How many times have I clicked that little box swearing to
the invisible Internet gods that I’m over 18 and thought of how great it would
be if it were that easy to tell bald-faced lies about myself during, say, job
interviews or insufferable dates? (And get your minds out of the gutter; there’s
one reason and one reason only that I ever need to verify my age online: the
porn.)
Well, a British psychologist named Tanya Byron wants to
change all that, making it impossible for a perfectly mature seven-year-old
to surf the Web at his leisure. Byron has published a report calling for all
new family PCs to come with filtering software and for greater family
involvement in Internet use. She contends that parents and grandparents need to
educate themselves about Web technology such as parental controls built in to
most browsers, so that kids are not the only ones who understand the family
computer. With 99 percent of youth between the ages of eight and 17 now regularly using the Internet, it might not be a bad idea for all adults to check out Byron's 10 tips to protect children.
Photo: blogs.webmd.com
