Ethical Impacts of the Internet on Children and Teenagers Essay

As the use of profits dominates e truly activity in the global market, its use in homes and schools has exponentially grown raising occupy on its ethical effect on children and teenagers. The nature of the greensters use of lucre has generated heat and anxiety among the general in the public eye(predicate) as the purchase order calls for ethical and moral guidelines that would protect children and teenagers from negative effect of the net income.This paper proposes a inquiry that lead identify the effect of mesh use among the puppyish community as the academic and policy importance concerning the opportunities and dangers of net income use observe to be raised. The paper identifies these opportunities and dangers as it proposes the methodology and limitations for the research paper. 2. 0 initiation 2. 1 BackgroundInternet which slowly started as a web for military officers in the c senior war eventually became an important mother fucker in the academic corridors and today the former Arpanet has greatly grown to let the primary platform for communication and interaction for different communities around the world. As the Internet traffic hit millions of users each day the communication engineering continue to grow to allow for infinite tuition access and moment interaction by users, a fact that has brought nearly a social paradigm shift in the elbow room societies used to live in the before days.This technology has particularly been embraced by children and teenagers as a way of skill, socializing and leisure. In the developed countries and many a(prenominal) other regions around the word, net profit access has ceased to being a trademark for the privileged members of the society as its use in the workplace, education institutions and leisure places continue to grow exponentially. As the use of reckoners and net profit become more and more entrenched in our day to day r tabuine practices, it has become a basic ingest not only in the offices but also at our homes.The posture of meshwork at our homes has opened up a super road to children and teenagers who argon being referred to as the digital generation that incidentally predisposes them to overwhelming information and social sites that may contribute heavily in geological formation their behavioural patterns. Whereas internet offers a perfect educational platform for the modern people, it is also seen largely as a risk factor that could let out them to adult sites, make them more addicted and dependant on the internet and eventually instil anti-social behaviour in some of them.While this distinguish demands a critical stance given the consequences it has on the future generation, very teeny independent researches has been conducted to inform the policy makers and end the growing public anxiety. In close of the researches conducted in the recent past only a few stupefy focused on the social consequences of the internet among the children and teenager s. The households with children or/and teenagers that have access to the internet is however more common than those without (Wigley and Clacke, 2000). 2. 2 Research ObjectivesThe main objective of the proposed research project is to look for the intrusion of the internet on children and teenagers based on the expected social, cognitive and behavioural patterns in the society. The research project will aim at identifying issues that variegate from the laid down expectations both at school, home and in the society which find their root from the internet. 2. 3 Research Question The proposed paper will focus on answering the following primary question What atomic number 18 the ethical impact on the use of internet among the children and teenagers?To effectively explore the primary research question the following secondary questions will be analyzed? What argon the children/teenagers perceptions towards internet? What are the perceptions of the parents whose children are using int ernet at home or/and school? What are the important contrasts in internet activities from what is expected to what is actually practised? What are the possible impacts of these struggles among the theoretical and practical internet activities on children/teenagers social development? 2. 4 Research Signifi gougeceA study conducted in the UK by Wigley and Clacke (2000), revealed that among the young people aged between 7 and 16 years, 75% of them have used the internet as compared to only 38% from the adult creation. This explains that in the contemporary society the young are actually the pioneers of the internet culture. For a long time children and teenagers have also been regarded as a special(a) homogenous object in other studies a fact that has do this category of population marginalised and often left out in researches on the internet.Even in the midst of growing researches on e-commerce and e-democracy very little efforts are focusing on the expanding online market drive n by the young people. For these reasons children and teenagers are often left out in technological progress as the market analysis is evaluated. As the social effects of internet on the young people become obvious in most societies it is becoming more difficult to ignore the subject and therefore many empirical projects on children and teenagers use of the internet are coming up.This makes it catch moment in which the research agenda on this category of population must be given priority. 3. 0 Literature Review 3. 1 Nature of Internet Usage Recent surveys reveal that children and teenagers attach naughty value to the usage of internet to gather information, entertainment leisure and as a medium of communication. According to Valkenburg and Soeters (2001), 73% of the children and teenagers use internet as an education tool, 59% use it for E-mails, 38% to play games, 32% for chatting with friends and 31% use internet as a hobby and an area of interest.The internet has already revol utionized the social patterns of our younger population drastically changing the earlier forms of communication and interaction among the peers. A research conducted by Valkenburg and Soeters (2001), indicates that among most households internet has continued to elicit mixed reaction between the parents and their young ones as it is considered to advantageously lead the young toward the wrong direction if mismanaged or taken for granted.While the parents praise the internet for its role in availing most of the information that their children would need in pursuit of their education, the children consider the opportunity more as a source of entertainment that gives them a break from the other old fashioned entertainment sources. The tug of war between the parents and children demonstrates an obvious digital generation gap in which children and teenagers who normally acquire and understand current internet skills faster than their parents get transformed into family tutors.The expe rtise in computer and internet skills among the children gives them a symbolic advantage over their parents that can easily be mis-used in pushing their interests that could not necessarily be canonical by their parents. The current researches on the social context in which internet is focusing more in identifying ways and means in which children and teenagers are changing their homes into centres for content production, entertainment and leisure.This fact has in essence brought about new approaches in childrens activities as questions linger on whether learning has become more fun, playing is turning more and more educational and whether online chatting is part of civic participation or a way of withdrawal from the general society. This kind of researches therefore calls for the need to analyse the online content that is most preferred by children and teenagers. This raises a challenge given the large book of online contents from which one can choose from and the fact that the hy pertext content can be actualized by the user.This has in effect discouraged most of the researchers carrying out studies on the impact of internet on children and teenagers. Most of the researches today are however guided by the policy issues that are endeavouring in hard to balance the benefits that the internet offers to the young population against the harm that may be associated with some of the sites. Therefore the key agenda is on how the society in general should ethically conceptualize and balance the benefits and the dangers of the internet on the children and teenagers at bottom there spheres of influence.