My parents took an entirely different approach, seeing as how I was 10 when we first had internet in the house. They just...let me use it. You know what a 10-year-old looks for on the internet? Pokemon fan pages. Neopets (anyone remember those?). Fun flash games. I don't know what the hell sort of harrowing experiences people have had with children actively seeking out porn or whatever. My mom taught me to be smart and never give my information to anyone, whether it be in the grocery store or a chat room. Did I meet weirdos? Yes. Did I do things I maybe shouldn't have? Yes. But here is the kicker: I didn't just do that stuff on the internet. I met weirdos in my neighborhood. I got exposed to stuff that I didn't tell my mom about. I went to the library and read the dirty books and yes, I went by myself. The world is a scary place. Teach your kids how to live in it, not how to hide from it. That's where this argument always ends up, isn't it? Now as far as this Togetherville goes, sure, why not? I'll admit, I hung out in a Pokemon chat room when I was 10, and I actually have two friends from there who have been my good friends for almost 12 years now, both normal nice girls who happen to live in Canada and Australia. I'm sure it would have been easier to meet them if we'd all had 'Pokemon' listed as our interests on our Togetherville pages.
Perhaps the internet should be treated like a gun in some respects. Parents allow the young children to look at it and mess around with it under safe supervision so that later on, when their curiosity is seriously piqued, they don't use it inappropriately and end up doing something stupid. In a lot of ways, the internet is the new creepy guy with the windowless van offering candy. Maybe stuff like this, that fosters the idea of parental supervision at a young age, will lead to more responsible decisions later in life. If parents can be honest about the huge window that the internet opens to their children (news, sports, porn, creepy dick swingers on chatroulette, kid snatchers...everything), then maybe this movement might be successful. If kids realize that the internet can be both awesome and scary at the same time, I think they'll learn to respect it a little more. Or maybe they'll just start looking at tentacle rape porn in their tree houses when they're ten years old and exposing the internet to young children is actually the first step towards the world becoming like Idiocracy with this next generation. Who knows.
Six to ten year old probably won't be getting on to the internet to look at porn. They'll be doing just like the previous post said--looking up kid things. Parental controls on the computer will limit the chances that the kid is going to accidentally come across anything you don't want them to. That said, if you're in the room with your kid while s/he is using the computer, it's not difficult to keep half an eye on what's going on on the screen. Kids use computers today like we grew up using the TV/VCR. We had a satellite dish when I was a youngster, and Saturday mornings were pretty lame, waiting on my parents to get up and turn the TV to cartoons, up until my dad showed me how to do it for myself. Problem solved. Not once did I try to get to the PPV channels to watch the dirty movies. I knew they were there (in theory, but I didn't really know what they were all about at the time, obviously), but 1) I knew I wasn't supposed to go to those channels because my parents told me that and I pretty much listened to their rules, and 2) My parents had a code you had to enter to access those channels and I didn't know the code. Now, when my big brother was at home and my parents were gone, I did catch some glimpses of skin and hear words I probably shouldn't have heard and definitely would not have repeated. Sure it was age-inappropriate, but that's life. It wasn't constant exposure and that kind of thing is just part of growing up. I'm hardly scarred from it. Putting kid friendly content on the internet is a great idea because it DOES give kids something to do when they are online. I'm not saying a youngster should have his/her own computer in the bedroom with complete unlimited unmonitored access. But as long as parents are monitoring the online activity (as they should be ALL online activity, not just on social sites or what-have-you), only good can come from sites like this.
How old are you? I'm 23, and have used a computer quite regularly since I was about 5 years old. Computers were common before the Internet ever became popular. Anyways, I thought about this question some more, and think there is a good analogy to television here; just like television, the Internet is a complete waste of time for kids, with little to nothing in the way of educational value. (In fact, probably even less education than a TV for little kids) The only difference is that there is a lot of personal information the kid can give out on the Internet, and grisly death/mutilation and porn sites which most "safe Internet programs" miss. Even if you completely dismiss that last sentence, why add yet another life-waster at a period when a kid should be learning, exercising, socializing, etc? One of my friends told me that the turning point in him getting into math and science, and becoming really smart was when his father banned from his using the Internet for an entire year during high school. Make of that what you will.
Even the name sounds like a NAMBLA convention. I fail to see the point of a social networking site for 6-8 year olds anyway. This is the point in their lives where they should be socializing with people. Let them turn 14 before they start making friends out of video game characters and dreaming of shooting up their school. Besides, with the way a lot of parents are, they aren't going to monitor what their kids do online anyway. Togetherville, making white vans and candy obsolete since 2010.
I'm 27. We had a computer when I was in Middle School, but it was basically just an amped up type writer. We used it for writing reports and such, and that's pretty much it. Admittedly, we were behind the times, but we had no "need" for a computer then. We didn't get the internet at my house until I moved to college and it was cheaper to talk online than it was to pay the long distance phone bill. But that is neither here nor there. My point was, the internet is common now. It is everywhere, just like television. As for kids being able to give out personal information, they can do that anyway. You teach your kids not to talk to strangers, so teach them that that applies online as well. It all comes back to monitoring your kids. If you don't like the idea of your kids going to a social networking site, then don't allow it. There is nothing inherently bad about those sites; it is the misuse of those sites that will cause a problem. Parental control can inhibit that misuse. The issue of whether parents are going to be monitoring their children is an entirely different conversation. More effort needs to be put into retraining parents on how to effectively monitor and control what their children are exposed to instead of relying on the government, television networks, cable companies, schools, or society in general to say what is acceptable and what is not and making broad sweeping judgments on what is out there. I'm a firm believer in the "if you don't like it, don't look" attitude.
