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Why parents should not supevise children's internet usage
Should parents control teens activities on the internet
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Rights To Privacy
Ever since the internet became a thing in our everyday life parents have been conflicted between allowing their children privacy on the internet or invading that privacy to keep them safe. Parents have the right to monitor their children's activity online because kids don't understand the difference between danger and innocent websites and people and to keep them safe from them.
There have been many cases of kids being targeted by bad people on the internet. This was stated in the article “We’ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile” (Par 8, Harlen) this shows us that in the past children have had unknowingly conversed with pedophiles. If a pedophile can easily get to an unprotected child on the internet why would you allow them, if a parent installs a spyware they can keep their child safe from the bad people on the internet keeping them safe and pure. There's another example of horrible things happening to children who are
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For example in the article titled “The Undercover Parent,” it states that “Your reading your teenagers every thought.” (Par 10, Harlen) However the fact still remains that Parents need to know thing that are happening to protect there children from the bad things on the internet. Some people may also argue that Children aren't going onto the sites with bad things on them because they don't know about them. As common as this statement is and the hundreds of times I heard it from trusting parents as I worked at the Boys and Girls Club it can be easily dismissed by one simple quote from the article. “It is far easier for a predator to troll chatrooms and MySpace and Facebook.” (Par 10, Harlen) so even of your kids aren't on sketchy or dangerous websites almost any form of social media can take a turn for the worst for the safety of the children using
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. Coben states, “…overprotective parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications…” (19). This is a weak argument because it inadvertently suggests that overprotectiveness
Lily Huang author of Protect the Willfully Ignorant states “An increasingly urgent question of privacy or how best to keep your public plot walled in” (474). Most internet users savvy or not, are aware of the potential risks. Most people know the potential risk for permanency and of the pictures or information we put out on social networks or other sites and the content being seen. We have all heard the warnings since grammar school from everyone about the internet and how to use it. Teachers, parents, librarians and school inundate our children all throughout school about information on safe usage. To be aware of predators and such is common knowledge. Why the need for laws to protect childrens’ privacy, and usage against exploitation? Similar reasons to why we wear seatbelts while driving and it is enforced by law. We all want our freedoms not to be infringed but at what cost and to who? We are aware of the statistics and outcomes of auto accidents without seatbelts and the need “to protect the willfully ignorant” (Huang). Lily Huang discussed consumer’s lack of expertise for making the best privacy decisions and how important default privacy settings are on social networks (475).
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.
Some parents care about their children but don’t care about the drama going on at school or who their best friend likes. I can see how parents think it’s an invasion of privacy and some feel like if the child found out about the software they wouldn’t trust their parents because who knows what else they could be hiding. So as a parent I could see why they wouldn’t want to put spyware on their teen’s computer because they are invading in the privacy of their kid.
In an article titled, “The Undercover Parent”, by Harlan Coben he states that he also agrees with Spyware. One example of this is when he states, “we all know about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile.” This really stuck to me because it states unknowingly. The kid didn’t know what he was doing. This is an example of why kids need Spyware.
¨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.
Kids now want to be more independent and have more freedom which might scare some if not most parents. A lot of parents look at the internet as a dangerous tool and not a tool where their kids can have some freedom. Although parents need to realize that they can’t protect their kids from all ...
In Peter Tait’s article, “Preserving childhood innocence” he discusses how it influences the way social media has corrupted the innocence of youth. It is very easy to Google search and find anything in the blink of an eye. But, just because the information is readily available does not mean that it is a good idea to take advantage of it all at once. Parents often struggle raising their children in today’s society in which kids have much more exposure to content that is not age appropriate than the past generation had at their age. Today’s generation can be overstimulated by the kind and amount of information at their fingertips as they stumble upon it. Burdens of adult life are being unknowingly placed on kids who have not yet reached, or are just reaching, adolescence. This often leads to long-term negative psychological and social effects on children if they are prematurely exposed. Most information on the Internet is unfiltered which is often why it is often called “overexposed”. Without filtration, anyone can pull up inappropriate or false information without being aware of its inaccuracy. This includes anything from inappropriate pictures to hateful comments to uncensored language. When absorbed by a child who does not know how to self-filter the material, it can destroy the innocence that comes with being young. The kid no longer thinks like a child and is haunted by the
The Internet is a method of communication and a source of information that is becoming popular among those who are interested in the information superhighway. The problem with this world we know as Cyberspace, the ‘Net, or the Web is that some of this information, including pornographical material and hate literature, is being accessible to minors.
However, sensitive information that may be shared might later embarrass the children as they grow older and realize what is available on the internet. Such events may result in resentment and misunderstandings on both the children and the parents’ sides. According to Steinberg (2017) in “Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media,” there have been long-term issues and conflicts regarding parental sharing and whether children have the right to control what is shared about them. Another long-term problem raised by parental sharing is the idea of data collecting. Per “Children’s Privacy in the Big Data Era: Research Opportunities,” “These trends raise serious concerns about digital dossiers that could follow young people into adulthood, affecting their access to education, employment, healthcare, and financial services. Although US privacy law provides some safeguards for children younger than 13 years old online, adolescents are afforded no such protections” (Montgomery, Chester, & Milosevic, 2017, p.
as people should have their privacy when surfing the internet. Alternatively, the evidence suggests that the government can help tackle terrorism and stop bullying. After examining this issue closely, surely society could not argue that we should protect our country and our children by monitoring social networking sites? Works Cited http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/09/cyberbullying-mother-fight-askfm http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/19/ask-fm-cyberbully-hannah-smith-death http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/5046447/Facebook-could-be-monitored-by-the-government.html http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/08/askfm-advertisers-cameron-boycott-cyberbullying http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=catfish
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.