Children Should Not Be Prohibited from Accessing the Internet

809 Words4 Pages
The issue of whether children should be prohibited from accessing the internet has provoked different kinds of reactions in our society. It is an important issue because although many parents believe that the effects of this form of technology are somehow detrimental for their children’s health, there is a more positive outlook for education and communication on children’s lives. This essay will consider some of the arguments to ban the internet usage and will outline some of the problems with this position. It will then put forward a number of reasons why parents should give their children the opportunity to fully engage with this virtual world. It could be said that the internet diminish children’s academic integrity (Kennedy, n.d.). This virtual world, so this argument goes, provides too many opportunities for children to plagiarise because they can easily use the copy-and-paste function from the Web into their schoolwork without quotation marks or citation. In addition, the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s report (ACMA, 2009) claims that the internet provides unreliable information for children which is misleading, no longer useful or even wrong. However, as Kennedy added, the importance of academic integrity on education can be taught to children at an early age. Furthermore, plagiarism in children's school assignments can be avoided if they understand how to acknowledge sources when reproducing material found online and anti-plagiarism software can limit plagiarism as well as help improve their academic integrity at an early stage. Moreover, unreliable information found on the internet can be minimalised if children have good browsing and searching skills. For example, several sources of online information can be reviewed and compared to prevent children presenting inaccurate data which comes from electronic media (Metzger, 2007, p.44).
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