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Would You Leave Your Child Alone in a Room Full of Strangers?
That’s what the internet is.
I wish I could go back in time and coach my mom on how to introduce my brothers and me to technology. What we ended up finding in the subsequent years after getting a desktop computer, an iPad, and eventually our own iPod Touches and phones wasn’t really her fault.
She didn’t know any better — and neither did we.
We have a conceptualization problem with the Internet.
Most people think of the internet as a country of sorts. It’s vast and complex to get around. For the most part, we stay in our “city”, or our area, and don’t venture into other areas without a strong need to cover significant ground. This led many parents in the early 2010s to overlook the importance of protecting their kids online.
They didn’t see the risk. Surely it would take leaps and bounds for their kids to find anything problematic on the internet.
Turns out, most of the problematic content that can lead to deviant behavior, pornography addiction, or way too much information about way too many things, is just a click away. Think more like a library than a country. The R and MA content is sitting on a shelf right next to what you’re okay with your kid…
