about half were aged between nine and 12, and the rest were younger.

Due to liberty and facility of hiding their own identity on social community building websites, kids and teenagers tend to be rude, aggressive and sometimes even vulgar while communicating with an unknown person on the cyberspace. This unknown person can be a dangerous person who may track down the person annoying him to “teach him/her a lesson”.

What’s the Solution?

1. Monitor the websites which your kid or younger sibling accesses. You can do it by viewing browser history or internet cookies.
2. Casually talk to your kids about their new friends which they have got through internet. Be cautious if the age difference of your kid and his friend is more than 3 years.
3. Educate your kids for not telling their personal details like phone number, age, home/school address etc to anyone on internet without your consent. Tell them to use different dummy names on different social interaction websites.
4. Tell your kids to immediately inform you if someone on internet asks them the questions like:

• “Are you alone at home?”
• “How about meeting somewhere?”
•  Tell me where can I send a gift for you?”
• “Would you like to see some real ‘stuff’ on webcam?” etc.

     5.  Time to time tell your kid about different educational websites and after few days ask him if he found that website useful and what new he got from it.