Topic 133

means for blocking access to information by Su

The Internet has become an important toll for finding health information, especially among adolescents. But many computers have software which is designed to block access to some unhealthy information namely pornography (most important reason) , gambling, hate speech and so on. The Internet, including e0mail, Usenet, and the World Wide Web, provides those connected to it an unprecedented amount of information usually at one location: the home, office, library or school computer.

The information available on the Internet is seemingly limitless in quantity and variety, and this lack of boundaries is possible because anyone, from a schoolchild to a corporate CEO, can post anything in cyber public view. As we know, information should all be free to every individual and every person has their own right to whether choose to post out their information or access to other information.

However, recently blocking access to information becomes a very popular and controversial topic over the whole world. Like everyone else, we are limited in access some information. Whether you want or not, people would never get completely free on access information. For example, at home parents may use KIDSENT which allows parents and guardians to “block” their child’s information. In school, teacher will also set the limitation block the website what they think are not good for us.

Furthermore, different countries will also set different limitations---blocking variety information which they think will threaten the security of the country. The blocking program let people to block whatever they want, and thus in some extends it already invade human privacy.

The initial response to this behavior is a technological one. Concerned individuals demanded a means of controlling what the Internet brought into their homes, and predictably, various businesses provided one----the Internet blocking software with names like “Net Nanny,” “Cyber Sitter” and etc. These products marketed themselves as convenient ways to keep pornography, pedophiles, and other objectionable away from children and teenagers.

The ordinary programs block every website that contains the word porn or other relative words. Therefore, sometimes they will also block the websites that do not contain adult or unhealthy content. Recently, Internet blocking programs achieve a huge improvement. The new programs allow user to get into the detail and try to increase the accuracy of the blocking system. Technology provides us a good opportunity to the individual or even the government to block access to any information which they do not want other people to know.

Yet the new question is that shall we use it or not. The essential purpose to blocking access to information is that prevent children or teenagers access unhealthy information. For example, if we don’t do that, children may accidentally get into a website which contains lots of violent. Little by little, because they do not have ability to decide what is good for them.

The unhealthy contents in the website may even “poison” them, children may just do what shows in the websites and perhaps will think that what they do is all right. In the future, they probably may become the criminals or terrorists. Although, I know this sound like a joke, in fact we all know small kids like to copy their parents or adult behavior. What these people do will all have a great impact on children’s future. But this does not only apply for children but also for teenagers.

Too many allurements in the Internet, for us we should know what is good and what is bad for us. Under this circumstance, I think blocking access to some information is good for the whole society.

Like everything has tow sides, blocking access to information will also have a negative impact on the society and individual. The blocking program invades our rights to access any information in the first place. Second, the incompletely blocking program sometimes may block some website that you do not want to block, waste your time.

The last one is that personally I believe that blocking access to some information might have a negative impact on teenagers and small kids. Since, people all have curiosity to the things when they are not allowed to do so. Same reason, if we just use blocking as the only way to protect them from the unhealthy information. In the end, it may turn up that more children and teenagers try to access these information.

The more you don’t want them to know, the more they actually want to know. Thus, personally I believe blocking access to information is not a suitable ways. It’d be better that we use more morality and social education to let them understand the dangerous of this unhealthy information at the same time. Let them understand why teachers or even parents forbid them to go to some websites.

Tell them the truth, not just use regulation. Also if we think from a different angle, then it is not only children’s fault to go to this unhealthy website. What matters more is that we need to find out who actually made these websites. Students and children are just the victims, the one who build the websites is the actually the killer. Society needs to cut the foundation of this, if we can reduce the number of them, they in the end we do not need to block the websites anymore. And for me, this is the central ways to solve this problem.

The social issue is that it will prevent people especially teenagers and children getting bad from these unhealthy information, improve the overall social security. The more important thing is that instead of putting times on these unhealthy stuff, students may spend more time in their work, learn more knowledge then before. In the future, they can contribute to the country.