Risks of the Internet

Parents believe that children having access to the Web is very important, yet many parents believe children will come into accounts with something they should not see. Clearly the benefits outweigh the risks in the Internet, but parents need to worry about children finding explicit images or hackers breaking into the family household computer. They need to be aware of these risks in order to prevent them from happening. Items, such as credit card numbers, are stored into families databases. Databases are something a hacker could easily gain access to. Like anything in life, there is always a little bit of risk involved. Having a bad mushroom could kill someone, yet we still eat them anyway regardless of the risk involved. As a society, we balance the risk in different activities with the benefits they provide to us.
According to Paul Slovic; risk is broken down into two factors: how unknown the risk is, and how dreaded the risk may be. Both of these factors go hand in hand. Internet risks are unknown to many people because for one thing many common users of the Internet are still learning new things about it everyday. The technologies and advancements we have been achieving are moving faster than we are able to keep up with. For that reason, some parents believe it is too dreadful for their child to go on the Internet. The dreadful concept comes from the fact that as parents they are responsible for keeping their children safe. For the same reason a parent may not allow their child to visit a friends house before they meet their parents, is the same reason they feel uncomfortable letting them surf the web; they have a sense of fear for the unknown. If they themselves are still learning new things about the internet, it is unlikely that they will let their own child discover these things on their own.
Others see the Internet as an escape for children from other technologies they are consumed in, they find the internet to become a good balance amongst everything. Also, they find the internet a good source for education and school work. It's not unlikely for these children to have more experience with the internet and use it to their advantage, not to spoil their minds. The Internet is still very much unknown and we as the users are vulnerable to the media. It is not only important to learn about the new technologies emerging all around us, but it is also important to understand the risks involved so we are able to gain the best possible experience from our medium.