Okay, I know I somehow fell behind. The beautiful weather change temporarily made me forget I was still in school. I'm back though. And maybe a little cynical.
I can barely get through this Congressional hearing clip right now because not only are these speakers reading directly from their little scripts but a bunch of them look too old to even know how to turn on a computer, let alone figure out what the problem is with the filtering programs implemented to save the children from the 'awful world of pornography.'
Ugh. Now listen, I am completely against child pornography and the abuse of children in the making of such, and am almost equally against children being able to easily acquire pornographic materials. That being said, I really don't know exactly how eligible some of these people involved in drafting and presenting all of these great proposals to control children and pornography online really are. Our generation has been exposed to the Internet and what it entails and have experienced many effects it has on us for almost our entire lives. It takes the shock factor away. Do I want my 7-year old cousin to accidentally come across some graphic pornographic video clip because he accidentally clicked the wrong link on his Google search? Absolutely not. But is it going to kill him? Not a chance. Is his childhood doomed? No. Is there a huge difference here between this situation and a little kid accidentally walking in on mommy and daddy 'making love?' No again. It seems that most of the time, when children are able to access pornography online.. or in their own home.. it is accidental.
Pop-ups and spam and everything else many speakers spoke about also irritated me a bit. How old is this clip anyway? I'm not sure exactly, but I'm sure it can't be all that old. Do people still really have problems with spam and spyware and pop-up ads? Someone get these people some Ad-Aware and Spybot. What e-mail servers are they using? I haven't had a problem with spam for quite some time now. The spam filters that AOL has implemented have worked wonders on my inbox. Same goes for my school account.
I guess my last complaint is this: if one more person steps up to the microphone and starts their little speech with something along the lines of "Although the Internet is an amazing technological tool to obtain and distribute knowledge and information and blah blah blah.. it also is the strongest tool to distribute pornographic filth and garbage to the youth of our society blah blah BLAH." First of all, in addition to a public speaking class, these people need to get a new opening line. Ya'll said it. The Internet rules and it has changed our lives for the better forever. Yes. There is porn on it. There is porn in daddy's underwear drawer and a vibrator in mommy's closet too. And like the lady who spoke about the efforts AOL is making in keeping certain materials away from the children who shouldn't see it said — it's the parents responsibility to monitor what their children are being exposed to. Watch what they are doing online just as you would watch them in heavy traffic. Watch who they are e-mailing just as you would watch who they are talking to on the phone. And while there are no guarantees, it certainly improves the chances that children can enjoy the Internet for the RIGHT reasons.
