Internet providers and children’s rights (2001)

The survey conducted on a nationally representative sample of primary school pupils shows that one and a half million children habitually use computers (65.4%), and 350 thousand (15.4%) surf the Internet. Thus, information technology in schools could balance the still considerable territorial disparities and bring more children closer to the new technologies. However, a careful analysis of the practical problems involved in its use in schools is needed. First of all, we need to address the issue of teachers’ computer literacy and their attitude to information technology.

When one thinks of the combination of ‘children and the Internet’, one, unfortunately, thinks almost immediately of the problem of paedophilia. The question is how reasonable and possibly harmful it is to protect children accessing the Internet from what point onwards. Our analysis leads us to state that introducing some form of control on the Internet is highly complex. Is it possible to try to achieve a compromise between the need to protect children’s rights and the desire to censor as little as possible, and in what way? A good model for the Internet is an adult who supervises and instructs the child in self-responsibility. Therefore, the real challenge of the immediate future is to educate parents, not only them, about the Internet.