Toward a Saner Internet Signs of trouble ahead on the information highway should have parents preparing to fight for a sensible, safer cyberworld. The list of unwanted intrusions goes on. Parents have always taken up the gauntlet to bring sanity to each medium, whether that meant calling for a rating system for movies, brown-wrapping sexually explicit magazines on newsstands, or demanding educational programming on the TV networks. While these safeguards may not go far enough, they do prove that when parents voice their concerns things get better. Here's my list of the Top 10 things we can do to work toward creating a saner Internet.
Parents have the right to protect their children from what they deem inappropriate on the Internet.
That means that parents should have any number of tools at their disposal, ranging from filtering and blocking software to educational materials to designated safe areas on the Web. 2. The law, which became effective last year, specifies that Web sites that market to children under the age of 13 cannot take personal information from them without verifiable parental consent. All information on the Web should be dated to make sure that children are able to discern current material from old and outdated material. All information should be attributed to a source so that children can distinguish between legitimate information and unsubstantiated information based on the source cited. Students should be required to take a series of media-literacy courses in school.