Are Children More Socialized because of the Internet - Research Paper Example

Children and the Internet Introduction The internet nowadays is an element of children’s natural environment. Most children have access to the Internet at home or at school. By the year 2000, there were 55,475,000 U.S. homes with private computers. It is also estimated that 99 percent of public schools have access to the Internet. The number of children Internet users globally is anticipated to grow from approximately 150 million presently, to 300 million by 2020. This is according to an estimate by IDC. Under these estimates, the greatest growth will be in South America and Asia (Demner, 1). This paper delves into the question whether children are more socialized because of the Internet. It inquires regarding children's internet usage, explores the level of children's exposure to internet content and detects the potential difference between whatever parents think their children are doing online and their children's real activities. It also inspects a variety of background explaining perceived parental control over children's internet usage. A rising number of children have access to the Internet. Children in most U.S. households have on-line subscriptions. Furthermore, in almost half of the probable number of homes, children have Internet access. Parents believe that personal computer use and internet develops children’s analytical skills, significant abilities and academic prospective. This has improved children’s access to personal computer and the Internet. Observers also point out that home personal computers and Internet access may boost children’s computer literacy and technical knowledge and affect their actions, behaviors and associations (Grossbart, et al., 2) Affonso indicates that students extend the capability to manage in a technical environment, acquiring the awareness and skills needed to be useful, as demanded by the present computer-driven society. Furthermore, online etiquette has become an essential part of technology-based curriculum. The lasting impacts of this change have however been questioned in the essence of rumor of its pessimistic influence on societal functioning and rising reports linking psychologically addictive characteristics to Internet use. Psychologists and educators have raised a lot of concerns on the influence of the Internet on the collective skills and psychological comfort of children. For most people in the current world and children not barred, the internet has grown to be an essential part of existence. In schools and libraries, there is omnipresent accessibility of Internet and children are more and more becoming drawn in, in this latest expertise. As of December 2003, there has been a threefold swell since the year 2000, with about 23 million children in the United States aged 6 to 17 having Internet contact at residence. 78% of households with children boast of Internet access at residence according to a study conducted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in July 2002. Children aged 12 to 17 years utilized the Internet at an average of 16.7 hours per week in 2003, according to a review by Yahoo and Carat. The Internet has the latent to being an extremely dominant socialization driving force given this widespread habit (Cho & Hongisk, 2). Online computer use by children is extensive and growing. Recent estimates show that 22.2% of the 76 million American computer users aged 3 and beyond use the Internet and one fifth of children with home computers use them to access the Internet. Reports also indicate that school is the most frequent place for children to access the Internet (Affonso, 3). A current National School Boards Foundation telephone survey of 1,735 haphazardly selected households indicated that children for the most part use Internet at home and in school. Ipsos-Reid Group surveyed 10,000 students aged 12 to 24, from 16 countries. In this study, it was found out that Internet was extensively accessible to Swedish and Canadian students. Seventy-four percent of students in Canada and seventy-eight percent of students in Sweden are able to go online at school. It is also estimated that seventy-one percent of Canadian students and eighty percent of Swedish children have web available at home (Demner, 8). The ways in which children and adults are using the Internet in general have far much difference. The Internet has turn out to be an ordinary part of everyday life and social relationships for various children and teenagers. For them, the web is leisure and more of a social space. It is a space for articulacy and self-presentation, for example, pictures and diaries, creating new friends and falling in love as well as a space for keeping offline social relations. This is however very different for many adults who view the internet as a means to do certain errands which could also be done exclusive of the internet (Peura, 1). Today’s children are frequently portrayed as either fatalities or criminals in their connections with technology. Issues of safety and anxiety when dealing with the Internet have been raised following the press releases warning of Internet ‘stalkers’, together with the current tragedies of Columbine and elsewhere. Many have taken the view that the internet has deteriorated the principles and social performance of children in the modern world (Affonso, 5). In addition to using personal computers at home (thirty-six percent), many teenagers use them at school (forty-nine percent) and somewhere else (sixty-six percent). This indicates that children also have Internet experiences from away their homes. More usually, the alleged Net Generation (ages 2-22) has had lifetime disclosure to personal computers and internet. Many children discover to use this technology at a quicker rate than their parents do and are more at ease with it. Due to their larger comfort levels with new technology, opportunities to learn about the Internet away from home and quicker learning rates, children may outdo their parents in Internet awareness and skill levels (Grossbart, et al., 3). Demner argues that Internet is believed to be a principally educational and developmental instrument by parents and teachers. According to the Kids.net study, children find the Internet simple to use, and like to use it for games, enjoyment, e-mail, on the spot messaging and