(NSFW?) At what age are you responsible for what you are exposed to online?

Where are the parents?! Aaaaa.
/rant.
I think, as a parent, that I’ll be pretty on top of what my kids are looking at online… at the very least to discuss less disturbing things, but also as a human firewall against “chat roulette”-esq situations.

Anyone in middle school (or by now probably 3rd grade) has easy access to porn. Pretending this isn’t out there and that the Internet doesn’t make it easy to find is sticking your head in the sand. Any kid can get around blocking software too. I don’t have kids, and I’m not sure how I’d want to address this with my non-existent children, but I’d want to set some pretty clear boundaries about where they can visit and trust them to be smart.

There has to be an area of the web which can only be accessed by an adult of 18 years old. I don’t care what anyone says. The resistance to this has everything to do with money and losing a demographic. I would not want my ten year old girl to happen upon a guy strokin’ it after a conversation with another girl her age about Disney. That’s just WRONG. In 20 years we are going to have some seriously disturbed people as a result of this societal neglect if we don’t do something. No parent can monitor everything.

Hey that sounds like my last family reunion.
If you see an old lady dressed in an all black patent leather outfit ,,,that’s my nana !!

I don’t know but there is never going to be a way to stop kids from viewing inappropriate content – if there’s a will there’s a way. Instead I think parents should have open dialogue with their children and keep communication open on both ends. Yeah you can keep the computer in a central area, but even that won’t completely work. Simply put, it comes down to good parenting because you can’t watch them 24/7.

I guess there’s no point in bringing in parental responsibility, since it was soundly ignored in your details. I will assume there is a good reason for it.

It’s like a person told me years ago. Your legal age is not your age of accountability. Your accountablity comes the moment you realize that what you’re doing is either bad for you, or flat out wrong.

Omegle, you say?

LOL jk I feel sorry for you.

I’d say 17, I guess.
I couldn’t see having a child under 18 with their own computer. I’d probably have a communal computer that is locked at night or something when I can’t monitor whats going on. The internet is a crazy place! Chatroulette included ;P

“At what age are you responsible for what you are exposed to online?”

When you are an adult. Till then it is your parents responsibility to keep you safe.

And you left out dogs sleeping with cats.

LOL! I tried this as soon as I read this, I had a 16 year old asking me to get him hard, ppl aksing me for naked pictures, I was like what the fuck?! Shocking! Sooo funny what ppl rant on about! But then I decided, after half an hour, to aks someone for a picture, bc I disconnected so many times with ppl asking for mine and I had no idea who I was starting a conversation with, and this 18 yr old boy sends a photo of him taken by a photogapher! Omg I havent been attracted to a guy in three years, but that blue eyed wonder was real cute. I told him are you shittin me? And he send two more that couldnt be fake.. and one on msn straight of his computer. The professional one was taken for his family. The way he talks indicates he’s really 18, that’s my luck, instead of running into weird ppl I find the most attractive one out of the bunch, the jock type that gets all the girls, I feel like I’m cheating?!

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. At what point a minor becomes accountable for what he/she sees in the Internet is moot. Who are they to be accountable too? And if they access porn or other objectionable content off the net who will meter out any punishment or penalty thereof? Some parents will get their kid a laptop and let them go to it, keeps them occupied so the [parents can do other things. Others would think it is a great learning tool so why not give them access and simply trust they will avoid the porn.

You can use filters and such but they are not smart enough to know acceptable nudity from porn nudity. With many filters if a child was studying great works of art A Bacchante by Corbet Edith; A Sculptor’s Model by Sir. Lawrence Alma Tadema; Actaea The Nymph Of The Shore by Lord Frederick Leighton; Andromeda by Sir Edward Poynter; And _ Girl bathing by Frank Frazetta. Might all be blocked because they are nude paintings of women. To block access to nudity and such might mean society will not be able to access it either. So, we end up straddling no man’s land, where it appears that kids are being insulated from smut but not really. Rather innocent types of words can pull up Web sites and images that when I was a kid you could only see if your adult male relatives didn’t hide it well enough out in the garage or the tool shed. If we kids on my day had the access to smut at the click of a mouse with little chance of detection we would have never gone outside to play football, pick up hoops, free frog, or anything, we would have stole time whenever we could to watch all manner of debased sex acts.

The buck really stops with the parents but many will find ways to lessen that responsibility, they work too much, they can’t watch the kids every moment they are online, etc, etc. It becomes on of those tongue in cheek things where you outwardly say ”bad, bad, do not do that”, but actually you acquiesce to the fact you can’t stop it, or do not have a real choice to stop it with out serious hindrance to one’s self. You say they are gonna do it anyhow, might as well make sure they are safe, and rather let them do it at home in their room, or put a box of condoms by the door and cross your fingers.

Kids getting turned on to smut is not that high of a priority, like a Twinkie you know it is probably not harmful to them but since it is not doing anything right now do not worry that much.