How safe is the internet for children?

Have you ever thought about how dangerous is it to use the internet from a noticeably early age? Rideout states that 75% of children between 0 and 8 years of age had access to a mobile device. This demonstrates that nowadays using different social media web sites is one of the most common activities of children and adolescents. Most people are blinded with all the benefits you have while using the internet, but there are multiple web sites that could possibly be dangerous and risky if parents are not aware of which sites their children are visiting. For this reason, using the internet at an early age without any adult supervision could be very harmful even though many studies have shown that since the internet is essential for everyone, there are a lot of advantages if there is an appropriate use of it. In this essay we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of children using the internet for academic, social, and recreational purposes without parental constraint and how it might affect their future. In addition, we will give some recommendations to solve most of the several risky situations that children can go through while navigating the internet. The description of the internet as the most influential invention for children and adolescents who have had to learn to use it to put it to good use. This invention basically serves to share information, exchange ideas and opinions, and communicate with others. That is why the good use of the internet provides positive aspects in the daily lives of children and adolescents. A study has shown that children who use the internet have cognitive abilities, for example, logical problem solving (UKEssays, 2018). This is because since the internet has a lot of information, kids and adolescents improve their knowledge and their skills in many ways. For example, reading books about different topics like history, science or something they like, articles and magazines online, helps their reading skills by keeping them focused and improves their ability to understand and evaluate information. On the other hand, there are positive effects that the internet has on education, one of them is by using it for research and participating in fun and educational games. For example, children have more access to getting help with homework, either through online encyclopaedias, online pages and videos that provide information on what is needed, also many students replace their printed books with their laptop and download e-books where they can find everything they want about different subjects. Another advantage is that it allows children to have a different way of communicating, that is, the use of social networks to chat easily and at any time with friends and family. This also helps children with their social circle, many times children and adolescents want to have more friends and sometimes because of shyness they are not able to approach someone, that is why a way to connect and meet someone is through social networks, they will be able to meet people with the same interest in musical tastes, sports or even in movies. Even though the internet has positive aspects, it is widely known that it is also a dangerous weapon in the hands of children and teenagers. Children have a unique way to see the world and at an incredibly early age they do not know how bad and untrustworthy the people are, this is very dangerous if they do not use it with any supervision or caution. They can even stimulate inappropriate behaviour due to the violence they may see such as cyberbullying, grooming, sexting, others. What the internet also does is that it makes them less social, this will not let them develop their social skills, due to this they might not be able to be more outgoing. Spending a lot of time on the internet can make children become more dependent on it, they can lose the ability to socialize in public, they will prefer to do everything on their own with the internet and of course they will not be able to face different situations in the future. In addition to this, there are several parents who are concerned that their children might be exposed to illegal material and an unsafe environment because there are uncountable blogs full of opinions and misinformation. Along with this, they will not be able to learn on their own since children use the internet to find the answers to their homework to just copy and paste them. This creates laziness, making the children less responsible with their homework to spend more time on the internet leading to an addiction to it. The abuse of social networks has shown an association with depression, attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome, insomnia, decrease in total hours of sleep, decrease in academic performance, repetition and school dropout (Dr. Elías Arab L. , 2014). In conclusion, the Internet has advantages and disadvantages. A child can freely use the Internet to gain experience and develop certain skills related to it, but in turn, there must be some control and vigilance in the hands of the parents to avoid any danger. situation that may occur. The main purpose of the Internet is communication, since it allows it to be fast and effective. As mentioned before, it is a great way to acquire much more knowledge, as there are so many sources of information, videos, images, this facilitates children's learning and makes it much more didactic. This stimulates research and discovery, as they autonomously enter to search for their own information. However, because many networks are so easy to access and navigate, most of the time children can encounter inappropriate content if there is no adult supervision. Grooming, sexting, cyberbullying, and Internet addiction are some risky situations that children can go through while online. In most cases, it is difficult for parents to monitor what their children are doing every hour of the day, but for them, there are a lot of applications that generate security and prevent children from browsing networks with inappropriate content.