• Unfiltered machines are available somewhere, someplace to
all children who seek them out.
• Filters may prevent research on legitimate content. Filters
based on keywords may prevent research on breast or prostate
cancers.
• Most important, filters say to your child, “You don’t have
the self-discipline to thoughtfully choose what content to view
or how to wisely participate in Internet chats.”Love and Logic emphasizes raising children who control their own
behavior. Internet filters are essentially like locking a child in the
bedroom because he won’t stay on his own. It isn’t long before the child
says, “You think you can control me from the outside, but you can’t
control what I do when I’m in here,” and then destroys the bedroom,
breaks the bedroom door, or climbs out the window.
There is always a way around external control. Even prisons, the
strongest of external control programs, experience breakouts. Most
external control simply provides resistant and rebellious children with a
challenge to circumvent, so Love and Logic places greatest reliance on
internal control and on children’s self-discipline, which grows as children
model loving parents who give factual information.
Children who have the advantage of having Love and Logic parents
gradually develop an internal voice that says, I wonder how my next
decision is going to affect me and those around me? This voice comes
from having made bad decisions and living with the consequences while
experiencing the love and empathy of their parents. This voice is far more
important than all the external controls parents can think up.
So why use filters at all? Filters are a wise first defense but not to be
relied upon. Pop-ups, redirects, and malware can surreptitiously display
content the user never requested or expected.
The following is an abbreviated conversation between a Love and
Logic parent and his son. It shows that before wise parents take any
action, they empower their child to be a participant in decision making