Online predators, pornography, drug trafficking, piracy, and hate sites are just some of the dangers that a child can face on the internet. The article “The Undercover Parent” by Harlan Coben states that parents should use spyware to monitor their children. Coben argues that parents should be able to know what is in their children’s lives. he believes that spyware can prevent children from being targeted by internet predators on social networking sites and even prevent children from being cyber bullied. I agree with Coben’s claim that parents should consider using spyware as a protection for their teens online. There are many possible dangers facing children on the internet and it is essential that parents install spyware.
To begin with, spyware can prevent pedophiles from targeting your children on the internet. The Internet has become a common hunting ground to prey on children. Nowadays, more and more young people are using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.While all these web sites act as a social network to unite people it also contains a lot of personal information that may help pedophiles to find their next victim. by using spyware the parents can be aware of
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who their children are talking to and what they are posting on their website. Spyware allows parents to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. Consider the evidence provided by Harlan Coben “One friend of mine, using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was also sleeping with the dealer” (2).This clearly shows that spyware is an effective deterrent against pedophiles. Spyware is a great resource for parents to monitor their children and protect them from pedophiles before it is too late. An equally important point to consider is that we protect our children from bullies in real life but not online. Technology now gives bullies a whole new platform for their actions. Harlan Coben says, “ We’ve all read about a girl who was cyber bullied to the point where she committed suicide” (1). This means that cyberbullying allows bullies to torment their victims any time of the day via social media websites or email and this can lead to suicide. Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are closely related. Studies states that those who are bullied at school are bullied online and those who bully at school bully online. According to the Center on Media and Child Health, “ Parents can reduce the risk of having a child involved with cyberbullying (as a victim or a bully) by being involved in their child’s online use”. This shows that Spyware can be a good option for parents to stay involved in kid’s cyber world, just as in their real world. To further support my point the internet displays many disturbing images and websites which can have a negative effect on children. Nowadays children can learn how to make a bomb online without their parents knowing. Websites like youtube provides many tutorials on how to create step by step weapons such as rifles or even bombs that can be harmful. The internet shows people getting killed in many horrendous ways. For example, the internet has disturbing images like the recent beheading of american journalist by Isis. By knowing what your children are watching online you can prevent them from harming other people or themselves. Teenagers will find other ways to communicate with their friends if they know they are being watched.
Some will say that if tennagers know that they are being watched they will be more cautious. Teenagers will find other ways of communicating to their friends like text messages or cell phones and those options are better because they do not offer the anonymity and danger of the internet. Also some will say that teenagers can block the content that they are watching from their parents. If parents talked to their children about why they are installing spyware and the dangers of the internet it can prevent all of this. Installing spyware in your children’s computer is not meant to be an invasion of privacy it is just meant to help monitor what our children are
watching. I hope I have convinced you that spyware is a viable option to protect your children from the dangers of the internet. With the state of the world today it is imperative to have control of what our children are watching and doing online. We as a nation have gotten to lackadaisical when it comes to the way we raise our children and i think spyware can be a helpful tool to assist us in raising our children. Their lives and the lives of their future children depend on spyware.
The expansion of the Internet infrastructure across the world, has brought an increased audience. Which has provided expanded markets for businesses and exploited new opportunities. There are virtually countless social sites and media used by individuals to access and share experiences , content, insights, and perspectives. Parents today tend to believe they should spy on their kids online activity. I argue parents should respect the privacy of a child's social life and his/her internet activity.
Internet is advancing every day, parents have no idea what their kids are doing in cyberspace and are contemplating the idea of spyware. In the article, “The Undercover Parent” by Harlan Coben, he argues the idea of parents putting spyware on kids’ computer is a good idea to keep the child safe. Many American parents have no idea what happens in cyberspace; sex, bullying, and drugs. Parents are torn between protecting their child with spyware and allowing the child to have privacy. Coben uses his friends’ personal experiences to support his argument without leaving room for counterarguments. By using strong emotional appeals, weak qualifiers, and sugary word choice Coben creates a weak argument that lacks persuasion.
