> What exactly is corruptive information?

Mostly porn and torture? I remember that when I was visiting my uncle, and he left me alone playing on his computer. I was poking around, until I found a folder containing video of a group of soldiers beheading a guy.

I didn't sleep well for a week.

I don't know, a week of lost sleep seems like a pretty cheap price to pay for not growing up into the average "TV shows gory pictures of terrorists blowing up something? I now have PTSD and will vote for any measure that you say will make it less likely that my sensitive eyes are exposed to such revolting material again" member of the American electorate.

I was left to roam the internet freely starting around age 10, saw my fair share of liveleak-style material, lost some sleep over it and grew up into what I like to believe to be a fairly well-adjusted adult who can only shake his head at the sort of things people in his generation experience irrationality-inducing terror over.

From my observations, the effect of disturbing content seems to depend on the person. Some people see it, are disgusted by it and are largely unaffected. Some people (like myself), see it are disgusted by it and then are bothered by it for a long time.

I've noticed that my son is the same way, so I tend to be very careful about what he sees. He's definitely more sheltered that some of his peers, but that's based on how he reacts. It's important to know your kids and know how much they can handle.

Even if there was an initial difference, it seems unlikely that sheltering him would do anything other than exacerbate his comparative inability to deal with such material. While this is obviously just anecdote and open to interpretation, I have noticed that instances of various form of mental trauma due to inevitable predicaments of day-to-day life (e.g. non-lethal car crashes) are very common among my American acquaintances, but practically unheard of among the European ones (who, for a variety of reasons, tend to be brought up in a much more hands-off manner as far as media consumption is concerned).

If a child is afraid of swimming, most teachers would find it reasonable to keep pushing and gradually acclimatise them to the notion rather than give up and say they are just not cut out for it; why would whatever reasoning that underlies this not apply in the case of "disturbing content"?

Sometimes I think brainwashing by some clever enough sect would be worse than regular trauma. In computer terms it would more akin to getting infected by a virus, while porn and torture are more in realm of a dos ?

>> corruptive infos > What exactly is corruptive information?

I'd image 'grooming' a kid would match the criteria of corrupting a kid's personality. Or suicide/'special' interests sites crafted to target people lacking enough discrimination to understand how they work. Honestly I think there are things that I don't know and don't really want to know about on the web.

In general I'd say information that is crafted in a way to bypass common safeguards and push someone to do or believe something that would usually be considered harmful and he/she doesn't agree with in principle.

> Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school?

The thing is, at school he will meet professional staff and other kids with roughly the same level of knowledge. In theory bad things could happen, but it's a very controlled environment. Actually teachers will inform parents of conflicts or marking events when it's serious enough, and kids are generally not good at lying or hiding things.

To try another analogy, letting a kid access internet without any check is similar to giving 1000$ in cash and just hoping for the best. Wonderful things can come of it, or the kid can go to a drug dealer. Personally I'd prefer to give him a credit card. If we get a phone call from VISA because of fraudulent transactions, at least we have a chance to do something for the kid.

There will be a time when just sitting down and talking to own's kid should be enough to avoid most of the very deep trouble. But until he/she matures enough to be able to have such discussions, parents need to compromise, with the two extreme of restricting the kid's freedom to such extent that he can't put him/herself in trouble, or let the kid free to do what he/she wants but keep an eye on everything's going on. I tend to err on the 'keep an eye' side until just trusting the kid becomes an option.

> Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts?*

No, it's not, in any extent. As it's not healthy in general to intervene in a kid's conflicts. You'll intervene when there is a crisis and your kid will get critically hurt.

I think having a log of what a kid does online doesn't mean checking it every night word by word. I means having a place to look at when there is something going seriously wrong and you know or need to know if you have to intervene.

For everything less than that, it's business as usual, talking to your kid, just getting involve enough in his life to have a feel of how it's going and give useful advice.

Mmm...tricky. Is it okay for the school to contact you when your child does not show up at school?

School attendance is a legal mandate and you are financially responsible for serious fines if he doesn't. So yes.

This is very different from telling you what he talked about at lunch or what he read in the library.

Mandatory... but not really.

I'd say that the bar for home schooling is set pretty low.