On Thu, 2016-03-10 at 11:38 +1100, Brendan wrote: > We have not owned a television for 15 years.
We owna TV, but have no free-to-air. It is a blessing, and when we visit someone wit free to air we are always amazed at the acceptance of what feels to us like an incessant blast of advertising. > but now we have something far worse than free to air - the internet. > > Otherwise innocuous content (eg minecraft walkthroughs) are peppered > with inappropriate language and, at times, concepts. Any attempt to > simply turn it off is met with wails about how they need it for > school (don't get me started) or that their games won't work or how > they need to download 30GB for the latest game patch (Star Citizen). Other (admittedly techie) parents I've spoken to have absolute blocks in the house routers, which are automatically opened between (e.g.) 6pm and 7pm on school days, plus several more hours on weekends, and whatever has to get done has to get done in that time or bad luck. That is probably best for younger children, maybe older children need more time to browse with less focus. As with reading, the best readers are those who read widely - even though a good percentage of what is read is rubbish or "inappropriate". The ends define the middle - everything is a bell curve :-) I no problem with "concepts", however advanced or strange. They either understand them or they don't, but hiding anything from kids just makes them want to know more; making something taboo just pushes them to poor sources of information. As far as inappropriate language in minecraft walkthroughs goes: Five minutes in any schoolyard will tell you they are hearing nothing that they haven't heard a thousand times already, probably worse, and they are probably saying it themselves too. Bad language is not something that kids should not hear or should not use - like knives, the main thing with words is that they learn to use the right ones at the right times. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
