I am the mother of a wonderful little boy who will be 4 years old in a couple of weeks. Raising a child these days is such a different process than it was in my parents’ time. The biggest difference is the presence of computers. For better or for worse, computers are here. They are there. They are nearly everywhere, from the library to the school to McDonald’s to the DMV.
As fairly hardcore computer and internet people, my husband and I are giving our son a lot of access to our computers at home, and even his preschool has a whole room of Macintoshes. What differences will this make in how he grows up? In how he perceives the world? Can we know yet? What are the dangers and risks? As parents at the beginning of this new computer age, we can do little more than guess. So what should we consider? Where should we hold hands and where should we give wide freedom?
Most children love computer games. I know my son does. Some of his games are wonderful, friendly and educational. He has the Blue’s Clues Birthday Adventure and the ABC game, both of which are cheerful and engaging and from which he has learned valuable things. I certainly haven’t gotten him as interested in learning the alphabet as Steve and Blue have! Some of his games are not specifically educational, but in their way I suppose that they teach problem solving skills and hand-eye coordination. Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon seems to be a favorite, as well as the Freddie Fish games.
But then there are games he sees us, his parents playing, which he wants to play so badly… but should he? MechWarrior3 is a lot of fun, but it is all about shooting and violence. You even shoot people running around on the ground. Is this something I want to teach my son? Is it harmless entertainment that we shouldn’t worry about? I’m not so sure, and I don’t want to take that risk. We recently got the South Park game as well, which we have let him play on occasion, but which worries us as well. The content of the game is innocent enough, but the characters use language that I don’t really want my son repeating. The characters routinely call each other stupid, dumb-ass, etc. Not filthy language, but not a way of speaking that I want to model for my son either.
I think it is clear that the games children play on the computer need to be selected with thought by the parents, but there is so much more to computers than games. How much access do you give your children to the wonders of the internet? My own son adores surfing the web, and can navigate the Back and Forward buttons, the scroll bars, links, and buttons totally on his own. He enjoys the Nickjr website (www.nickjr.com) and the Disney site (www.disney.com) and recently he has been surfing though the Star Wars site (www.starwars.com).
Generally speaking we only keep a corner of our eye on him when he is doing this, in case he tries to click something that might mess up the computer, like deleting files or renaming our shortcuts (which he has done a number of times). After all, he can’t read yet. But the nature of the web is that you can get to new places at the click of the mouse. From the Star Wars site, where might he end up? What effect could web content have on a 4 year old?
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