Dibya Sarkar wrote an article about an internet safety group broadening its mission:
The explosion of social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Second Life, along with free video sharing sites like YouTube.com, is making it increasingly difficult to protect children surfing the Internet, says Stephen Balkam, who founded a voluntary website rating system seven years ago.
To deal with this new Web terrain, Balkam relaunched his group Tuesday as the Family Online Safety Institute with a broader mission of improving online child safety and protecting free speech through public policy, education and events.
The institute, originally called the Internet Content Rating Association, or ICRA, was originally formed to promote voluntary self-labeling through a rating system.
We don’t believe labeling is some kind of silver bullet,” Balkam said. “Labeling is one tool in a range of tools that’s going to be needed to tackle this problem.”
Nancy E. Willard, who directs the Portland, Ore.-based Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, said that blocking technology is largely useless because kids and teens can find a way around them.
“What we are doing is evaluating what exists right now,” Balkam said. “We’d love to see some government-funded research on what works and what doesn’t work.”
Balkam, who is the institute’s chief executive officer, said his group will host a series of round-table discussions involving educators, lawmakers and corporate executives in the United States, Mexico and Europe.
Access to the internet provides a new danger for children. Firstly, it gives children access to inappropriate content. Even worse, it also gives predators another route to prey on and manipulate children and teens. These predators come not only in the sexual form, but also con men, thieves, and hackers.
The ignorance and inexperience of parents and guardians about the threat and about how to protect their children from it, makes the internet exceptionally dangerous. Most parents know to tell their kids not to take candy or rides from strangers at the playground, because playgrounds were around throughout the parents’ whole lives. In contrast, many parents do not know what advice to tell their kids about internet safety, nor do parents know what rules to set and how to enforce them.
Educating parents, guardians, and child supervisors (such as teachers) can increase internet safety.
I do not like the idea of state-funded research. I do not want the state to force anyone to pay to protect someone else’s children.
What do you think?
Wednesday, March 17th 2010 at 9:19 am
Yes of course plenty of information on the Internet which is very harmful to children. But I do not like the idea of state-funded research . Because the parents are responsible for their children. Therefore they need to know about the dangers of the Internet, and besides, there are many programs for the control.
Tuesday, May 19th 2009 at 6:13 pm
Good points, educating the youth on internet safety will benefit the state of the web. Teaching best practices to adults will increase security for both financial matters and safety. Nancy E. Willards views on blocking technology proves that eduction is needed.
Wednesday, February 14th 2007 at 2:40 pm
Agreed, the web had made it more difficult for parents to protect their children from outsiders who do not have their interest at heart, but would exploit them for their own pleasure/gain/sickness. I think that it is important for parents to use the technology that is available to monitor their children’s chat, useage and sites visited. Parents must take the power back! I do not feel it is an invasion of my childs privacy to read their chats and know the sites they are visiting…after all, I do ask where they are going when they leave the house. Remember…there’s danger in plain sight…even though they are sitting in front of you does not mean they are safe.