Negative Internet Content

Provide a 8 pages analysis while answering the following question: To what extent the negative internet contents affect children. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. In this paper, we will discuss the effects of negative internet contents on young children. We will also focus social construction of the childhood in order to get a better understanding of the issue. 2. Children and Negative Use of Internet “The combination of pornography and the pedophiles it produces is deadly for children” (Kastleman 2010). The sexual contents available on the internet in forms of pictures, stories, and movie clips produce a number of negative effects on the children. Some studies show that almost 4 to 5 out of every 10 children regularly switch on their personal computers just to watch the adult material. The number of children watching adult material varies from place to place and it depends on their social construction as well. In some societies, people try to keep their children away from any sort of adult activity. Some people even make their children stay away from the friendships with opposite gender. Such restrictions increase the frustration level of the children and the frustration leads their way towards illegal social and sexual activities. The growing age of children is very critical for their proper mental and social development. Children generally are very eager to know about sex, and for this reason, they use different ways to gain information about it. Internet is one of the easiest ways to get sex related information. Some children do not open adult websites intentionally. They just log on to the internet to search educational stuff or other things based on their personal interests. But when they start searching for their desired stuff on the internet, the links present on the websites sometimes lead their way towards adult material, which drive the attention of children away from actual purpose. Seventy percent of all children exposed to pornographic material are not actually looking for such contents (Dougherty 2010). The unintentionally opened websites attract the attention of the children and they start exploring those websites in order to know more and more about sex. 3. Negative Internet Contents Livingstone and Hadden (2009) found that internet brings both opportunities and risks for the children. Risks are related to the presence of sexual contents on the internet. There are three major types of negative contents available on the internet, which include sex stories, sexual video clips, and webcams. Pictures and video clips arouse the sexual feelings of children and increase the level of sex frustration in them. We cannot say that every child who views pornographic material is affected by the negative contents. “Every child who is exposed to pornography does not automatically become a sexual deviant or sex addict” (Hughes 1998). The effects are harmful for those children who view the pictures and try to practice what they see in the pictures. We can take the example of alcoholic drinks. Not every person who takes such drinks becomes addicted to those drinks. Some people take those drinks very seldom just to relieve themselves from the tensions for some time whereas some people become addicted to alcohol and they cannot even live a single day without taking alcoholic drinks.