In this 21st century society, Internet is everywhere and in fact it has become an essential part of our lives which we cannot live without. The emergence of the modern Internet had largely changed the way how businesses were coordinated and operated years back. It has also influence our live-styles and live patterns for it has become the hottest medium of communications with the outside world which we found to be inevitable. Internet has also removed the old beliefs that every business needs to be supported by having a premise such as a shop let, a stall or even a mall to begin with.
Today there are hundreds and thousands of online businesses which emerged competitively in the Internet, each trying to gauge the best returns that they are able to from this highly prospective business with low capital investment model to start with. One of the popular areas which Internet services had largely dominant in today is for the children, such as below:
- Interesting Internet information resource for the children such as Wikipedia and kids forum
- Online Entertainment such as e-news, online music with online games and matches
- E-Training and extra-curriculum such as English lessons, lessons on literature and poetry, art lessons and many more
- Sharing of information and communication channels such as blog, online chat rooms , facebook
All of us know and realized the high importance of the internet today for our children on what they have contributed in. At the same time, not all of us are aware on the negative impact and risks which the Internet had brought into our children life. I wish to elaborate and share more on this area with all beloved parents as below:
1. Deterioration in health – It has been cited that the Internet online games has gained its huge popularity among the youth especially for those ranging from 15 to 19 years of age. The lack of physical activities over the long run from these children for spending an extended long time by their computer daily on the online games, their health will be affected with lack of sweating as well as having their eyes over-stressed with continuous being in front of the computer for long hours.
2. Increase of fall-out from schools – This has also seriously jeopardizing their studies and academic results with the lost of studying time and negligence of their school work resulting in poor performance in their academic. This group of teenagers will eventually be falling out of the schools if they can cut off their relationship with the Internet where they are possessed with.
3. Not all of the chat rooms and forums designed for children are showered with healthy and positive information. It is very easy for anyone to setup their own website nowadays, which had driven the increased of websites propagating unsuitable and inaccurate information for these children.
4. Through the huge number of websites which exist in the Internet today, these teenagers may potentially getting access into pornographic website, website promoting for violence or any harmful activities such as hatched, snatching, bullying, drugs and many more. It is very difficult to filter and sensor off some of the harmful and inappropriate information which get posted over the Internet as we wished to be.
5. Through some of these information and incidents where they get to learn from the Internet, some of these innocent children may commit a crime without realizing themselves to be doing something against the law. Here are some examples of such incidents – miss-use of emails and MSN with the purpose of threatening or harassing others, which might be to other strangers or their peers in the school by hiding their real identity.