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The Internet is evil. Formerly the result of a research project funded with the help of Al Gore, now it is a haven for scum, pornography and paedophilia. You can't trust the Internet. Any e-mail you can receive is likely to contain a virus. You can't even let your kids play unsupervised on IRC these days, because IRC is nothing but a hunting ground for paedophiles and perverts.
Well, duuuuh... of course it is. The Internet is a place, like any other. It's not a passive entertainment form, spooning government-approved sanitized mush into the visual cortices of the populace, like TV. It's a place where memes and ideas can flow, at the speed of light, all around the planet, and it's full of real people. Real people, like the ones you see around you walking down the High Street.
Would you let your young child play unattended and unsupervised in public? I'm not talking about the friendy local streets of your quiet, suburban, middle-class neighbourhood, but, say, Central London. Soho, maybe, or Camden. Somewhere a little rougher. Somewhere where you'll meet people from all parts of life.
Would you be happy with your child handing out her contact details to just about anyone? Of course, you bought them a mobile phone, so people calling them needn't even go through you...
Wake up and smell the fucking coffee. You're stupid. Go on, say it. "I'm stupid". There you go. Realise that the Internet is just like the real world, in digital form. Stop demanding draconian, unworkable laws just because YOU are too fucking lazy to take the first bit of responsibility. Just because you want a beige box where you can leave your child for a couple of hours while you watch vacuous brain-draining soap operas. Just because you've been told that the Internet stimulates a child's mind, and hence assume that IRC is in some way "educational", rather than just a bunch of half-assed morons typing crap into a channel so they can pretend they're having a conversation.
Watch what your child is doing. Don't snoop, because that's Wrong (tm). Put the computer in the living room, so you can occasionally glance over while Adrian's arguing with Sandy about whether she slept with Terry (Adrian's brother, dontchaknow) while Adrian was in that car-crash induced coma (and Terry was driving, which makes it even more suspicious).
Tell your child not to pass on anything that can give someone a real-life advantage in finding them. For fuck's sake, make sure that your child has better things to do in its life than pick up thirty-year-old perverts on an IRC channel
But no, soon we'll see government-enforced legislation that stops people accessing content on the Internet "for their own good". Don't get me wrong, I'm all for stopping paedophiles from picking up underage girls online, but I think that getting underage girls to stop giving out their phone numbers is a much better tactic than passing more laws.
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