Re: Should a 12 year old have a computer in her room?

Rich wrote:
My wife thinks it's ok and says the girl is trustworthy and needs
privacy to do her homework.

I think kids shouldn't have a machine in their room for many reasons.
Obviosly there is the issue of the dangers of the internet, but, beyond
that, I think it will result in less family time/more seclusion. I can
see the girl being holed up in her room 24 hours a day. Also, there are
3 younger children who will want to use it who will of course claim "it
isn't fair".

Fortunately we're a few years away from this problem although my son
(age almost 5) has his own PC in the lounge where he can play games and
we occasionally show him stuff on a web browser. He can play on it when
we're not around (lots of educational games), although as he can't read
yet he's not capable of internet access.

My longer term solution will be to tweak the PC I use as a firewall to
log everything he does with the internet and bar access to certain sites
from that PC (or its replacement, given that it's older than he is).
That way, even if he does access things when we're not around, he will
be fairly restricted on what he can get to and we'll be able to audit it
afterwards. I leave my PC with a password-protected screen saver
running, although at the moment that's to protect it from cats that
walk/sleep on the keyboard.
--
Dave
mail da ve@xxxxxxxxxxx (without the space)
http://www.llondel.org
So many gadgets, so little time
.

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