The boys were playing on the computer the other day, while I was sitting on the couch nearby reading. I couldn’t see the monitor from where I was sitting, but I could hear the sound.
They’re getting quite proficient with the computer, and can load and play games pretty much without supervision. Their game of choice is Star Wars Lego, so when I heard rap music instead of the Star Wars theme bleating from the speakers, I was more intrigued than concerned.
I came around the corner in time to see they had made their way to You Tube, and were watching a video with Jamie Kennedy’s name plastered across the top. It was a stop-motion animation of Star Wars Lego minifigs set to some rap song, and as I blinked in surprise at the screen, the Princess-Leia-in-her-metal-bikini minifig was bent over double and spanked by a Police Man minifig.
(You’ll pardon me for not linking to it. I’m not sure if I could find it again if I wanted to, and I’m not sure I want to.)
Part of me is absurdly pleased with their computer literacy. I’ve watched Simon, who can’t spell and who is still dicey on his letter recognition, use Google to get to his favourite sites – which, prior to this week, were limited to Nickelodeon and the Wiggles and did not include Star Wars porn.
In this case, they had put their little (three and five year old, mind you) heads together, and used the Google search box in the toolbar. Tristan knows that Star Wars starts with S – heck, he can probably even spell it by now – and the autofill on the toolbar did the rest. One, two, three clicks on the Google search results and who knows what they could have come up with.
Needless to say, we’re now looking into parental controls for the Internet.
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Now the fun begins Dani! My 7 y.o. is playing Runescape – I somewhat reluctantly (I said no, Dad said OK after lots of his pleading) let him play as a lot of his friends (same age and older) were there, and it’s a fantasy/knights game. He’s doing a lot of keying, spelling and chatting online with his friends in the chat option- I warn him to never disclose his real ID or information, as you never know who’s on there. He’s very diligent about it, but it still scares me somewhat. His priority is gaining gold coins, selling cowhides etc. to get to the next level. Which is just fine by me now, but I tend towatch him like a hawk when he’s online.
Kinda funny – but not. I hate it when that crap happens to our kids. I’ve had viruses before that put a porn pop-up (randomly) on the screen and won’t allow you to get out of it … I hate that crap! Luckily, 3 and 5 year olds don’t really “get” some stuff they might see – my 10 year old boy, however … I have to watch his every click.
I think that’s so funny. Sorry, I probably shouldn’t. Pretty impressive though that they know how to use google and watch something on youtube. But, um, yeah…parental controls.
I’m a mac user, so I’ve set up my kids with their own logins to Simple Finder (a very restricted desktop), with the browser set to such strict controls that they can *only* visit websites that are on their bookmarks list, and it requires a parental password to add a site to the bookmarks list.
I’ve been told this is just *so* restrictive of their abilities to dink around on the web, but your story is *exactly* why I’ve left it that way…..
I had hoped that worrying about internet porn was something only parents of older kids have to deal with. Thanks for the heads-up.
This is why Nathan is not allowed to surf the net alone. I my self got into trouble way back when I didn’t know much about the net and got into some site wouldn’t let me out. Needless to say my dear hubby thought it was hilarious. I didn’t.
Yikes. I haven’t introduced the kids to Google yet — I oscillate between wanting them to learn more about computers and limiting their access to two or three sites that I open up myself. So far the latter impulse has won out. I guess I will learn to be a little more flexible as time goes on, with the help of those parental controls.
You know what the scary part is, Suzanne? I didn’t show them, they just watched me doing it and figured it out for themselves. It only takes once, and they absorb it. It’s TERRIFYING!!
Wow, I thought I had years and years before I had to worry about that sort of thing. I’m so glad I’ve got people like you charting the path. I have to confess that we don’t encourage Reid to use the computer. There was a period of time when she was a toddler that she was *fascinated* by it but since has only occasionally asked to use it. Since she shows herself to be a hacker-in-training whenever she gets her hands on my iPod or Blackberry, I’m not worried that she will be behind her peers. I guess that it’s a benefit of not having a sibling who is 2 years older in the house. The Player to be Named Later will be surfing by the time he is a year old, eh?
this happened to us when i put elmo on youtube for the girls…a couple of clicks and they ended up at a really innpropriate youtube video of elmo being, shall we say, compromised by other sesame street members. is nothing sacred????
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