Five year-olds given Internet training

I wanted to write about another Google row, (this time between the search engine and Iran), but as I surfed the BBC’s technology website I encountered the following headline: “Online safety push for five-year-olds.” Sure there were other stories about government surveillance, web hacking, hi-tech gadgets, and third world countries laying broadband track – but this one struck my eye. Five year olds surfing the web and going to chat rooms? Really?

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When I was five years-old I was playing with Tonka Toys in a dirt bank outside of Fort St. James, BC. Times have changed. I am sure that when television began to reach every home in the industrialized world, similar questions about safety concerns were raised. In response, under-age censorship ratings were developed and controversial shows were moved beyond the vestiges of ‘appropriate’ bed times. But the Internet is a ‘no-time’ space. And unlike television, which is a one-way experience, the Internet is a two way world, where users can be harmed as much as they can put themselves in harms way.

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The only way I ever harmed myself at a young age via television was the mistake of watching The Shining and having nightmares for a year. The Internet world has made my youthful experiments with horror films child’s play, even for a toddler. Some of the issues brought up in the article by the BBC included the fact that 80% on children age five to seven in the UK use the internet regularly and that one and four parents are concerned about the sites their five year olds visit. Responding to parent and government concern, a training module has been developed, (using a five-year-old friendly cartoon character), to teach children how to navigate the Internet ‘safely.’