Following my blog from two weeks ago advocating education over censorship, I would like to posit this week that it is a superior policy position to rely on parental guidance and supervision instead of legislation to protect minors from obscene, indecent, or sexually explicit materials.
Both of Congress’s attempts to protect children from pornographic material on the Internet, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), and the Child Online Protect Act were struck by the United States Supreme Court based on First Amendment grounds. Both attempts at regulation proved to be overbroad, and ultimately would have been rendered ineffective.
Rather than rely on statutes, which may prove to be almost impossible to draft in a constitutional manner, we should rely on parents, guardians, and other supervisors of minors to ensure that minors utilize the Internet in a safe manner. The affirmative defenses to violations of the statute, e.g. the good faith effort to ensure minors don’t see the sexually explicit material, ultimately are unworkable. Like most aspects of life, children and teenagers can find ways around credit card or registration requirements to access adult material. The onus is ultimately not on the State to protect the minors’ interests, but the minors’ parents or guardians.
I completely agree! One of the tasks of parents is to become efficient with the tools to protect their children and backdoors the kids will use. As a parent in the digital age, I can attest that my 4 year old can surf circles around her 50-something grandparents. As the technology gets more complicated, the younger you are - the better your ability to learn it. The answer then, may be in adult education rather than allowing government to regulate.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I don't think government regulation is the answer. It looks like it's Back to School Night for parents. Many parents buy their kids cell phones, smart phones, computers, and more recently iPads. If parents want to protect their kids from online porn, violence etc, then they should at least educate themselves on the security and filtering functions available on some of these devices. Further, perhaps parents should set ground rules regarding time spent on the internet, monitor sites visited by children and especially monitor if strangers, websites, pop-ups attempt to make contact with their kids. If contact is made, parents can block and filter.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that legislation is not the answer for this situation. I wish that parents were the answer, but so many parents these days just do not seem to care. I look at this subject like sex education in schools. I do not think schools should be teaching this, parents should. It is unrealistic though to count on parents to broach these sujects. It is sad that so many parents just don't seem to want to parent.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the answer though. Maybe educating parents on what they could we be the best thing to do. This would include putting filters on computers, no internet on cell phones, and just simply having better communication.