chatting. One-third of the children would like to use the internet for training if they were home sick from school while two-thirds think that it aids them with their education. Pursuit of learning activities that are not linked openly with school is another reason why children go online. Students who are using the internet to find information for their coursework are challenged by the lack of information filters, for example editors and peer reviewing on the web. Children depend on search engines and agree to information in effortlessly accessible, visually attractive pages. Due to this, they cannot accurately approximate the legitimacy of the information they find on the internet. The emergence of many realistic strategies on Internet safety for parents and children and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 on the Internet were triggered by possible disclosure of children to contentious information on the internet. The act provides an authorized definition of a website intended for children. Principles of web plan for children are not yet well clear, regardless of the plenty web sites for children. Researchers and web designers are faced with both a challenge and a chance due to children’s lively, widespread and speedily growing presence on the web (Demner, 6). A bulk of parents in computer households fears the Internet's pressure on children. This is according to national survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Washington. This is chiefly due to its wide-open nature and interactivity. It is thought by these parents however, that their children still require the Internet. These parents also cited as benefits the capability of learning helpful things and helping with schoolwork. It is also believed that the indicative ill effects of Internet use do not stop at the secondary school level. For example, the dropout rate among newcomers increased dramatically at a large university in New York. This happened as their venture in computers and Internet access amplified (Affonso, 6). Reports by the UK Children Go Online established that children were frequently the internet experts even in households with one or more computer-literate adults. This happened though they chiefly used the internet for music and games and for communicating with friends and family. This form of web literacy is believed to be a boost to the self-esteem of young people as observed by the report. The reports further indicated that both boys and girls achieve important, possibly even extraordinary social status through the worth that adults place on this skill. Young people's eagerness to experiment may make this a long-term turnaround of the generation gap, although parents may be ‘catching up’. Children can find strategies to get around the limitations placed on them, although parents do check internet use. This is primarily because children object to being checked on (Richards, 2). Affonso also indicates that the home Net study found out that children use the Internet much more than their parents. Teenagers were more probable to use the Internet to listen to music, to play games and to meet new people, while adults are likely to use the Internet as part of their jobs and to get employment-related information. It is believed that the Internet will strengthen the negative consequence television has by now had on children’s social skills. It is therefore implicit that children are being encouraged to become social nitwits. Online surveys approximate the occurrence of addictive patterns of actions among children using Internet a lot, which ranges from 6% to as high as 80%. The disarray had various symptoms acknowledged which included neglecting work, school, or family responsibilities; using the computer for enjoyment, satisfaction, or liberation from stress; and feeling ill tempered and out of control or low when not using it (Affonso, 8). For various technical and artistic innovations attached to the Internet and communication technologies, children are, in many cases, the test users. The new communication technologies are regularly first adopted by the families with children. It is estimated that about half of the 7-13-year-old children have learned from their parents how to use the Internet in a safe way and how to appraise the consistency of the information online. The internet is not all-inclusive for most of the children. They converse often with their offline-friends, play the definite games, and visit frequently certain few web sites. These are particularly the ones that their friends or siblings are using. Looking deeply in to the children’s experiences and starting to comprehend even partly, the joy and pleasure they get may be amazingly inspirational (Peura, 6). The worlds of adults and children do not appear to correspond with each other in respect of using the internet. This is because of the disparity in experiencing the nature of the Internet in common. According to an assessment conducted at a number of schools (495 respondents), almost half of the 7-13 year old children by no means talked with their parents what they had seen or experienced in the Internet while seven per cent of children used the Internet frequently with their parents (Peura, 7). According to a survey conducted by Cox Communications, more than half of parents either do not have or do not discern if they have software on their computers in which their children go online. It also revealed that 30% of parents permit their children to use the computer in secretive areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office (Smithers, 4). In what could be a permanent turnaround of the generation gap, children are becoming the web experts in households as their parents leave them to it. This is according to recent research. The statement from the London School of Economics indicates that danger signals concerning the dangers of chat rooms and of meeting unknown people have got through to teenagers (Richards, 10). According to Cho & Hongisk, the Internet provides many opportunities in support of education for children, at the same time revealing kids to potentially harmful contents, which is a double-edged blades feature. It provides negative aspects such as brutality, pornography, hate sites, segregation, predators, and commercialism but as well provides important benefits for kids such as exploration access, socialization, leisure