Minnesota, USA –December 13, 2011 – For centuries, the use of censorship was as natural as breathing; although there is not a significant amount of censorship in the U.S. –at least when it comes to adult viewing materials –, it is still a tremendous issue. The public criticized Amazon’s Kindle Fire for not having ‘parental controls’ –because it believes that children should not see or hear certain ‘forbidden’ situations; now Amazon promises to make changes, which undoubtedly includes blocking websites and other applications from being used on the device.
However, the public tends to forget that children may not be able to access certain types of sites on that device, but could go elsewhere in order to do that. Is the public overcritical about this situation when it should be the parents’ responsibility to watch over their children’s activities As many people know, there is only so much ‘monitoring’ and ‘prevention’ that a device can do; after all, it cannot stop a child from going elsewhere to use another device or computer that does not block this material. Would the country go so far as to put ‘parental controls’ as default on devices and do the same for public-use computers
What people fail to see is that they are trying to prevent children from seeing what they already know; it is unlikely that children will come upon an inappropriate website on accident –he or she must search it. I cannot deny that obscene images are easily discovered on Google Images whenever any topic is searched even when it is ‘innocent’. Yet, can parental controls even stop these images from appearing It can only stop children from entering these external websites, but children can still see these images.
What does this mean It points out that parents must take control and do the ‘parenting’ rather than depending on controls to keep children in line. These days parents are surprised by their children’s behaviors even though they forget that they do not actually ‘teach’ these children about things, but rather keep them from seeing what they do not want them to see.
It would make more sense for parents to use these ‘situations’ as a tool to teach children about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; then when these ‘wrong’ situations may be ‘right’ –particularly when it comes to sexual behavior and other related situations.
So should Amazon be as criticized as it has been or should the ‘accusing finger’ be pointed the other way around at the public Whose responsibility is it to keep children from certain activities; when should the products that do not provide ‘parental controls’ on the shelves be taken down
