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KEEP KIDS SAFE ONLINE: Different ages, different problems

Parents must find a balance between the need to provide their children increasing freedom and privacy as they grow older with their parental rights and responsibility to protect them from harm.

With my three-year-old niece on my lap, I punched the keywords "girls fun games online" into a popular search engine, and, without thinking, clicked on the first item in the list. As the pornographic images began to display, I could see that the owners of that site did not have us in mind. Fortunately, it was my finger on the mouse, not hers, so we exited before she could even begin to figure out what the pictures showed.

Solving the Puzzle Problems With Chat Exposure to Adult Material Traffic in Child Pornography Different Ages, Different Problems Communication & Supervision My Rules for Online Safety

That experience reminded me that parents have good reason to want control. Yes, youngsters have always giggled over adult material that someone's parents thought was safely hidden away. But the Internet can bring explicit and sadistic material into a child's view by accident, and parents vary in their willingness to laugh off such incidents.

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