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The negative impact of the internet on children
Free speech in cyberspace
Free speech in cyberspace
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Recommended: The negative impact of the internet on children
“Children start using the internet at the average age of three and most to spend twice as much time online as their parents” (Ward, 2013). Through the information age, the internet has become an invaluable tool. We have information at our fingertips in record time, but not everything on the internet is appropriate for everyone to see. Pornography, hate speech, and writings meant to incite violence are making their way to children’s computer screens every day. Scary, but we can change this. Internet filters can change this. Personal computer filters exist today and will help prevent children from accessing inappropriate material, but children also use the internet away from home. Libraries, schools, and community centers all offer internet services to children, but are they safe using these resources? The federal government should require by law that all public or government-funded computers have filters to block the access to material deemed inappropriate or objectionable for children. This would help protect children from exposure to inappropriate materials outside of their home. …show more content…
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) works diligently to overthrow every attempt at placing some sort of filter or censorship requirements on the internet. They believe that the things censored are protected by the constitution. The court case ALA v. Pataki (1997) held that internet users must be protected from, “inconsistent legislation that, taken to its most extreme, could paralyze development of the internet altogether” (ACLU, 2017). Our freedom of speech is not absolute, so restricting where people are able to get access to these materials does not affect one’s right to speak freely, rather where they speak
The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (First Amendment Oct. 20, 2013). But "the First Amendment does not protect all speech from government censorship, and it does not prevent private non-government entities from censoring. Years of US Supreme Court decisions have identified exceptions to the general rule that the governments in the United States cannot censor" (Censorship Copyright © 2002). American citizen's right of freedom of speech should be held in the highest integrity and any kind of censorship of free speech should not be allowed because it take away those rights. However, censorship has been going on for centuries.
When you bring your child to the public library to checkout a book, or to let them use the computers for a school project you do not want to have to worry about them accidentally seeing another person there looking at pornography or even worse, them accidentally pulling it up on their computer. Many libraries do not filter their internet and therefore leave children at risk of seeing these disturbing images. Those that oppose filtering the internet feel as if it imposes on their first amendment right and that these filters either filter too much or do not filter enough. Although it is important to protect people’s first amendment right, it is our moral obligation to protect our children from pornography and other disturbing images while they are in a public place, especially a library since it is used mostly for educational purposes. But, with filters comes controversy: whether it imposes on one’s first
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
Especially considering America’s wide access to information through technology, the attempt to restrict “inappropriate” information from children is an infeasible and somewhat malicious task. First of all, children are not “protected” when unable to read books that contain adult material. Kids need to be exposed to things like sex and violence because if they are unfamiliar with these “adult” topics, when they come upon them in the uncensored, real world, their reactions will be unpredictable. Censoring reading material about murder, for example, may seem like a good solution to preventing violence among the future adult generation. But if a child did not understand the concept of taking another per...
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. In other words, one day you might not be able to Google everything you want to know as you can now. Although the Internet can be a dangerous without caution, countries need not to censor the Internet for their own selfish reasons. Internet censorship is a form of a dictatorship, and they can cause riots as well as take away our first amendment right.
The Internet has become such a vast and quickly growing technology that law makers have had difficulty keeping up with the technological advances within the internet grid and the sick minds of individuals. One specific area of concern is internet safety regarding minors, especially in the area of pornography. There is a controversy that surrounds the policing of the Internet for illicit activities such as pornography that has been going on since the early 1990’s between the U.S. government and the American Civil Liberties group that claims policing the Internet would take away personal freedoms from Americans in the form of freedom of speech. This issue has even gone to the highest court in our country, the United States Supreme Court. “Leaving the Internet alone” has been the nations Internet policy since the Internet was first commercialized in the mid-1990’s. The primary government imperative then was just to get out of the way to encourage its growth (Strickland, 2012). In 1998 President Clinton signed COPA (Child Online Protection Act) into law, but it was never enforced (Information Week, Nov. 2006). The rate of pornography viewed in the United States has grown, and continues to grow in viewership to this day with few arrests being made for those distributing the sites or for those who are viewing them where minors are concerned.
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
The internet is a wonderful learning tool. Of course, like any good thing, the Internet comes with its ups and downs. There are several things that aren’t suitable for any child on the internet, such as pornography, violent material, adult chat rooms, and racist or hateful sites, there are even websites about cheating in schools.
Within the last couple of years, however, arguments have arisen concerning children's safety on the Internet. Contributing factors to some recent events have been traced to the Internet, and rules regulating Internet use have commenced at schools and libraries across the country. While this is happening, Congress has been trying to censor the Internet to protect juvenile users. Some organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, believe that such regulation of the Internet is a violation of free speech, a constitutional right. The Supreme Court made a 1997 decision to ban Internet censorship. Many risks, therefore, are still posed to any-including young-users of the Web. Congress defines the term child as "an individual under the age of 13" (United States. Cong. House). Areas of concerns for children's safety on the Internet range from personal identification to inappropriate sites to unsuitable chats, and organizations have started to present solutions to such problems.
First of all, if the Internet was regulated by the government, this would violate the first amendment and the citizen’s right to privacy (Parrish). More than 55 percent of U.S citizens agree with the fact that the federal government should not regulate the Internet (Wark). One of the main rights granted to Americans was the right to free speech and freedom of the press. Censoring the Internet would go in direct violation of this amendment. It would also take away the citizen’s right to privacy. Censoring would mean that the government is in some way controlling the people which would rid of them their privacy rights. It is mainly used in some sort of dictatorship. The federal government regulating or censoring the internet would decrease the value of democracy in our country. Also, the people have the right to know specific information. Censoring the internet would mean that the government would be keeping information away from the citizens ...
Internet censorship is acceptable to a certain extent, but shouldn’t be taken too far because we are individuals who deserve personal freedom and expression. Many precautions can be taken to enforce protection without having to have the government or higher authorities watching your every move. The government should not have control over the Internet and overlooking what individuals can and cannot see, protection should be taken into the hands of the individuals. The First Amendment and the United States believing in personal freedom and rights can support my position on Internet censorship. Further into reading, you will notice how the First Amendment takes a role into my topic of debate and how it makes a bigger impact in the dispute than one would
Censorship is the control of communication between people. This includes restrictions on what can be seen and heard. Mostly, censorship is practiced by Governments. But religious and political leaders and special interest groups also try to control the flow of information. Censorship violates individual rights, hides useful information, and limits freedom of speech.
Most of the Internet regulation is imposed by the Government in an effort to protect the best interest of the general public and is concerned with some form of censorship.
There are multiple sides to the debate over the amount of censorship the United States' internet should have, two extremes have been chosen in order to form a mutual agreement of them. Having no censorship or filtration is the first extreme; nothing on the internet, including apps, articles, and social media sites, are monitored, filtered, or blacklisted. These people who are against complete, or absolute, censorship argue strongly that internet regulations will take away the first amendment. Cornell Law School defines the first amendment as the following: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
There are two real issues at stake when looking at this controversial topic. The first issue is finding a way to protect our children from potentially damaging material. There are advocates to censoring the Internet and removing this type of material because it will help shelter our children from this type of content. On the other hand, Free Speech advocates believe that it is the individual citizens right to have access to this typ...