Free Monitoring Children Essay Sample
There is no doubt that kids growing in this digital age are faced with the problem of the internet predators. There are a myriad of imperceptible threats crawling in the periphery as well as in the midst of our preconceived safe homes. This leads to the question whether parents should be allowed to monitor their children's internet activities especially when it comes to the use of the social networks. With research showing that many children below the age of 13 are flouting the age requirements to open accounts on those networks, it is important that the parents should monitor what their kids are involved in when they are logged on to these social networks. This is unequivocally the most vulnerable age bracket in the contemporary generation where the internet enjoys ubiquity (Gross, 2009).To help answer this question I conducted a research to try and get what parents as well as kids say about this issue. The research involved kids below the age of 13. The question put to the parents was "would you monitor your child's use of social network and cell phones?" while the question posed to the children was "how do you feel about parents monitoring your social network and cell phone use?" These questions were put to the participants through a questionnaire (Gross, 2009).
From the research, 80% of the parents who responded agreed that they would allow their children to have an account and a cell phone . However, in the real senset they would also like to know what there kids are doing on those social networks and their phones (Oleary, 2009). The children overwhelmingly said they would not mind and adult's supervision on their accounts.
When kids were asked "do you have any social network account?" around 90% gave an affirmative response. When asked "do your parents monitor your account?" 95% of those who have accounts the also gave an affirmative response When asked what parents do with inappropriate post, 45% said they were asked do delete those friends from the friend's list, while the rest either deleted the message or were asked to contact the friend and ask them to delete the message. These are some of the somewhat spontaneous and honest responses received from the test subjects who happened to be teenage children
When parents were asked whether their children below the age of thirteen had those accounts, 80% said they did or they would allow them to have them. When asked whether they would monitor those accounts almost hundred percent said they would. When asked what they would do with inappropriate post on the children's account many of the said they would ask their kids to delete them as friends (90%).(Oleary, 2009).
While conducting this research many parents expressed the feeling that they would monitor their children's social network accounts and cell phones as well as their friends. These sentiments resonated from the children's perspective this has been confirmed also by (Oleary, 2009).In synopsis, it would be correct to conclude that: from the research conducted, it is clear that both parents and the kids agree that parents should monitor their children's social network accounts, cell phones, as well as their friends. Oleary and Gross also resonates this view in their articles (Gross, 2009; Oleary, 2009).