Our blog topic this week is about online safety. A few years ago I saw an SNL skit on NBC that I was reminded of by this topic. It was a skit about a MySpace teaching class. There was a plethora of people in the classroom learning how to use MySpace. The people ranged from parents wanting to learn about what their children were doing on MySpace to teens learning about exactly what it was. There was one man in the classroom that was clearly trying to pretend he was younger to attract underage girls. Although this was the funny part of the skit, it has become a very serious topic on the Internet.
The Internet can be an extremely scary or an extremely safe place depending on how a person goes about using it. There are so many stories shown on the news, including an entire show called ‘To Catch a Predator”, devoted to the dangers of the Internet. Sometimes these fears get so out of hand that they become blown way out of proportion. I am not saying that it isn’t okay to be scared of the Internet because that fear makes people more aware of their actions. The problem is that people allow this fear to get in their way of exploring new and exciting things. There is so much information out there on the Internet to be found and so many things to experience that it would be a waste to avoid a computer because of safety issues.
According to KidsHealth.org, “A federal law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), was created to help protect kids online. It's designed to keep anyone from obtaining a child's personal information without a parent knowing about it and agreeing to it first.” With the proper precautions and the right attitude, the scary things online can be avoided and we can all use the Internet in a positive way.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
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