Even before the average child’s fifth birthday, they’re already cruising the internet daily – nearly 80% in the U.S. according to a recent study. The benefit, obviously, is that kids will grow up having more information at their fingertips than any generation previously, and it won’t be close. In the right hands, the internet can be an invaluable educational tool. In the wrong hands, you get people who start believing that aliens are the villains behind hurricanes, third world pestilence, and renewing Jerseylicious for a third season (it hits TV later this year). I don’t know about you, but the internet creeps me out daily, and I’m a reasonably grown up 26-year-old. The key idea here being the malleability of the word reasonably. But the internet is the one place where you can find out that peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite, and that Kim Kardashian has allegedly had surgery on her cheeks, nose, eyes, ass and chest. We’ll save the way that the bionic woman is ruining the image of female sexuality for another day, but for now it’s easy to see quite a few drawbacks for young kids shooting through the internet. True, there are ways to block your child’s access to certain sites online, but how long do you think it will really take them to circumvent those
restrictions? I’m not sure about anyone else, but it took me about four days to figure out that I could surpass my daily allotment of Sonic the Hedgehog growing up, as long as I played at three in the morning. But instead of busting my thumbs to beat Dr. Eggman in the dark on mute, kids will be finding photos like the guy floating on the right side of this post. Sure, restrictions have gotten more sophisticated, but so will children. The other problem is that kids obviously don’t know what the word allegedly means. Actually, I’m occasionally convinced that most adults don’t, but kids are especially susceptible to being misled by people more than willing to do exactly that. I’ve successfully told five-year-olds that I did in fact at one time work as an elf in Santa’s workshop. Just imagine what they’ll believe with the backing of the internet…