37-Year-Old Mom Spent Seven Days Online as an 11-Year-Old Girl
&gt; They’re all children. And like every case of abuse, a child is never at fault.<p>This is accurate, first and foremost before what I say could be interpreted as shifting the blame from these perverts. But one thing not mentioned in this article is why an 11 year old would be on the internet at all. I think we need to have a serious think about whether it makes sense to expose a child to everything to world has to offer, unguided, before they&#x27;re <i>much</i> older than 11.<p>There was a lot of optimism about the internet, or more specifically the web I guess, as it developed. But realistically it&#x27;s not the utopian vision many expected it to become, large parts of it are a cess pool.<p>Back when I was younger the idea that it would aid in education, and make it easy for children to research any topic. Is that truly the case? I&#x27;d argue not, misinformation is rife, could any child really be expected to critically examine this stuff unguided? I think we were better with something like encarta to be completely honest.<p>Social media is an abomination, I&#x27;m not convinced many adults have the faculties required to use it in a non destructive way. How many of us have parents that seem to be completely radicalised by one Facebook group or another? We know that because they won&#x27;t shut up about it, so what&#x27;s it doing to a bunch of kids that don&#x27;t share what they&#x27;re reading with their parents? God knows.<p>This is all before we admit that children can be really quite cruel, which gets magnified by them not actually seeing the result of their words&#x2F;actions. Putting a screen in-between the bullying is a sure fire way to make it much worse. Couple that with the isolation that&#x27;s felt by this fake &#x27;social connection&#x27; and its a recipe for disaster.<p>I really worry about the future if our education systems can&#x27;t be retooled to teach children critical thinking, and if we don&#x27;t start to change the way we look at the internet to realise its way more dangerous than we expected it to be.