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The Internet Your Rights Online

Gov't Report on Youth, Pornography, And The Internet 76

Posted by timothy from the goldurn-interweb dept.
Frisky070802 writes "I don't recall seeing this already, nor am I finding it when searching for it ... the National Academies commissioned a report on how youths are affected by child pornography, predators, and other threats on the net. They've issued a 400-page report on their findings, which are very extensive, and were used to support the argument for the new kids.us domain."
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Gov't Report on Youth, Pornography, And The Internet More

Gov't Report on Youth, Pornography, And The Internet

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  • Wrong report (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:13PM (#4719258) Journal

    From the conclusion in section 14.1:

    The Internet has enormous potential to contribute to public welfare and private well-being. One dimension of that potential involves the use of the Internet to enhance and transform education for the nation's youth, and many public policy decisions have been taken to provide Internet access for educational purposes. Easy access to the Internet (and related online services) has many advantages for children--access to educational materials; collaborative projects, publications, online friendships, and pen pals; access to subject matter experts; recreation, hobby, and sports information; and so on.

    It might be useful for someone to produce a 400+ page report examining the above stated and widely-held belief that Internet access is going to magically "enhance and transform education for the nation's youth". I, for one, am not sure that filling cash-strapped schools with computer equipment is somehow going to result in brighter children than if we just stuck to the basics.

    GMD

    • Re:Wrong report (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kevin Stevens ( 227724 ) <kevstev.gmail@com> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @06:24PM (#4719748)
      I do not believe that the goal of having computers in classrooms is to have brighter children. Rather, it is to make them comfortable using computers and to increase their skills in using them so that when they go out into the real world they are more competitive. The internet can also be used as a valuable resource. There were several times when my college professor's notes did not help me get an understanding of a topic, so I would go and search the web for alternate material. It almost always helped. If more money and energy was provided, the government could help transform education. As an example of what could be using today's technology, lets say all classrooms were wired. A teacher who is going to be absent for a day and needs a sub could potentially pick a lesson from a large internet repository and have the children watch the lesson that is piped over the internet as opposed to being given busy work by a clueless sub (as is all too often the case). Or I could envision homework assignments on a computer that report back to the teacher and give statistical analysis of where the students as a whole are having trouble understanding a concept, or even better, homework assignments that reinforce concepts to the children as they get things wrong, and then make them do problems until they get it down. Could you imagine the improvement that could be seen if software could pick out weaknesses and help someone understand something better, and then reinforce the concept? I do not think it is really possible to have a piece of software be the equivalent of a real live teacher next to you helping you, but, I do think it could help quite a bit.

      On a side note, I made a bit of an attempt to create a piece of software to do just this over at Sourceforge, and while it appeared to be feasible to me and I did some proof of concept type stuff, my job has been killing me with hours and I have not had time to get anywhere with it. Its the eduonline project. If you have an interest in doing something like this, check it out on sourceforge and let me know.

      • Re:Wrong report (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @07:46PM (#4720253)
        I do not believe that the goal of having computers in classrooms is to have brighter children.
        Not the goal, but a very oft-cited goal among schools I have been to and worked with. Heck, I even went to one of the schools that was involved with the Microsoft/Toshiba Anytime, Anywhere Learning [www.aal.be] project. The whole idea of it is that computer technology has some magical ability to help teach kids. We had laptops assigned to every kid, we had the entire school wired for networking, and were jacked into the 'net all through class.

        Of course, the whole thing was a complete bomb. Teachers didn't know how to use the Internet. Kids spent more time in Yahoo chatrooms than following whatever website the teacher wanted them to be following along in. E-textbooks need to die. And, of course, kids learned very quickly about all the webistes out there that catalog thousands of papers for them to plagarise.

        Not to say that kids don't learn from the 'net. The 'net got me involved in the demoscene and open source, which taught me to program. Various political sites gave me access to information about the world that I never would have touched any other time. I can't begin to say how liberating some BBSes were when I was 11, and when Prodigy gave its users Internet access, it gave me oppotrunites to think that I never would have otherwise had growing up in a town of 7,000.

        That, and I found a lot of porn. And jerked off. I have a hard time saying that was unhealthy, though, especially from the studies I've read giving evidence that boys who are exposed to a lot of porn as adolescents have a tendency to be much more well-adjusted sexually, more likely to use condoms, &c.
        • Well I agree that putting a laptop on every desk and then hooking them all up to the internet is a huge waste of money and counterproductive. Its an additional tool to the arsenal, but it sounds that project got caught up in the thinking "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" type thinking. The only time that students should be sitting in front of a computer is when they are learning to use the computer, or are engaged in an activity that can only be done on the computer. It would be interesting to see if students at a young age who used e-textbooks would actually prefer them. I have tried to read some books online, and man is it a pain. That might just be me being slow to adjust though.

