Originally Posted by Burns
Let me guess, all of you are under the age of 18, am I right? Spoken like true teenagers.
Your parents are fully entitled to monitor your activities and are essentially responsible for what happens to you while you are not legally an adult and live under their roof. Period.
You can be mad about it all you want, but if I ever had kids, I'd be damn sure to monitor what they are doing online. You can explain about the birds and the bees and internet predators all day long, but that doesn't stop a teen from looking at inappropriate material online.
You feel like your privacy is invaded now, but you'd have the same responsibility to monitor and protect your child if you were in your parents place. Admittedly, some parents can take it too far, but I don't for a second think a 14 year-old should have unmonitored access to the internet.
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I am under the age of 18, and I fully disagree with crisscross.
I think parents should monitor their children's activities if they think they should. A lot of unsuitable material is floating around the internet. I know I wouldn't want my 7-8 year old offspring to be browsing 4chan's /b/, and while I might not go to such lengths as configuring applications/internet gateways (the router) to disallow such sites, I would most likely at least monitor my children's activities until they've reached a certain age in which they can decide for themselves what is suitable and what not.
On the other hand Burns, a 14 year old can usually perfectly decide for themselves what is suitable and what is not. After all, when you were 14, did your parents monitor every action you made? It's been a while since I just turned 14, but I know that back then I was damn capable myself to seperate appropriate from inappropriate.
On the other hand, internet site filters is maybe going a little too far. Guys, hello? The children are going to find workarounds anyhow, or on the likely case it's near impossible to find a workaround (unless your kid is a complete computer-obsessed one), he/she is just going to go to a friend's place and do everything there.
It's like alcohol: You can forbid it all you want, but children at a certain age are going to want to experiment with it anyhow. Maybe allowing them to do have one mixed-drink (ie, 5% alc.) on occassions (such as New Years, Christmas, birthdays, family parties?) is a lot better, for:
[a] You control when they drink alcohol and how much.
[b] They know what drinking alcohol is like, so they're less likely to drink it when you're not around just to experiment with it.
I know this has worked for me. I'm sure everyone here knows what Bacardi Breezer is? Yeah. Starting at the age of 12-13, on special occassions I was allowed to have one Breezer when my parents were around. I knew what it was like, and I didn't feel the need to drink it when my parents weren't around "because I was dying to know what it was like". You know, peer pressure. It's just a big cause for doing certain things when you're a teen.
Anyways, I'm straying offtopic - sorta. Back fully ontopic, I sorta agree with Burns. Anything you do on the internet, be it illegal or not, are the parents' responsibility as long as the children are under the age of 18.
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