and a contact means with families. The Websites devoted to harmful content such as pornography, brutal online games, online betting and so forth are considered negative. For instance, scores of children are unintentionally exposed to frequent obscene occur signs ads and widespread pornographic substance as soon as they type apparently naive key terms into an explore engine. Smithers asserts that children could be trying to get to their much loved risk-free web site or doing research for school and simply stagger across one of these sites. He also concurs with the fact that despite the Internet having a wealth of substance, much of that substance can be offensive and unsafe to a child. This is particularly due to the liberty of the Internet. It is easy for the common compassionate parent to discover material on a variety of topics that would astonish him/her. Material such as revulsion group and racist sites; sexually unambiguous material; promotional stuff about tobacco, alcohol, or drugs; graphic hostility, satanic or other sect information; or even recipes on how to make hazardous explosives are all just a click away (2). For illustration, the first name of a lead singer such as Britney Spears or Madonna and can simply access pornographic content. According to a study, 25% of the respondents reported getting unnecessary exposure to sexual resources while online, and 19% received a sexual solicitation online. More than 30% of studied parents had not discussed the disadvantage of Internet use with their children despite the probable negative effects on kids using the Internet and 62% of parents of adolescents did not apprehend that their children had visited unsuitable web sites (Cho & Hongisk, 4). Children can be desensitized sexually by explicating resources on the Internet to promote them to perform unsociable violent sexual behaviors and abnormal sexual stimuli. The secrecy of the Internet makes children through online talking become simply approachable by pedophiles. Children can be easily targeted and ill-treated by strange grown-up sexual offenders when they use hours in chat rooms searching for acquaintances or just passing time. An additional serious concern is violent online games. Children's physical, oral, relational, and antisocial aggression is increased by exposure to violent computer games. The access to such brutal games has become easier for unsupervised children due to free or fee-based online games hence, the serious harmful effects of violent games on children. Another cited serious Internet predicament affecting children is online gambling which can seriously interrupt the junior’s social and mental development, for example, addiction, being unable to repay debts, missing school and so forth (Cho & Hongisk, 6). There are also dangers of social nature if the Internet is a social space. The social risks in the Internet are in some way present in children’s offline life as well; hence they are not fundamentally new. These may include trickery, maltreatment, aggravation, segregation and mistreatment. The nature of the children’s Internet as an adult-free social space is what may make these risks extra harsh in the Internet. It may be very tough for a child to discover to take care of oneself and to deal with the circumstances if an adult is absent to console and share the social experiences when required. If communication on online experiences do not get any time, or trust, an unspecified message that the child’s schoolmates intended for a joke may become too big a deal for a 10-year-old. Ordinary contact and participation of parents will provide children with self-esteem and skills to discover the different risk contexts online as well as to protect themselves (Peura, 8). With all the rampant sexual material comes the sexual marauder. This is perhaps the scariest risk of the Internet. The marauder is a polished and crafty character lurking in ordinary child inhabited areas of the Net and masked in sheep clothing. Regrettably, children turn out to be more vulnerable to this kind of individual due to their very nature. Children lack moving ripeness that permits them to be extra simply manipulated and demoralized. This is compounded by the need to be accepted and a well-built sense of belonging. Children are trained from an early age that they are to obey adults and not talk to strangers. Nevertheless, a sexual marauder can easily control a child into thinking that they are a secure adult, or even probably, an adult that they recognize and trust (Richards, 9). Conclusion Apparently, we cannot conclude that children become more socialized because of the internet. This is because there are positive as well as negative consequences that result from children’s use of the internet. Some of the positive issues discussed are using the web for their studies and using it for valuable games. It is also a place of networking and socializing with friends. The negative consequences however outweigh the positive consequences. These include sexual addiction, violence, aggression, and gambling, just to mention but a few. The Internet means so much to children’s lives and people do not know adequately what to imagine about it. As Peura notes, this is the challenge that teachers, parents and other caregivers have. These parties should take up their roles in protecting the children from the risks posed by the internet. They should look for a knowledgeable concern and significance in children’s life online. This would indicate more contact, distribution and trust than apparent control and limitations. Parental control is of course needed as well, but its function could in the long run assist younger generation discover such skills, behavior and values, with which they will sometime be ready for parenthood in the digital era than today’s parents. Works Cited Affonso, Bob. Is the internet affecting the social skills of our children? 1999. Web. Cho, Chang-Hoan & Hongisk, Cheon. Children’s exposure to negative internet content. 2005. Web. Demmer, Dina. Children and the internet. 2001. Web. Grossbart, Sanford, et al. Socialization aspects of parents, Children and the internet. 2002. Web. Peura, Juuso. Children and the internet-Towards a balanced concern. 2005. Web. Richards, Andrew. What dangers do children face while online? 2010. Web. Smithers, Rebecca. Children are internet experts. 2003. Web. Read More