Children and the Internet

There are many parents who don’t take their children to school because there are bad kids there.  Over-protectiveness is not a good reason to keep your children home all the time.  Children need to go to school and they need to be taught how to deal with those kids who are bullies. They will find themselves in uncomfortable situations, but there will be opportunities to teach and to learn.  In the same way, you need to teach children how to deal with technology, especially the Internet.  Sadly, you can’t always be with your children to guide and protect them, but you can teach them correct principles. The prophet Joseph Smith taught, “teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves”.  Not letting them surf the Internet at home doesn’t prevent or guard your children against the experiences that they will have surfing the Internet at school or at a friend’s house.  It is better to give them the opportunity to learn at home, where you can supervise them (looking at the browsing history, setting up filters, etc) than expecting them to do the right thing without having first talked about it or set down guidelines. There are a lot of things that you as a parent can do at home to teach and control your children’s use of the Internet.  A great guide to do this is the Internet Safety Project where you can find podcasts (audio/video broadcasts) on the subject, a wiki that includes tutorials on how to keep your kids safe from the dangers of the Internet and other useful information.  It is better to prepare your children now than trying to correct and teach them what to do later.