All Parents Should Use Parental Controls

The dangers of allowing children unsupervised use of a computer are understated in many of the environments where children might gain access to a PC. Modern society embraces the undeniable advantages of computer based educational support for children yet persists in neglecting the safety and security that should go hand in hand with such resources instead of implementing simple parental controls.

Some of the World’s best parents stand open mouthed when informed that their children have been subjected to abuse on the internet. This might take the form of pornography, invasive and inappropriate chat room coercion or direct contact via email, from undesirable characters prowling the net every day for suitable victims to prime, compromise and even physically contact.

"Oh no, not my child," most parents object; my child would not be viewing content like that; my child is sensible; I don’t need to exercise parental control; my child has no secrets. This is complete nonsense: all children are susceptible to persuasion. A child’s natural instinct is to comply with instruction from an adult, even if that adult is a seemingly detached online entity.

All children have a sharp curiosity and might even actively search for prurient content online. Once the child has gained some interaction with a pornographic site, the temptation to continue to browse and experiment with online interactive tools can lead to actual contact with a perverted individual.

Permissions that enquire whether the user is over 18 years of age are a pointless waste of time to control access where children are concerned, as most of them will simply comply by clicking the YES button. The next screen they will see is a gateway to obscene internet content that many hardened adults would find tasteless and sickening.

Would you take your eight year old to a sex show? Would you take your nine year old to a striptease club? Would you leave your child with a babysitter with a known record of sexual abuse of children? If the answer to all these questions is ‘NO’ and you have access to computer technology in your home, you need to install parental control software to safeguard your child against the uncensored content freely available online. It is not unusual for the children in a family to be more skilled in computer technology than the parents and these children especially require stringent controls.

Once your child has been exposed to internet pornography, there is a real danger of addiction to the kind of sensations viewing such material might produce. Contrary to what is widely believed, pornography addiction is not age related and sadly, can begin at the tender age of four or five.