When John turned eleven years old, his parents decided that he was old enough to use their computer to get on the Internet. John had a lot of fun surfing the Net, playing games, and chatting with his friends. But one day John came across a Web site that really disturbed him. On it, there were violent pictures and instructions for building bombs. He switched to another site right away, but he couldn't forget what he had seen.
John thought maybe he had done something wrong and he didn't want to lose his right to use the computer, so he didn't tell his parents about what he had found. But soon he started having awful nightmares and eventually he asked his parents about the pictures he had seen.
John's parents were horrified that their son had found these things online, but they knew there was a lot of good content on the Internet that he should still have access to. To protect John they installed filtering software that only let him visit approved sites that had no adult content. They also made sure that John understood he could talk to them about anything he saw online. "I still love using the computer," says John, "and I'm glad I don't have to worry about seeing something bad on there."
To learn how to protect your child from inappropriate content online, see the encyclopedia entry on Parental Control Software
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