Parents are talking about their kids' internet use.
My friend has a nephew who knows how to turn on the computer, open the web browser, and sign into YouTube.com all by himself. The little boy is 4 years old.
Now YouTube isn’t exactly a social networking site, but that’s still unhealthy behavior for a preschooler who should be playing with blocks, not the Internet. A similar trend has been growing rapidly over the years when it comes to kids and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
Some experts, including Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist, say that these online sites “are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.”
Others add that pre-adolescent use of online social networking sites could be damaging to children’s relationships and brains.
But others argue that social networking sites aren’t so bad as the public makes them seem…
Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University in Los Angeles, points out that the children who live in this generation have spent their entire lives on the computer. Naturally, their brains are better adapted to integrate their online activities with what they do offline.
Have you heard of KidSwirl? According to the creator, Toby Clark, children as young as 5 years old have an account. That, I think, is a bit too much.
What YOU can do as a parent is to protect your kids from the harms of the Internet, (and believe me, there are many harms out there) by monitoring how they use online social networking sites, especially if they’re not old enough to make an account.
Do you let your kids fudge their ages in order to get an online social networking account like Facebook? What do you think of this trend that younger and younger kids these days have an account to interact with the World Wide Web? Is it healthy? Do you welcome it? Or are you totally against it? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Social Networks And Kids: How Young Is Too Young? [Ethiopian Review]
