What The Kids Search In The Internet
According to the findings released by an Internet security specialty firm in its OnlineFamily.Norton site, “sex” and “porn” were among the hot online search topics for children in 2009. “Sex” comes in at No. 4 for teens (13 to 18 years old) and tweens (8 to 12 years old) while “porn” comes in also at No. 4 for kids 7 years old and under. While YouTube, Google and Facebook were the top 3 searches in the different age brackets, the coming of “sex” and “porn” in the fourth (4th) slot should raise a red flag to parents if they haven’t talked with their children about content that may not be appropriate for them, according to what Symantec said in the news release about their findings. The statement blends well with the universal initiative of protecting the children online. For the same reason, having anti-pornography filters installed in computers is an advice that should be considered by everyone.
According to the same survey, the boys’ searches centered on social networking, games, shopping, and “adult terms,” while the girls were also interested in online social networking websites, but their searches leaned more toward music, movies, celebrities, and television shows. The findings were derived from 14.6 million searches conducted between February 2 and December 4 by users of a free OnlineFamily.Norton service that parents can use to filter or monitor their children’s Internet use.
For the i-café owners, the above-stated findings on what your young customers were searching in the internet especially the unwanted pornographic contents should make you decide to immediately install the filters that would avoid access to websites containing them. There are many free software and services available for the purpose. You just have to test which one fits your set-up. You do not have to reason the there is no local regulation that prohibits you from allowing your customers to access those sites. It is your moral responsibility to protect the children online.
I agree, it is “our” responsibility as parents, cafe owners, system administrators, or what to do the filtering and take charge of what our children, customers, employees, etc, can see on the internet. There are a lot of FREE tools we could use (k9 webfilter, opendns, mcaffee, squid – dedicated proxy servers). Even non-techy persons can actually do the filtering.
I have used k9 webfilter before and it’s very effective. Now, I am using opendns to do the filtering.
.-= dodimar´s last blog ..Breaking Point =-.
Also, attaching some kind of warning (like, browsing adult related (R18) materials is strictly prohibited), either on the desk or above the monitor of every computer on a cafe will help. Just my 0.02 cents.
It’s no surprise that a lot of children are looking up sex and porn when they’re alone. This is what worries me about the internet. But it’s not half as worrying as who they might be talking to. When I was 13 I started using chat rooms on AOL and there were a lot of grown men very interested in talking to me. I think adults should accept what their children are going to do and talk to them about the way to handle it.