At What Age Should Children Be Allowed to Use the Internet?

Today, the Internet is more than just a source for education. The internet now contains so much information, maybe too much information, unnecessary for children who would want to utilize the internet for innocent purposes; but the general question, "at what age should children be allowed to use the Internet?" is a little general. Does it imply supervised or unsupervised use? How would a child get on the internet? The slang term, "the internet" now has several different meanings. You could be referring to social media or you could simply be talking about google when referencing “the internet.”

When the question, "what age should children be allowed to use the Internet?" is brought up, answers vary due to the way people think about the sources of getting to the internet. For example, some people think about home desktop computers, some think about cell phones, others think about a child’s own device, such as a laptop. In old standards, the internet was considered safe since there would usually be a home computer that everyone shared in a household that was easy to monitor, track, and secure; therefore, it wasn’t a big deal for a child to use the internet. Today, there are new devices that are sometimes mandatory for children to utilize (for education, etc.) that are harder to monitor since there are so many of them. The main question now is, “what kind of devices should children have access to, to get to the internet?” and in today's world, it depends.

According to an article in NetworkWorld, “Microsoft's survey found that the average age is between 11 and 12 for kids to start using mobile phones, texting and social networks, which could still potentially be disastrous without some kind of parental online safety guidance.” When I was 11 and 12, I remember going on AIM to chat with my friends, however, my primary purpose for using the internet was for educational use, as I needed it to look up facts for my research projects. My parents used to give me time limits on the internet and I knew they could monitor and see what I was doing on the computer since we all shared the same computer. Cell phones weren’t a big deal at my age back then since no one really had them and cared for them.

This wasn’t the case for my sister, who was born 6 years after me, in the 2000’s. During that time, society started to loosen up and provided more unsecured ways to communicate with others, as did my family. My sister was already begging for a cell phone because she wanted to go on social media and text her friends. It was much harder for my family to please my sister and ensure her the safest route for going about the internet, to help her prevail in her education. 

That is the struggle for most parents today. They would love to see their children do well in school by giving them access to the internet, however, they do not want them to be exposed to the terrible things. Some parent's say that they would wait as late as high school to have their children exposed to the internet, and some say they don't mind, as long as they have an idea of what their children are doing. The answer is, it depends.