Children Should Be Protected Online Argumentative Essay Sample

Keeping children safe online is an issue that needs to be taken very seriously by parents. There are many predators out there that, through an online platform, have a way to virtually breech the safety of a child’s home in order to victimize innocent children and teens who often do not have a sense that anyone could try to do them harm. There have been many cases of children and teens having contact online with evil people who use the internet as a means to groom, deceive, and even arrange meetings with them, often with disastrous and sometimes even fatal consequences for the unsuspecting young person. What’s more, many children are often victims of online bullying from their peers through common social media sites, and this has also led to problems like depression and sometimes even suicide. Because of the growing threat children are facing every day online, parents cannot afford to sit back and be passive about these virtual threats; therefore, they must start supervising, and even restricting, if necessary, their kids’ online use, just as they would carefully monitor their children when cooking on a hot stove.
The dangers related to the internet are increasing as technology is advancing, and this is the main reason parents need to monitor their children’s online activities more than ever before. Ten years ago, children only had access to the internet via computer at home, school, or at an internet café; therefore, it was easier to monitor what was being seen and done online, as public computers usually had strong blockers to keep sites such as sexually explicit pornography sites from being accessed. Even if these blockers were not utilized, it was easy to track who was doing what on a computer at a certain time, as each user had a unique log in code that was quite easily traceable. In the home, there was usually one PC per household, usually centrally located in the living room, kitchen, or other common area where everyone in the household had access to it and could see what anyone else was doing on it as the computer had to be located where the phone jack was in order to have internet access. Nowadays, tablets and laptops are the norm. It is not uncommon in many homes for every member of the family to have their own personal laptop computer or tablet that they can connect through wifi and kids can easily take into their rooms and use unsupervised. Even if a child does not have their own computer, chances are they have unlimited access to the internet via a smartphone with an unlimited data plan. Popular gaming consoles such as Playstation or Xbox are often placed directly in a child’s room, and these consoles are also connected to the internet and children can use them to play online games and exchange messages with others who are also playing. Advanced technology is making it possible for everyone to be connected to the virtual world of strangers 24 hours a day, and this constant access is also holding the door wide open for predators and bullies to have access to our children that they normally wouldn’t have in real life, and this is why parents need to be super vigilant in ensuring their children’s safety online.
So how can a parent be vigilant? Blockers and restrictive software often are not enough as they are not foolproof and often quite easily bypassed. The answer to the problem lies in communicating with children, setting rules, and restricting children’s freedoms until they show enough character and responsibility to govern themselves appropriately on the internet.
First, communication with children is crucial. It is important for parents to explain to teens that the internet can be full of bad people who are out to do them harm. Parents can reinforce this view by having more mature teens read or watch stories about tragic consequences that resulted from other young people first chatting with and then meeting up with predators they met online, even though the initial contact with the predator may have seemed friendly and innocent. Parents also need to communicate strongly to teens to be very careful about the content that they post on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites, telling them that anything they post online can be there forever; their own content can be used against them by bullies or other people out to do them harm. If parents can convey to children the potential dangers of the internet, children can use this knowledge to make safer choices as they can be aware of what could potentially happen to them if they are not careful.
Second, parents need to set rules regarding their children’s internet use. When I was growing up, there was only one computer in the house. I had unlimited time to use the computer for schoolwork or research, but only one hour a day for games and recreation, two hours on weekends. The only games that were allowed were games that could be downloaded and played offline. Unsupervised chat room visits were forbidden, and my parents always knew which school friends I was talking to via instant messenger and regularly inquired if they saw me chatting with someone whose user name they didn’t recognize. As a teenager, of course I thought my parents were being too invasive, but ultimately it is the parents’ job to keep their kids safe, whether their kids like it or not. Good parents of course set rules and standards concerning their kids’ conduct in real life, and the same should definitely apply to their virtual life as well. Rules are of course necessary, but sometimes kids’ freedoms simply need to be restricted in order to keep them safe, especially if they are too young or naive to understand the potential dangers that could be lurking online. A friend of mine has 13-year-old twin girls, and once she entered one of their rooms to find both her daughters chatting with an unknown man via Skype on one of the girls’ laptops. Immediately, my friend took the laptops out of her daughters’ room, setting them up in the living room instead. Only she knows the wifi password and keeps the wifi switched off unless there is an adult present in the home. Tablets and cell phones are turned in by her daughters at the end of each day, and my friend checks the browsing history, pictures, and text messages on a regular basis. Of course the twins think their mother is super strict and unfair for the restrictions, but my friend regularly says that she would rather have children who were alive to hate her for being too strict than have dead children because she ignored warnings and dangers simply to make her children happy.
Of course, there are many parents and guardians who do not agree with the aforementioned type of “tough love” parenting; parents who feel that such strict methods are an invasion of their children’s privacy and freedom, and that kids who are so closely and strictly monitored will simply become savvier about covering their tracks online. Many others also feel that children that constantly have parents breathing down their throats and micro-managing all of their online usage would make children feel that their parents do not trust their judgment and simply think that they are out to intentionally try to get into trouble even though that may be the last thing that a child intends to do. Many people believe that lack of parental trust in kids may make kids more likely to intentionally want to do something wrong, since they think it is what parents are expecting of them anyway or else they wouldn’t be scrutinizing them so closely. Other people also argue that restricting a child’s use of the internet may actually be a huge disservice to them in the future, as the world is becoming more influenced by technology seemingly every day, and parents who restrict their children’s internet usage are denying them free reign to freely experiment and discover the various positive things that the internet and technology bring to their lives, and this may hamper their ability to be technologically inclined in the future. However, all these arguments are flawed.
Ultimately, the internet is simply a tool that can be used for great good as well for great evil. Parents would be unwise to give children free reign to the positive aspects of the internet while completely ignoring the potential dangers of the negative aspects. Children are innocent and their minds are unable to fathom that predators and bullies are looking to take advantage of them and the things they may share online. Therefore it is up to parents to practice good judgment and go through any means necessary to protect children online.