From what I can see, despite the arguments, there's some valid points floating around. I see the internet as a tool. Just like any other tool it must be used correctly, or it's of diminished worth or outright dangerous. It's a stupid analogy but compare the internet to a nail gun. In the right hands with the proper application it's a very useful tool. In the wrong hands, it's potentially lethal. Of itself, it isn't a malicious object. You shouldn't just let kids have free reign on the internet without supervision and 'training'. At the very least, there's a lot of bullshit on there. Anyone can put anything on the internet and anyone can access it, generally. Taking something as true just because it's on the net, without thinking about it and doing further research, is ignorant and stupid. Things like textbooks are better, because you can (in most cases) guarantee they've been checked and widely accepted. Things on the internet don't always have that benefit. The benefit is, though, that the internet has accessibility and availability far beyond anything else currently available. It needs to be balanced with accuracy. Kids generally aren't capable of that by themselves. At the other end, there's people who want to do harm to your kids trawling the internet to get their greedy hands on them. They exist other places as well, but the internet lets them have that accessibility and availability that is one of the strengths of the thing. The point is; the internet shouldn't be treated lightly, which too many people seem to do. Access and usage can be controlled and monitored if the right effort is put into it. But just like television, it's not a babysitter or a surrogate.
I'm 24. I've used a computer since I was 5. Computers and the internet helped me a lot when I was younger. A close family friend worked at IBM, so we had illegal copies of most games on floppy disks. I excelled in my shitty schools because I had exposure to a lot of materials that I would not have had exposure to. The Learning Company created a lot of games that taught me about math, science, technology, physics, engineering, a lot of things that helped me in my formative years with more advanced course work. I remember I had to complete a circuit in one of their games. They even when as far as to have you complete parallel circuits or circuits in sequence, things that I didn't see until possibly middle school. So it's really a matter of personal experience. I was also playing parser based Sierra games in DOS before I was 10. This really helped me with my reading, writing, and comprehension, because you can't get through the game without being able to do the above. I'm talking about games like Space Quest and King's Quest, in which the mouse was useless. We got internet when it first came out. My father actually bought a second phone line so we could use the internet without tying up the main number. My brother and I both used the internet unsupervised, and we both looked at boobies. My brother's favorite site was this. My favorite site was this (which actually featured Lacy Duvalle when she first came out.) He would save the sample pictures on floppy disks. I think it's just the natural progression from having a bunch of playboys under the bed to nowadays having your porn folder hidden where no one will look/and protected. My porn folder is now on an external hard drive that requires a password. I'm sure it could broken, but it stops casual folks, and that's what it was intended for. That being said, we weren't jackasses and we weren't idiots. You can't coddle children forever, and if you prepare them for the real world, they will be better equipped to deal, that being said, no one is saying don't keep an eye on them either. That's what this community is trying to do. Will it be well executed? I doubt it, but I still think it's a good premise.
Well, same here. I'm 23 and started using the computer when I was 5, also. My parents made me a play a bunch of educational games for things like basic English, writing, and math. (Number Munchers was cool) I played a bunch of Sierra titles as well as other DOS games that incorporated basic reading comprehension, strategy, and elementary math. King's Bounty, by the same people that later made Heroes of Might and Magic, was a lot of fun. But notice everything we're discussing here. They're all things that do not require the Internet. Instead, all you need is a computer and a floppy (nowadays CD and DVD) drive. The first porn I ever looked at was black porn. I still find dark-skinned girls incredibly sexy.
I don't think many 6 year olds are really "using the internet" even if they join sites like this. A friend of mine worked for an online company based out of Kelowna, BC, called Club Penguin. It was/is a social network/games site for kids; they sign up and get a little penguin avatar that walks around and gets coins by doing things like winning surfing competitions and making pizzas. Yeah, I'm like 90% sure I didn't dream that. Anyway, sites like that* are heavily moderated to keep the crazies out, and are designed to give parents complete control and access to their kid's account. The idea of letting a 6-10 year old loose on the actual NSFW internet is a little scary, but I think these sites are a good way for kids to learn about computers and play some cool games in a very controlled environment. (The games are actually really fucking stupid, especially the surfing one.) *For a while this was the most popular kids website in the world, so I think it's a valid example. Maybe my friend was lying to me and it was #3 or something, but I do know Disney bought Club Penguin for hundreds of billions of dollars, so it must have been doing something right.
Social networking for kids 16 years old and younger: school, sports, birthday parties, dances, work, regular parties, talking on the phone. Am I off base by thinking the internet should be for educational / entertainment (ie. Gaming, pop culture news) reasons for children of this age? As someone planning to have a kid, this is my thinking right now. Will it change it change in ten years, maybe. I doubt it though.