  • Filtering and .kids.us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:15PM (#4719272)
    I'm not trying to troll here, but I think that .kids.us sounds like a better idea than the alternatives. For example, it sounds like a hell of a lot better solution than (poor) internet filtering. IMO, young children (10-12), shouldn't be exposed to ridiculous stuff online and a parent shouldn't have to watch what they do every second they are online. At the same time, we (everyone older than the first group, shouldn't have to suffer, because of fears the first group will see the questionable content. I realize there are a lot of /. zealots who would yell at the prospect of any potential filtering, but as long as it isn't implemented in a way that censors (even implicitly), it'll get my attention.

    • Re:Filtering and .kids.us (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GuruJ ( 604127 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @09:32PM (#4720662) Homepage

      The biggest problem with the idea of .kids.us is that you would have to take away one of the biggest advantages of the Internet in the first place -- its ability to interact with other people.

      Things you couldn't do on .kids.us:

      • Run chatrooms
      • Allow postings to forums
      • Run personal webpages

      ... at least without 24-hour moderation of all materials that would be posted. And who will pay for those expenses?

      • For Personnal Websites and Forums, not sure about chatrooms. Companies will be formed that catiere to children. I can see a new website like Geocities popping up that allows personnal webpages that then go through an approval process before going live. Other companies could offer moderated forums. Sure you can get improper content; however, with attenative mods, most of theses can and will be caught quickly. If there is a big concern have the forum be fully moderated where every post has to pass a content check. Chatrooms will be much more difficult to control due to their realtime nature; however, proper screening and good nazious ops could keep most of the garbage away.
    • IMO, young children (10-12), shouldn't be exposed to ridiculous stuff online

      Grab all the porn you can while you're 9 because your time's running out!!! Once you hit 10, the floodgates swing shut :(

  • How excessive! (Score:5, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:22PM (#4719320) Homepage Journal
    Youth, Pornography, And The Internet

    Well, these are all things that I like. I don't need 400 pages to talk about it though.

  • Whitelist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:23PM (#4719322) Journal
    The main problem raised with filters isn't that they filter too little. It's that they filter too much. Internet whitelisting does not improve that at all. It only amplifies the problem.

    kids.us is a humungous, unwieldy, unworkable, whitelist. (But at least it's .us, gotta keep them foreigners from corrupting our youth.)

    • Be glad it's .us (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 )
      Don't complain about the .us; be glad that a country is not, for once, trying to extend their authority to legislate over the entire Internet.

    • Re:Whitelist (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SScorpio ( 595836 )

      My experience on filters is that they can work; however, I've had many times where I could access a sexual explicite website, but couldn't access websites pertaining to technical information. My example was not being able to access a VRML website while I was researching for a project.

      Whitelisting while blocking off alot of good content can pretty much block out all the bad content. If your whitelisting your email, chances are your aren't going to get spam unless it's from a virus. I do agree that censorship sucks; however, providing a know safe area for children while not trying to remove things is the best we'll probably get.

      If you had a younger child would you feel better about having an option where they can visit only a website pertaining to say Big Bird, or Nickelodeon child shows and not let them access other things? It's true that parental supervision is still important; however, letting your children visit .kids.us by themselves, and letting them have more full access while you can properly supervise them is pretty appealing.

      • Re:Whitelist (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tassach ( 137772 )
        Some things are (almost) universally recognized as being acceptable for children. Some things are equally recognized as being unacceptable for kids. However, there's a lot of grey area where even well-meaning, intelligent, and informed people disagree vehemently.

        Is it appropriate for a young child to see a rendition of Michaelangelo's David? That's a matter of opinion: some would say yes - it's a classic piece of art and it's good for kids to be exposed to culture. Others would say no - his naughty bits are hanging out and it's bad for kids to see a naked human body. Some parents don't want their kids seeing Harry Potter but think it's perfectly fine for them to read fundamentalist Christian religous tracts, while others have the complete opposite view.

        So who gets to say what can go in .kids.us and what can't? If the Jerry Fallwells of the world were in charge, chicktracts.kids.us would be perfectly fine, but witchvox.kids.us or harrypotter.kids.us wouldn't be. I'm not willing to allow anyone other than myself and my wife what is or is not appropriate for our children to see.

