Opinion

The Internet and our Children

Thursday 20th of March 2014  |  Category: Opinion  |  Written by: Leoarna Mathias

In the few months that have passed since my daughter started school, I have learnt to check her book bag regularly. This isn’t just because her reading books regularly change, and I need to spend time with her practicing reading, but also because there are frequent communiques from the team at her school. Trips, clubs, changes to the lunch menu, that sort of thing. But this week’s letter got me thinking a little more deeply. Entitled ‘Internet Safety’, the content of the letter encouraged us as parents to be vigilant about what we allow our children to do online, and also shared the schools’ revised, and now more robust, policy on how it works to keep the children safe while on the premises and using technology.

Keeping Kids Safe

I’m a bit late to the party, but I now discover that in February each year there is a National Safer Internet Day. This year’s theme was ‘Let's create a better internet together’, and a variety of events took place. My research for this blog also takes me to the Think U Know website, run by CEOP, where there is a fabulous wealth of well-pitched information for parents, teachers and children themselves, broken down by age category.

Until now, I have kept our daughter’s access to IT pretty simple; she is occasionally allowed to play a small number of age-appropriate games apps on my Samsung phone, and from time to time we play games on the CBeebies website together. When she wants to know something, we turn either to the pages of a book – or to Google. Last summer, while attending a blogging conference, I listened to a fascinating talk about the as-yet unknown impact of the new technology on the developing minds of our children. You can read my take of that presentation here, but in essence, I would say, that like most parents, I have a natural-arising caution about her use of technology. I know I have to let her become familiar, as computers will, undoubtedly, occupy a central place in her life, as they will for the whole of her generation. But nor do I want her to be a lab rat; an experiment into what happens when we use a lot of IT from an early age.

The Value of the Net...

Ultimately, the value of the internet to society depends on how we use it, to what ends, and for what purposes. My daily working life keeps me huddled over my laptop, and every now and them a wholeheartedly positive use of the web warms my heart. Genuine humanity is very readily located online, if we look in the right places. This week I found it on the facebook page of a forward thinking educational group in the US called Explorations Early Learning. Play Around The World Wednesday is a regular feature for them, and a stunningly simple concept to boot. Followers are invited to post pictures of the play that their children, or the children they care for, are involved in right now. Exploring the site’s timeline I saw children splashing in muddy fields in New Jersey; caring for chickens in Queensland, Australia; playing in the sand in The Netherlands, and in the snow in Minnesota; finger painting in Malaysia; gathering frogspawn in Eire; and a child exploring DCs and sunlight in Ukraine. Every image beautiful, every image a story of children being allowed to be, play, do, in their own environments. A marvellous use of social media, and a great talking point for you and your child, if you are stuck for an idea as to how to work together online in a safe and productive way. I’ll certainly be taking a look with our daughter sometime soon – while showing her the safe way to make the most of the internet.


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