Are the Dangers of Internet Child Pornography Exaggerated?

Essay by cwalter24College, UndergraduateA, September 2008

download word file, 3 pages 5.0

The idea of child Pornography on the internet is very well alive and well. There are people who rummage around the black holes of the internet looking for Child Pornography or some call “Kiddy Porn”. Child Molesters are everywhere; the internet is a virtual playground for them to pry and hunt out children for their satisfaction. These reviews are both very opinionated views.

The first thing that stood out to me was that Julia Wilkins, which states that “Yes” The Dangers of Internet Child Pornography is in fact exaggerated. What I noticed is the book that Wilkins wrote “Protecting Our Children from Internet Smut: Moral Duty or Moral Panic?” First thing is the book was written in October of 1997. This I believe is extremely important to the argument. So much has changed in the last 10 years in the internet. I would only imagine back in 1997 the internet and internet chatting was in the early stages of its career.

In my own personal experiences when I chatted on the internet using American Online back in 1997 it was in my opinion very safe and harmless. I would go in a chat room for teens (which I was 16 at the time) and I would go into the chat and have normal conversations with teens across the country. Wilkins argues fallacy’s about there is multiple ways of preventing children to access pornographic material on the internet. Wilkins suggestion is to put the computer in a well-traveled space in a home so parents can monitor what is taking place on the PC (pg188). I believe Wilkins idea is just stupid. Another safe guard that Wilkins promotes is software that blocks access to typing searches using key words such as Sex, Erotic and E-Rated (pg188); in my own experiences...