I would love to know if the people who worked on its design, production, sales, distribution and maintenance ever thought of the need for parental controls. I certainly didn't. Of course, what one person thinks or doesn't think of is very different from hordes and scads of people.
It has always tickled me how the subject of children modifies and extends our thinking. As a student and a teacher, I have learned about the rights of others, undoubtedly with an American, male and Western twist. One of the important rights and needs of children is protection. Of course, basic care matters from even before birth. But protection from dangers is a big part of assisting children to grow and thrive. The magic electrical wall sockets are a modern marvel but a danger to an uncomprehending child. Autos and bikes actually follow somewhat predictable pathways most of the time but the child has not learned to see them.
When we read the famous First Amendment rights, we don't find protection listed, especially not in the form of the government protecting us from things we are deemed too young to use and understand. Yet everybody knows the usual house is chockful of things children, dare I say even some teenagers, need protection from. The governing of children, especially with an eye to helping them grow up to use, enjoy and care for the rights of a democracy, is a tricky business, very much concerned with the levels of maturity any given child has reached or is reaching.
In an age of information and its relatives, any form of communication can be used to deliver frightening or corrupting messages to children, to manipulate them into giving Mommy's credit card numbers to the wrong person. The Kindle can obtain many books, for a price, in less than a minute. More and more children's books can be downloaded and might be great reading for a child. Yet, what if the enterprising 2nd grader I recently wrote about hears that "Locker Room Lust" is a really exciting book or that access to it can be sold to others for their lunch money.
Parents and teachers find out quickly that heavy-handed investigations can be a fine tool for inadvertently planting ideas in children's minds, the very ideas the oldsters were trying to avoid planting. So, it is not straightforward to know who knows what or by when.