Harlan Coben’s essay “The Undercover Parent” attempts to enlighten readers, specifically parents, of the benefits to installing spyware onto their children’s computers in order to keep record of their child’s online activity. Whilst admitting at first he was not particularly keen on spyware himself, Coben aims to persuade his audience of the benefits by highlighting the dangers of children using the internet unsupervised and without boundaries. However, Coben fails to supply factual evidence to back up his claims, all while stating a number of contradictions within his own arguments.
In Harlan Coben 's, The Undercover Parent, Coben claims that it is okay to install spyware in children’s technological devices. He says this because it can prevent children from, “gambling away their entire life savings", or from cyberbullying others “until the point they committed suicide", or even from the situation where there was a “young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile” (Coben 66). However, I believe parents do not need spyware to prevent these things from happening. A parent’s job is to be aware of how their children are using technology to inform them of all the dangers that may waiting and to set rules or boundaries.
¨The Undercover Parent¨ by Harlan Coben, published in an online newspaper ¨New York Times¨ (16 March 2008), claims that the Internet is dangerous for kids. Harlan Coben explains how spyware could be a resource that keeps track of our kids’ internet use, but how it could also invade sons’ and daughters’ privacy. He also claims that parents should have conversations about their concerns with teens, and let them know spyware is a possibility. In my opinion, I quite agree and do not agree with the most of it.
There are many dangers that people can encounter on the internet. Parents, young children, and teachers now face a new region of hazard that may lead to more of these crimes. “Online communication can take place in a variety of forms: electronic mail (e-mail), chat rooms, newsgroups, mail exploders, and the World Wide Web” (Lowenstein). With the expansion of technology of computers, along comes the internet that allows further communication among strangers. Pedophiles also use scanners, printers, and digital cameras to use for their activities. While the new technology expands, pedophiles now seem to have been on the prowl obsessively, and the crimes they commit against young children have increased. The computer and the internet is not only a useful machine for education and knowledge but it is now the key that excels crimes in pedophilia.
Social networking establishments like Facebook and Myspace have blowup in latest years and early surfers in particular have grown into devoted fans of this active and advanced way to bond with the comprehensive world around them, interactive with friends and joining up with compatible people. But as using everything in the computer-generated domain, parents do need to recognize in what way their children are cooperating on common networking spots, and be certain their kids be familiar with what to make sure of if they have knowledge a foul or unsafe circumstances. Children should not be online without supervision due to fear of privacy, bullying and inappropriate behavior like sexting. Privacy is at all times a worry for any message discussion passed out online and children
If not used appropriately and responsibly, the internet can be a dangerous place for children if they get cyberbullied, exposed to inappropriate content, or lured into a trap. If a child has not been properly informed about the lack of safety in the internet, they may find themselves virtually talking to strangers. These strangers could try to get their personal
Technology can be your best friend but also your biggest enemy. It can be used for pleasure or as a helpful tool to get schoolwork done. However, many youths are not aware of the dangers they may face by browsing through the Internet.
In today’s times, it can be hard to know what you children may be doing on computer. It is sometimes upsetting and very scary to know that someone could be stalking your child without you or him ever knowing about it, until it’s to late. There are programs out there that monitor your child’s activities on the Internet. But where are they, how much do they cost and why aren’t they advertised more? There are a couple precautions that you can take at home, without spending any money, to help safe guard your child.
