[Ldsoss] Fireside talk on the Internet

[Bryan Murdock]

On 5/16/07, Shawn Willden <shawn-ldsoss at willden.org> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday 15 May 2007 10:56:26 pm Gary Thornock wrote:
> > I also depend primarily on DansGuardian on BSD for my content
> > filtering, and I agree that it's not something that most parents
> > can set up.
>
> I can, and did, but turned it off.  We've decided to handle the issue a
> different way, with the kids' computer placed in the kitchen/dining room
> where little privacy is available, plus discussion of the issues and
> occasional review of the kids' browsing habits.




 we've decided to focus
> on accountability and education, rather than blocking.



There is a lot of wisdom in what you say, Shawn.  Even without the internet,
kids can and will be exposed to harmful images, music, etc.  This discussion
reminds me of a recent 5th Sunday discussion in my ward on the topic.
People started excitedly sharing their favorite internet filtering and
computer access limiting tools, when the bishop's wife raised her hand and
said with a wry grin on her face, "The problem with all of this is that kids
are smarter than us about computers, and I don't know if you know this,
Bishop, but your son knows how to get around the password you set on the
computer."

Technical solutions are not the answer.  They do help, if the kids (or
adults!) first want to avoid the stuff that they filter out in the first
place.  If they don't want stuff filtered, then technical solutions are no
good.  If you want to teach your kids (or self) to want the bad stuff to be
filtered, I don't think technical solutions are any help with that either.
I would even hazard that filters or locks could increase curiosity and have
a negative effect in decreasing desire to see bad stuff.

I would definitely stress that technical tools are no replacement for the
preaching of the word (or education and accountability as Shawn said), but
don't leave out tips on good tools.  In fact, I'll add to your list of
tools.  Check out this for filtering profanity:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4175

(It's a greasemonkey script)

Bryan
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