  • Sex vs. Violence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suricatta ( 617778 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:26PM (#4719361)
    I'm all for providing a safe haven (?) for kids on the internet, after all there is a lot of filty stuff [rotten.com] out there. However, one thing I've always found interesting is that society goes to a lot of lengths to hide young people from sex and yet no where near as much effort is spent on hiding them from violence. It seems to give the message that sex isn't OK while violence is fine. Any other thoughts on this?

    • Re:Sex vs. Violence (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      Seeing how adults treat sex and violence, it makes complete sense to me.

      I'm going to totally ignore what adults have told me through my teenage years. Actions speak louder than words, and I've seen a lot of adults acting in my life.

      The distinction is simple: Violence is a perfectly reasonable and effective way to solve your problems with other people. Sex is at best a guilty pleasure.

    • Re:Sex vs. Violence (Score:3, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
      "Safe haven"

      It's not a "safe haven" if you're stuffing Johnny into a box so that he can't get the porn he's actively seeking out. He's not *fleeing* it, he's looking for it.

      I sure hope you don't approve of kids watching TV, too, unless shooting people is okay but porn isn't.
    • Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the world with your offspring, just don't look at any pictures of people doing that.
      Thou shall not kill, but pictures of people doing that are just fine. So Sayeth The Lawwwward!

    • I agree that is disturbing.

      Part of the reason may be that, until parts of the last century, it would have been a lot easier for kids to experiment with sex than with violence. Now that kids are getting more dangerous weapons more often, perhaps society will have to revisit how important childhood exposure to violence is, as compared to exposure to sex.

    • I have to agree, I've found this particularly disturbing myself.
      For example, look at the venerable Loony Toons. How many times does Bugs make Fudd shoot himself? Or cause other bodily harm to Fudd? But this is just normal good slap-stick comedy.
      Also, how many TV shows do we have out there now that have no problem showing a shoot-out In all its gory detail?
      But God help us if a breast pops out. Personally I'd much rather we turned this sort of thing around a bit. Lets go ahead and show naked people on TV, both women and men. I don't mean hardcore porn, that is probably a bit too much, but why not allow TV shows to show nudity? And, at the same time, lets start treating violence with the draconian measures we have used for sex. No more showing people getting shot, no more blood everywhere, save that sort of stuff for the cable channels and movies. Sure they would still be able to imply violence, (i.e. you see a guy with a gun pointed at him, camera pans to a window, you hear a gun shot.) but not show it.
      Afterall, sex is a natural thing, and a good thing. Teenages shouldn't be made to feel ashamed for wanting to explore it. And it shouldn't bother parents to discus it with thier children. If anything, the parents should be the ones who control the child's introduction to it. A teen-age boy is going to get a hold of porn. He's going to find something to look at while he masturbates his willy raw. You aren't going to stop them, so why not make a descion as to what it will be?
      Let me stop and ask a question, how many of us searched our parents room when they were out? How many of us found the Playboy or Penthouse, or better yet the movie Dad had stashed away somewhere? I did, those were my first experiences of human sexuality. And, if I am cursed with kids, I have every intention of having a few items "hidden" in the house. I'll make sure those items are carefully selected to present a view of sex, to my child, that most agrees with my beliefs. If I have a kid, I it want to know that sex is a good thing, and that violence should be used only when other methods fail. One way to do that is to control what input that child gets, and I intend to do just that. And it would be nice if the media helped out just a bit.

      • Not only do I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I am a teenager myself (I'm 16), as well as a pacifist.

        It seems to me that your view on human sexuality is vastly more healthy (and more true) than mainstream views.

        However, I would contend that violence does have a purpose and even a need, but only as a form of education. As it is violence is ridiculously glorified. Really, the same goes for irresponsible sex (listened to any rap lately?).

        Not showing these things is not the answer. These things should be shown, so that people can learn from them.

    • Interesting national difference here, incidentally. In Canada, there used to be (might still be) a show where they air music videos that were otherwise banned and then get to talk about it and tsk-tsk while simultanously being titillated and hiking ratings.

      The only discussion that really interested me regarded a Radiohead video that had been partially censored in the U.S. and Canada. For different things. In the U.S., they cut out all the sex. In Canada, they cut out all the violence.

      That brings to mind a possible problem here. Who will set the standard and what are they going to allow that some large percentage of parents won't get pissed off about? Sex education? Evolution? Religion? Politics? I mean, access to stuff your parents/community doesn't want you to see is in some ways a saving grace of the internet. Because there's still lots of parents telling their kids that pregnancy happens when a boy sees a girl in a swimsuit. Or Buddhism = evil. Or hey, how about foreign = untrustworthy/dangerous.

