Wondering…

I was just watching a segment on one of the morning shows about cyber bullying. Tell me why these little kids are online to begin with. The first girl they described was 17, so that is understandable, but children under 10 years old, like some of the other kids on the show, should NOT have facebook pages or myspace pages (not that anyone does myspace anymore). 

 I have a couple of friends who have facebook pages for their children. These kids are 5 or 6 years old. I understand that they think  their kids are precious snowflakes and deserve internet attention. I even understand that their kids are begging to play farmville or yoville or lameville or whatever. And the parents might tell me how diligent they are about monitoring what their kids are doing. But how long is that gonna last. You might be careful when they are 5, but by the time they’re 10 they’ve been on the internet for so long you start to slack off. 

I know there are parental controls, but let me tell you…they don’t work. Kids are smart enough to circumvent that kind of thing. I certainly was. I just asked Don about parental controls (he’s an systems engineer) and he laughed.  I hate the idea of censoring everything for my kids. I’d rather wait until they are old enough to process anything questionable they might come across. There is a reason sites like facebook have a minimum age, as unenforceable as that is. So when some pedophile send your 5 year old a penis pic they won’t be liable. 

These pepole who let their kids on the internet must have no idea what is really out there. If I sent them over to 4chan.org they wouldn’t let their precious babies anywhere NEAR the internet. Check out the random forum, your soul will die a little.