I am not a parent myself. In fact, I was a preteen myself as recently as a baker’s dozen years ago; so I guess my opinion is still very much from the other side of the fence.
I feel that having a pre-teen life where discipline is stressed makes for better adults down the road. In fact discipline where a semi-strict schedule is followed with activities and the like, in my opinion, gives kids the framework necessary to function in today’s hectic and high-tech society. I wish I had more of a strict schedule in my yearly years as I currently have a bit of trouble with getting things done. (I’m working on it and making huge strides toward fixing it).
Monitoring what kids do on the internet is a part of developing discipline. It’s simply too easy to fall for the addictive nature of the internet, which makes it a potentially dangerous influence to self-discipline. However, the monitoring, in my opinion, shouldn’t be coupled with blocking of many websites. Perhaps just the NC17+ websites being written to a log for later review by a parent, guardian or older sibling. I’m talking more of a benevolent monitoring where you know all the potentially questionable websites the kid has been to. This would give the monitors a chance of talking to the kids about it down the road, if they happen to notice some interesting websites in the logs.
One should also take into the account the undeniable fact that kids nowadays do not stay kids for long. I’m not saying whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing; what I’m saying is that it changes things. We need to acknowledge their earlier maturity by not applying completely arbitrary age laws.
People tell me that my opinion will change when I have kids. Perhaps, and we’ll see. I can’t predict the future.
As a recent user of public school computers, let me say just how annoying the filters are and how easy to get by the them it is. I was often very inconvenienced when doing research on school computers. Many topics involving war and sex (as in anatomy and reproduction) were blocked. Also, sites about hacking (the good kind), computer gaming, news and many others found themselves on the blacklist. It took me all of 10 minutes to bypass all this by using port 22 to connect to my home network and funnel all the traffic through there.
It seems like there is a huge misunderstanding between children and their parents on this issue. I have yet to see someone over the age of 11 being permanently hurt by something they have seen on the Internet (again, I’m not an expert; this is just my personal experience). In fact, these people are the prime and willing audiences for some of the most disturbing content on the Internet-content which even I shy away from.
Also, there is the issue that now there are laws requiring schools and libraries to use approved install blocking software in order to get federal funding. This gives few select companies all the profit and takes the initiative away from schools to find the best suited solution for their case.
The whole idea of content blocking is untenable at its core. There are hundreds of millions of sites on the Internet. If filters decide to block the bad sites, they will fail due to the numbers being stacked against them. If they choose to block everything and only allow the good sites, they will greatly inconvenience the users of network by blocking necessary resources.
Please, before you respond to this, keep in mind that I’m still very much thinking about this issue. We shouldn’t be too quick to reach a conclusion about something as important as this. If you disagree, tell me why and I may change my mind. After all, I don’t have kids and I’m still very young myself.