We live in a society that thrives on technology; it is pervasive throughout our daily lives. Everyone seems to have an iPod, cell phone, or laptop with them at all times. We have become a completely connected society with our Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. It is hard to argue that technology hasn’t improved our lives through medicine, communication, and entertainment. Our children face an increasing number of dangers on the Internet. Sexual predators, cyber bullying, and pornography are the most prevalent dangers our children face on the Internet; the best way to protect them is to be an involved and informed Parent. Sexual predators on the Internet are a topic that has received lots of attention from the media in recent years. Shows like Datelines: To Catch a Predator have highlighted the issue and shown that it can happen in even the smallest communities. For predators the Internet provides a sense of security and anonymity. They use chatrooms and social networking sites to find and gain the trust of vulnerable children. The anonymity of the Internet and its global nature provides a large degree of security for prosecution for Internet predators. Law enforcement agencies face some atypical challenges in attempting to prosecute Internet crimes. Local police departments rarely are equipped to handle Internet predators due to the nature of the crimes. Laws have also been slow to keep pace with changing technologies. A Lack of physical evidence or crime scene is just two of the challenges facing law enforcement agencies in the prosecution of cyber crimes. The burden for investigating Internet crimes often falls to federal agencies because of the potential interstate nature of the crimes and their broad resources. Cyber bullying is ...
Many children have access to the internet and are able to search up anything on Google. As with any type of media, there are positive effects and negative effects. Some of the negative effects of the internet for children are that ,since, children and adolescents are more or less technologically savvy than their parents, they are able to search about just about anything and and talk to just about anyone on the internet, this can lead to some very dangerous situations. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “89% of adolescents report using a computer, 61% report “surfing the net,” and 14% report seeing something that they do not want their parents to know about.” (Villani, 2001) 14% of adolescents reported seeing something that they did not want their parents to know about, this shows how unsupervised the internet is and shows how the internet can lead adolescents to become secretive and , maybe, even violent. Again, this leads to deviant behavior that the child learned from the internet. In addition, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “... a profile of the recent school killers, noted that almost all were computer-savvy and frequented sites where they could obtain violent, anarchist-oriented material.” (Villani, 2001) This shows that websites that have violent material on the
These individuals feel that it is an invasion of the teenagers’ right to privacy and the development of their trustworthiness. Kay Mathieson states “only by giving children privacy will they come to see their thoughts as something that belongs to them – to which they have an exclusive right.” In the United States and according to the law, monitoring the internet usage of a minor does not break any laws and is a moral obligation of the parent. Trustworthiness is an important development of a child to learn in order to develop genuine relationships with others in the lifetime. “Not only does monitoring have the great potential to undermine the trust of the child in the parent, and thus to undermine trust in others more generally, it also has the potential to undermine the capacity of the child to be worth of trust” (Mathieson). If the parent has not already had conversations with the teenager about monitoring internet usage and the parent is not telling the child about the monitoring, there is already an issue with the development of trustworthiness in the teenager. There was already a failure of development of this skill before the internet or internet monitoring was introduced.
To begin with, while using the internet, children are exposed to different kinds of materials. In most cases, they are exposed to inappropriate ones such as sexually explicit materials and/or violent ones (Magid, 2003). Some children, especially adolescents, are curious about sexuality and sexually explicit material; they can move away from their family and seek fulfillments for their curiosities online. Hence, dangerous situations commonly occur due to the child molesters on the other side of the net waiting to find those children, seduce them, and manipulate them (Freeh, 2008). It is also worth mentioning that other children can be exposed to such resources by accident; they can receive them through e-mail spam or when a popup that contains violent or sexual materials opens in front of them (Magid, 2003). Also, there are some people who attempt to sexually exploit children online. Some of them progressively seduce their targets through the use of attention, affection, kindness, and gifts. They are often willing to devote considerable amounts of time, money, and energy during this course of action. They listen to and empathize with the problems of children. They are aware of the latest music, hobbies, and interests of the youngster. They also attempt to gradually lower children's inhibitions by slowly introducing sexual context and content into their conversations (Freeh, 2008) which can get them to gain the trust of those targeted children and can lead to meet them face-to-face.
According to the Federal Trade Commission “Children can be more vulnerable to scams and sophisticated online marketing, and are sharing more personal information on social networking sites.” How do you safeguard you and your kids online? The best way to protect your kids online is to monitor their online activities. Parent’s need to talk to their children about Internet safety. Parents need to always know what their children are doing online. MacAfee advises parents to “use child software that is age-appropriate. Limit your children’s time spent online. Install and use...