dragonlady7 - 6:48 pm on Jun 25, 2003 (gmt 0)

OK, I'm coming to this late from another thread linking to the same Harvard study.

I just wanted to say that we put far too much emphasis on protecting kids, and give kids far too little credit. We want to keep them stupid as long as possible, as far as I can tell. I don't appreciate that, and didn't as a child either.
My father sat me down when I was about 7 and explained swear words to me. He told me what they all were, what they all meant, and why he personally felt it was dumb to use them except in very specific circumstances. If I have kids, I'm going to do the same with them. I will also do the same with them about porn. It exists, this is what it's about, you might find it, this is what it means, this is why it's all over the Internet, and this is why you probably want to avoid it.
I didn't swear, as a child, until I was in my late teens, because my father's lecture made so much sense. I still think it's a pretty good guideline on using offensive language. It's just common sense.
And I think it would apply to porn as well.

So, my point:
the solution to filtering is to put the responsibility on the parents. When your kids take up a new hobby, sport, activity, pastime, go with them and watch it. They're interested in the Internet? Sit with them and find out at least nominally what it's about. If you hear that there's something disturbing on it, talk to your kids about it.

I don't understand why that's so hard.