A few days ago the White House admitted that it has a cyber-porn problem. Confirming in an MSNBC interview that hard-core pornographic video files had indeed been downloaded and viewed by dozens of White House employees, administration spokesman Jake Siewart nonetheless gave assurances that none of the naughtiness can be traced to the West Wing.
Whew! What a relief! I’d hate to think anything untoward was going on in the West Wing.
While this newest scandal to rock the Clinton-Gore administration is not particularly surprising, it does point out the ubiquity and apparent easy availability of XXX-rated material on the Internet. Which begs the question — how easy would it be for our kids to access, receive via e-mail, or otherwise stumble upon such images?
For many parents, this is cause for great concern. Having even one hard-core pornographic image flash before a child’s eyes for even a second could undermine a lifetime of careful parenting. Once such an image is implanted, it's difficult to erase the file from memory. And premature introduction to the birds and the bees — especially to a grotesque or perverted version — can spell real trouble for a child’s future psycho-sexual development.
Discussion Forum
How do you go about protecting your children from Internet pornography?
Modern Times
Viewing pornography used to involve concerted effort and risk. The potential for social stigmatization would hover above the would-be porn consumer whenever he would venture out to satisfy his craving. The phrase “dirty old men in raincoats” described this crowd until the advent of videocassette technology allowed them to get their fix indoors. Even this mode of delivery required that people line up at the video store and risk being spotted by one of their neighbors.
But these days all you have to do is type a few letters into your computer to be swimming in images most people have never even dreamed of (except for the White House crowd, whose tastes according to WorldNetDaily apparently run toward teens, homoeroticism and bestiality). Attempting recently to access a feature I had seen the previous night on Chris Matthews’ Hardball, I got an eye-full — and my intentions (at least consciously) were completely pure.
Should You Worry About Children on the Internet?
According to the Santa Ana, California-based organization Enough is Enough, pornography is freely and easily available to children on the Internet. The group documents that nearly 20 million teens use the World Wide Web an average of 8.5 hours a week, and that as of March, 1998, there were over 100,000 commercial pornography sites, most of which offered “teasers” to any visitor — adult or child.
Thousands of hard-core sites, they say, are specifically designed to take advantage of innocent mistakes in order to expose people to sexually graphic images. As in the Hardball example above, children searching the Internet for the official web site of the White House can be confronted by hard-core pornography by typing whitehouse.com as opposed to whitehouse.gov (oh no, not the White House again!).
Children who mistype betscape.com instead of netscape.com, or sharware.com instead of shareware.com, will be confronted with live sex shows and other X-rated pictures. And an innocent search on “Disney cartoons” can yield links to hard-core pornographic cartoons using popular cartoon characters engaged in graphic sex acts.
Curiosity in children and teenagers is natural and healthy, but if they seek out information about sexuality on the Internet, they will be hit with a deluge of negative, anti-social messages that can forever alter their views of sexuality and relationships.
Enough is Enough further contends that pedophiles have easy access to children. The medium affords them anonymity, and they can use newsgroups, chat rooms and e-mail to exchange information with other pedophiles and interact with children.
Not A Victimless Crime
The sad fact is, pornography is everywhere. According to Donna Rice Hughes, advisor to the watchdog group FamilyClick.com, there are now more outlets for hardcore pornography in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants. The introduction of pornography to the information superhighway has made home computers the fastest-growing and primary mode of distribution of illegal pornography.
Despite the arguments used by many to defend or downplay its hazardous effects, pornography is a serious public health and safety issue. Besides being addictive, it de-values women, facilitates child molestation, contributes significantly to the epidemic of rape and sexual violence in America, fuels the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and distorts young people’s attitudes about sexuality and healthy relationships with the opposite sex.
Unfortunately, its pervasiveness and easy availability discourages many people from fighting it. But fight it we must – if not at the federal, state and local levels in terms of law enforcement, then at least in our own homes.
Safety Tips for Children
Following are some ideas that Ms. Hughes recommends parents communicate to their children:
• Never fill out questionnaires or any online forms or give out any personal information on the Web;
• Never agree to meet in person with anyone you have met online;
• Never enter a chat room without Mom or Dad present;
• Never tell anyone online where you will be or what you will be doing without Mom or Dad’s permission;
• Never respond to or send an e-mail to new people you meet online;
• Never send a picture over the Internet or via regular mail to anyone you meet over the Internet;
• Always tell Mom and Dad about something you saw on the Internet that was upsetting.
Safety Tips for Parents
The protection of children from pornography should not be entirely up to their own self-discipline, of course. Once children have been exposed to graphic sexual content on the Internet, their innocence can never be regained. Adults must become aware of harmful material on-line, and knowledgeable about how to protect children from these images. Ms. Hughes’ tips for parents include:
• Become more computer literate and Internet savvy;
• Place your computer in an area of your home where you can easily monitor your child’s Internet activity;
• Talk with your kids about their on-line friends and activities;
• Implement parental controls available on your online service, install parental control software on your home computer, or use a clean ISP;
• Monitor the amount of time your child spends on the Internet;
• Establish online rules and an agreement with with your child about Internet use inside the home and away from home;
• Watch for changes in your child’s behavior (sleeping problems, secretiveness, inappropriate sexual knowledge, etc.).
The RSACi System
Of the many technical options available on the market to assist parents in the fight against Internet pornography, e3mil recommends the approach that filters out offensive/inappropriate material at the server level. The most widely used and effective of these is the RSACi system, which we ourselves have implemented. While RSACi cannot guarantee 100% safety, we feel it is parents’ best bet in protecting their children from the sea of inappropriate images on the World Wide Web.
Developed by the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) and currently managed by the Internet Content Rating Association, RSACi is an open, objective content advisory and filtering system that provides consumers with information about the level of sex, nudity, violence and offensive language in software games and web sites, and allows us to prevent access to this material.
To activate RASCi on your system and you are using Internet Explorer 5.x, 4.x, 3.x, or Netscape 4.x, click here for instructions. For America Online users, RASCi is unavailable, but you can review your filtering options here.
The RSACi System
Of the many technical options available on the market to assist parents in the fight against Internet pornography, e3mil recommends the approach that filters out offensive/inappropriate material at the server level. The most widely used and effective of these is the RSACi system, which we ourselves have implemented. While RSACi cannot guarantee 100% safety, we feel it is parents’ best bet in protecting their children from the sea of inappropriate images on the World Wide Web.
Developed by the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) and currently managed by the Internet Content Rating Association, RSACi is an open, objective content advisory and filtering system that provides consumers with information about the level of sex, nudity, violence and offensive language in software games and web sites, and allows us to prevent access to this material.
To activate RASCi on your system and you are using Internet Explorer 5.x, 4.x, 3.x, or Netscape 4.x, click here for instructions. For America Online users, RASCi is unavailable, but you can review your filtering options here.
Related Articles
What Can I Do About Porn Spam?
http://www.enough.org/porn_spam.html
Tips for parents to protect Children from Internet Predators
http://www.enough.org/safeguards.htm
Donna Rice Hughes' FamilyClick.com
http://www.familyclick.com
