"We need to be careful about giving children access to the Internet"

[kaberett]

I was a queer teen under section 28. I say I was brought up by the Internet, and what I mean is: the Internet told me that people like me could exist, and exist happily and without judgment, at least some of the time.

And now, after that thoroughly vile FB conversation, I am going to go to Bar Wotever and watch my girlfriend sing cock rock, because I'm an adult now.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Hugs?

[batdina]

you're the second person in my world who has referenced a horrible FB conversation. more reason to stay the hell away from the place I reckon.

[kaberett]

Ayup. It's unfortunately still the best way I have to stay in touch with a lot of people, but I keep wanting to extricate myself...

[milkymoon]

The internet has saved a lot of queer lives, and it's astoundingly clueless to claim that the internet is wholly harmful, especially for isolated youth who aren't told about LGBT lives, either because of national laws like the horrid Section 28, or because their parents isolate them from information about queer people, or both. It's saved ours too, literally.

[redbird]

I suspect there is non-trivial overlap between the people who think the internet is wholly harmful, and the ones who actively think that our lives are not worth saving.

[inoru_no_hoshi]

On the one hand, some care is needed with children on the internet, because IDK about you but I used to be Exceedingly Dumb about giving out some personal info (age, sex, location, walletname, etc., etc.) because They Were Friends And Awesome People! It could've gone very badly for me - but that's the sort of concerns I think of when I think of policing children's internet forays. (I'm of two minds about porn but mostly I fall into "once they're older than 10-12, if they're interested, let them look" because goodness knows I was hardly uninterested in sex and porn at those ages!)

But on the other: the internet has been my salve and security blanket, and has no small hand in the fact that I A) am not dead, B) know and accept that I'm not straight, C) know and accept that I'm kinda unrepentantly kinky. I remain uncertain as to whether any of these would be true (for A) or known/accepted (for B and C) by the time I was 19 (or even now, at 25) without the fact that I had the internet at my fingertips since I was 12 or so. It's not a resource I would want to keep from anyone, because I have no way of knowing whose life could be saved, or made to suddenly make so much sense, because they can look around and see that maybe not everything's okay with their life, but they're not alone.

So... I think my point is that children need to be more aware of which things could be very dangerous for them to share on the internet (age, physical location, full walletname... things that could lead to predation and/or identity theft) and why it's dangerous, so we need to clearly communicate these things, but restrict access? No.

[catyak]

I learned an awful lot from the early internet, even if some of it was at the level of "don't explore alt.binaries.pictures.* while eating". I also blame the internet for the fact that I'm sitting on my own in a small apartment in the US while my family is still in the UK, while also crediting it with the fact that I have a family.

[quirkytizzy]

What is section 28? Is that a UK thing??? Here in the US we are finally just getting around to legalizing gay marriage (not in all 50 states yet, but almost half.) And the whole trans movement is only - only barely barely barely - beginning to make itself a public issue. Very infancy stages. It's both fascinating and really scary to watch, because so much could go right - and so much could go wrong, too.

[rmc28]

Summarised wikipedia:

Section 28 was a law passed in the late 1980s which stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

It was repealed in 2000 in Scotland and in 2003 in the rest of Great Britain.

It covered my entire time at secondary school and what limited sex education I received through school, and is probably why I didn't really understand I was bisexual until I was in my twenties. (Yes there was an LGBT soc at university, but I knew I wasn't L and they didn't really talk much about the B or T parts). By the time it was repealed where I lived, I was engaged to a man.

I adore my spouse utterly, but the way society kept me in ignorance, deliberately, of my full self and my potential choices, will never not be a source of anger.

At least my children will have better knowledge, and at least they will be able to marry who they wish, if they wish.

[quirkytizzy]

Thank you for this explanation. I didn't know all that. It's funny, here in the States a lot of us liberals tend to look at the UK and see your systems as all pretty enlightened. I didn't know the struggle was that difficult over there. It's baffling to me that it took until 2003 for that to fall away.

Even here in the States, we didn't make it illegal to at least talk about it. I can see where that would EXTREMELY damaging to LGBT youths. Trap them into these horrible places their whole lives, even if some limited information (like the L and G part of the equation, but not the others) is out there. It's not enough.

I get that about the anger at society thing. Some things can't be let go of, especially when it comes to who you are being shoved aside like that.

[shehasathree]

This discourse makes me SO ANGRY because, although i am not queer, the internet saved my life. it also let me learn that i was not the only person in world to SI, and that was worth so, so much to 17-year-old me.

[hairyears]

There's an identifiable cluster of toxic opinions around "The Internet is Evil": authoritarian moralism, an urge to control rather than offer leadership and support, fear of sexuality - homosexuality most of all! - a liking for censorship, and a tendency to use falsehoods to promote the agenda.

A common example of these falsehoods is a tendency to conflate everything the author doesn't like with child abuse. Needless to say, authoritarian moralism and censorship enforce a silence in which all manner of abuse can flourish.

[silveradept]

Sounds like our CIPA, which says kids have to be preferred from age-restricted material and conveniently offers filters, which don't work at all and are usually set by default to the mindset of the most conservative and religiously fundamentalist parent, as the easiest way to get into compliance with the law. There's so much information that's needed for kids and teens at crucial moments that just isn't available to them because of the laws.