[ale] Niece's laptop

[JK]

William Bagwell wrote:

> On Monday 31 July 2006 04:55 pm, joh6nn wrote:
> 
>>snip
>>personally, speaking as a "kid" (i'll be 23 in a few weeks), i don't
>>think filters are the answer for someone her age (since she earned the
>>money herself, i'm imagining she's at least 11 or 12).  sure, there
>>should be safe guards in place for younger kids, but if your niece is
>>smart (and it sounds like she is), she will defeat pretty much any
>>filter you put in her way.  i guarantee you that if she has not yet
>>defeated AOL, it is only for lack of something that piqued her interest.
>>
>>the best answer will always be to simply tell her what is and is not
>>acceptable, and trust her.  if she lets you down, then you can act.  but
>>we don't like it when the government treats us like children: why should
>>kids like it any better?
> 
> 
> This needs a +5 Insightful :) My "kids" are 18 and 20, we have had Internet 
> access for almost 9 years and never had content filters of any kind (other 
> than spam). I have no regrets this was the right decision in our case.
> 
> Two situations where filters might be appropriate would be extremely young 
> children. (Of course if they are that young perhaps they should not be 
> using a net connected computer unsupervised in the first place.) And older 
> kids who have *lots* of friends over who are not well known to the parents. 
> (Probably not wise for other reasons, but I'm trying to play devils 
> advocate here)
> 
> What I probably would have done had the later occurred here, would be to 
> install a filter, and show *my* kids how to bypass it when needed. Then 
> warn them to never bypass it for others.

I considered installing a filter and then telling my kids,
"There's a content filter installed on the firewall machine,
which will prevent you from seeing content that you might
*really* want to see, since you're 14. If you can figure
out how to bypass it, more power to you."  But I never did
it.

-- JK