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As a parent, I was surprised – and saddened — to learn that kids start watching porn as early as six years old and begin flirting on the Internet at age eight.

According to a survey of more than 19,000 parents worldwide, more kids are accessing instant messaging and computer games than ever before and porn is readily accessible for viewing.

Very troubling.

It’s a societal problem for sure, but it’s also a parental problem. There should be more parental oversight. Six-year-old children should not have access to computers to view porn. A six-year-old can’t drive to a store to buy the computer, or call a company to set up Wi-Fi in the home, so an adult has already set up the system for the child to misuse.

At the extreme, 3.45% of kids covered in the analysis used instant messaging to chat with friends while 2% of computer game addicts were just five years old.

The study results were released exclusively to CyberTruth by Bitdefender. The Bucharest-based antivirus vendor correlated results of an online survey of parents with data compiled from its parental control services, such as which sites parents choose to block, and which sites children access regularly.

So I’m left to wonder if parents – which includes me – are giving our children too much technology freedom? Perhaps we need to scale back on buying our kids the latest computers, high-tech gadgets and unlimited access to the Internet.

Maybe we need to go old school for the benefit of our kids and make them spend more time reading books rather than playing video games.

COMMENTARY: Why Are Six-Year-Old Kids Watching Internet Porn?  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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