COMPUTERS AND THINGS
In the post comes an excellent booklet Children and the Media, produced by Mediawatch-UK It has common sense advice and some illuminating information about how much TV children watch, and how to win back some family life if things have turned in to hours of zombie-like inertia in front of a flickering screen. It is scary how naive some people are about the Internet: they seem to think that if a child is sitting alone in an upstairs room, contacting complete strangers and chatting to them for hours or surfing through all sorts of weird, pornographic or violent sites...well, it doesn't matter very much. It does matter. This new booklet is readable and useful, and at £2.50p a good investment.
4 comments:
I hardly know how to work my computer but I believe that there are anti-spyware and virus programmes which can be installed that block pornographic and other harmful websites. Would you be able to track them down through Mediawatch, perhaps, and post the information on your own site? I shall make inquiries and pass on any information I am able to discover via your comments but you really would be doing a service to concerned parents who might read your blog by drawing their attention to them. Can any of your other readers help? I wish I could be more informative.
Joanna, it's me again. I've just Googled 'anti-pornography computer filters' and an entire range of products came up which claim to protect children's and other computers from harmful access. My technical knowledge is low and I am not in a position to recommend any personally but, with your contacts, I am sure you can track safe filters down and, perhaps, post further details. They would put many parent's minds at rest and protect children from dangerous influences. Schools, I believe, also install them and your contacts there might also be useful.
Hi Joanna, we have met, a loooooooong time ago and I simply cannot remember where except by recognising you immediately once I saw you on Television years ago.[ As an ex seminarian and professional junior God-botherer in those days it could have been anywhere]
Anyway thanks for all you do.
Back to topic.
By all means use any anti-porn software available - but there is enough very harmful 'soft porn' and detrimental attitudes regarding every manner of salacious or corrupting lifestyle freely availble on the internet that attempting to protect the naiive innocent is a losing battle.
Sadly departed Mgr Gilbey said that there is nothing evil we can't vanquish with Truth and Love.
As a father of three children all entering or appraching their teens I have to state that I started equipping my children for the 'harsh realities/ illusions/ lies of the world' when they were barely out of the high chair....
primarily the first assault on children's minds is the television.
the most harmful are those which portray life in a twisted way - ironically the majority of these programmes are the ones deliberately oriented towards children - children in children's dramas are rude, wrong thinking, selfish, narcissistic and travelling from neurotic crisis to antagonistic self-wrought crisis or always seeking revenge or displaying spite - not real children or teens - they merely promoted a 'right-on' stereotype; so out they went.
ditto all soap operas; the benign,humorous nature of coronation street seemed to dissipate rapidly in the early nineties and every other one was reprehensible and anti-human - so out went soaps.
what replaced them ?
well surprisingly what would be considered only appropriate for mature audiences - as well as a few select animated series which inspired friendship [pokemon] or sheer fairy tale fantasy which inspired perceptions of good vs evil [yu-gi-oh] or belly laugh good stories or nonsense [ Home Movies, Simpsons, Futurama, fairly odd parents]
Mature audiences ? -well what kind of things would children appreciate ? or understand, or not be distressed or deeply affected by ? Well children are different but let's start with comedy - recently the kids have become re-acquainted with 'one foot in the grave' , but they were raised on [incredibly] Frasier, dinner ladies, various benign uk and american old-fashioned sit-coms from many decades ago but I doubt if any of you would ever guess what their favourite was: 'Jeeves and Wooster !'
Now this may seem quite ridiculous, but comedy introduces aspect of life in a way that children can just about 'understand the gist of what is going on' and it depends upon the age as to what questions will follow - and in these sort of thing a truthful answer is readily accepted and discerned over at a surprisingly deep level. children love to feel a part of something, which is why they love long running series - Frasier was perfect for this - they got to know the people and felt like they belonged.
The same goes for drama and comedy drama - this may seem terrible but two things used to get our children to sleep. one was the film 'remains of the day' with its hypnotic music - the other was 'I claudius' even amidst the shouting and occasional screaming the deeply complex speech patterns seemed to hone in on the toddlers' attention - when it was on they would not move away from the screen.
Drama and comedy drama - well when it came to scares the best thing we found was funny horror - and nobody does this better than the chinese with their innocent comedy ghost stories like 'mr vampire' the children were besotted with the film. Asian cartoons like Howl's moving castle and spirited away are as good as anything disney produced [incidentally their favourite disney's may surprise you - dumbo, snow white, the little mermaid,finding nemo but their long term favourite was the hunchback of notre dame!!?] but back to drama :
They became hooked on 'judging Amy' ; which could have some harrowing, adult themes, but because they were dealt with responsibly we rarely had any qualms with letting the children watch all but a few.Columbo ! [They loved the tricks] Hornblower,
long running sci-fi series, Ally Macbeal, but here's the crunch many of you may feel affronted and scandalised that I should allow my children to watch them : Buffy the vampire slayer and Angel.
Why allow them to see such violence and horror ? Well I think the best answer I can give is not mine : It's from tremendous trifles by chesterton in two essays [both online [just google chesterton and martin ward]] the red angel and the devil's grandmother. Please read.
Now pornography is silly, demeaning, ridiculous and an abject lie - and children need to know this - the easiest way to do this is by explaining prostitution - kids are so ready and mature when copng with the truth it's amazing - it's when it's all cluttered up with equivocations and obfuscations that the problems arise. Truth is our best weapon - the truth about love, our sexuality, our bodies and both the beauty and ridiculous character of them.
To fight porn we have to both portray it as it really is and prepare our children to face it head on - with wisdom, understanding and familiarity; preventing the whole notion of it possessing a mystique of 'forbidden fruit' ; rather something quite sad, false and delusory and ultimately stupid.
If a kid knows that the women on the screen are bad actors thinking about shoes or what to have for lunch, and that the sex portrayed has nothing to do with lovemaking, we destroy one thing - self-participation in the fantasy...
it shatters the looking glass, it reveals the emperor to have no clothes....
suppressing and hiding things make children inquisitive and secretive, informed knowledge and understanding in the full light of truth [with concern and love for their age and circumstances] can make what could be unwittingly dangerously enticing [if they remained ignorant] ultimately become boring, mundane, mediocre and laughable and not worth bothering with....
onthesideoftheangels:
Good thought's...
I am a parent also and your views on dealing with the porn head on has made me re-think how to handle it.
I do feel however that the mere visual stimuli of it is so powerful and addicting that just understanding it isn't enough.It almost becomes a "drug like substance" you need to just stay away from. Very difficult to deal with.
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