Someone called Zoe getting paid by the NSPCC says:-
“Children are just a few clicks away from innocently stumbling across upsetting or even dangerous pictures and films such as adult sex scenes, violent dog fights, people self-harming and children being assaulted.”
Call me sceptical, but I'm just a wee bit concerned by this.
I've been surfing the internet for the best part of twenty years now, and whilst my address bar is carefully primed with every porn site, it takes more than 'a few clicks' to get there.
First, 'a click' we're talking about one of the actions you do with the mouse, like clicking on links, or on the OK button, or google search. Actually, for most of those things you have to type something first, but thats not what Zoe says, she specifically say 'a few clicks'. Hmm, what could these kids be clicking on?
Secondly, 'a few', to my mind this means between two and five. We're somewhat limited here. How can you find "adult sex scenes, violent dog fights, people self-harming and children being assaulted" from your typical startup page in two to five clicks?
Hmm, actually, going by yahoo.com, google.com and bbc.co.uk its mostly likely that these kids are innocently clicking on news stories, such as
Taliban gun down British aid worker
Man arrested after office killing
Man bailed after Daughter Death
and even then, that's not 'innocently stumbling', that's looking for stuff with killing, murder and death.
Am I clicking on the wrong things here? I want my adult sex dog fight self-harming child assault. And I want it in less than five clicks.
What is Zoe doing? I want to see a demonstration of this innocently stumbling across dangerous images in two to five clicks, otherwise its all bullshit.
Clicking on pop ups, leading to more pop ups which lead to all sorts. I've stumbled across these things, I have to say. I'm not really the sort to intentionally go porn-hunting, dog-attack hunting and the like.
ReplyDeleteChildren are very computer-handy these days, you know. My eleven year old sister has had a bebo for almost two years, been handling msn since she was six and has often come across something she shouldn't have.
Say your homepage is youtube and you type in 'puppy', you never know what you might find.