      I do agree that simply saying, "parents, ya gotta watch your kids" is an impossible oversimplification. No one questions the need to protect our kids. But I firmly believe that a little education and communication goes a lot farther than filters and a separate net can. There will always be Johnny next door with the real thing.
  • Does the book contain all the URLs the researchers visited while compiling the report?

    Gimme, gimme, gimme :)

  • "Kids" is problematic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by climber ( 53359 ) <slashdot@doxsystem[ ]om ['s.c' in gap]> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @09:48PM (#4720723) Homepage
    The idea of a "kids-safe" domain is fundamentally sound (from a psychological perspective). The problem is that 'kids' don't like to be called "kids". Ergo, ".kids.us" is likely to be a dismal failure in the target market, even if it's a good idea (i.e., if you were 13-16, would you be caught dead surfing a domain called 'yadda-yadda.kids.com'? I didn't think so...)
  • Kids these days...can't trust them. Turn your back and their faces are glued to porn, they are attempting to light buildings on fire, or are shooting each other. Children are completely incompetent and the government should protect them from the big scary world and some how allow them only to view *.kids.us sites on the internet.

    Children will love *.kids.us because it is completely hand filtered/checked by adults. Children love regurgitated garbage, they want you to feed them more garbage (school just isn't enough for them).

    Children don't want to learn useful things. It's impossible that they would want to know how the world works. What they really want to know is how to light buildings on fire and shoot each other. The reason they want to know these things is because they are bad. Just like humans and adults. We cannot let them know these bad things.

    Children are not to be confused with adults. They are very different. In fact they aren't even considered human, which is why the adults don't apply the United States Constitution like the adults apply it to themselves.

    The internet is one big filthy pot that corrupts these sub-humans. We must protect the children.
    • we need to have this as a moderation selection on /.

      +1 Funny sometimes just doesn't apply
      +1 Insightful doesn't either
      Sometime sarcasm can combine the two.

  • Youth, Pornography, and the Internet. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a matter of fact, most of the pornography I've seen was downloaded from the internet in my youth. And this was back when the internet was heralded as a great tool of communication and education. There was no spam, there were few flame wars, people still knew what archie and gopher were.. Porn wasn't yet everywhere, but it was still everywhere.

    Of course, my kids won't have the free reign over the net that I had. Yet, I don't doubt that any offspring of mine will have an overabundance of porn sprung upon them. I mean, christ, you can't search for an .rpm without having porn spam thrown at you.

    Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? I mean, no sane parent is going to say, "Woohoo! My kids found some porn!" On the other hand, porn, and sex itself, is still covered in a Victorian obscurity. I can't help but wonder if a greater awareness of, "Yes, people boff. People boff a lot." wouldn't result in the slowing of the spread of various diseases and such.

    Anyway, enough rambling. Some domain name won't work. As someone else pointed out, kids don't like being called kids, and you won't catch one over the age of twelve browsing anything that ends in .kids. I think, rather than this, the ideal solution is for parents to shut the hell up about how much they work and how they have to think of their careers. Spend time with yer bloody offspring, and stop using the 'net as a baby sitter.
  • Having a .kids.us domain won't be the greatest thing since the www, and I think we all know it.

    As many people have pointed out in this forum already, Adolescents often _want_ to see the porn that's out there, and are smart enough to just close the window when (if?) they don't want it. While some adolescents may be traumatized by having porn made of them, looking at it certainly won't hurt them. If it broadens their horizons a bit, I would call that a Good Thing (TM).

    Now, here's why I'm all for doing this:

    Congress has been trying to censor the internet longer than I've been using it. Every time, the supreme court whacks them down, but they just don't seem to get the picture. Instituting .kids.us will placate congress and allow everybody who votes for it to go home and tell their constituents "Yes, I voted to save out children from the internet!" While not infringing on the free speech (and access to speech) rights of adults. On top of that, it has the potential to be a great place for putting fun/educational sites geared at children--real children, like elementary schoolers, as opposed to teenagers who are generally most competent to use the internet in its full capacity. It can't hurt, and it looks like it'll help. Write your congresscritter today and tell them you support .kids.us!

  • so.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
    Where would one go to buy howtoburnthings.kids.us?
  • Come on, looking at porn is a hell of a lot safer than actual sex. Besides, how else are you gonna learn about the clitoris? Its not like your GF is gonna show you (Oh wait, this is slashdot where the closest thing to a GF (for most) is the Virtual Jenna Jameson tape.

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