CHILDREN APPROPRIATE CONTENT ABDULLAHI UMAR

The media affects our children’s social, emotional and physical developments. In many ways, the internet is a huge library both having contents to teach and entertain. However, all of the content may be equally accessible. Not all Internet content is appropriate for children.

 Children are really influenced by the everything they see, hear, and interact with.  children may be exposed to materials which may cause risky and illegal behaviours making them think it is ok to copy these activities.

 many young children are learning about sex from the Internet, media and social networks.  Without the attention of parents or guardians, children may develop opinions on their self-images sexually.

 Children are becoming more addicted to watching television and not participating in physical activities.

 Children watch too much television and they see plenty of violent activities and drug intoxications like alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking.  On television children do not have to look hard to find inappropriate materials, in fact almost all entertainment channels have bad contents.

 Many children have mobile devices like Iphone and android or tablets and are connected to many social media networks that do not have restrictions.  In this case, children are connected to people or different age and tribe around the world and learn many things without the knowledge of the parents.

There are ways that parents or guardians can restriction their children and control what they can do with the internet and what they watch on television. They provided the means for children to view this devices and it should come with instructions of use. For example

 Know where children may have access to the Internet, at schools, friends house or at the library and knowing if the computers have blocking to certain sites.  Encourage the children to come to you or another trusted adult if he or she encounters inappropriate material to know if it is something he/she should use on the internet.

 Install blocking, filtering, and monitoring software in order to block pop-ups  restrict access to sites with adult content, and see which sites your children visit through the web history page.  Discuss your family values with your children and be clear about what online content they are permitted to view.  And discuss the danger and risk in viewing inappropriate sites.

 Children should have schedules made by the parent or guardian on how long they pay attention to the media because they are full of curiosity and will prefer entertainment and not concentrate on other serious issues that will prepare them for the future.  Depending on age, children should be allowed to use media for a maximum of 2-3 hours before distracting their attention to a more important issues.

Method parent can use effectively are:  Controlling time.  Content matters.  Providing children with attention.  Child encouragement.