Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia surprised me this week.  He wrote the majority decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.  This case was about California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to children. To me, not only as a parent,  but as a person who just plain cares about what kind of environment we create for our children to grow up in, such a law seems obviously good. I mean, the basic premise is that exposing children to violence is bad and children are not capable of exercising good judgement about what they purchase. So, like children can’t buy cigarettes, alcohol or porn, they should not be able to buy video games that are inappropriate for their age due the violent nature of the graphics and type of activity involved in the game.

Call me naive, but why the game manufacturers would take the trouble to contest the law, is beyond my comprehension. Most decent people draw the line somewhere when it comes to profits. I mean, even if there was some legal loophole through which beer makers could sell to underage teens, I like to believe that the management in those companies would choose not to pursue a legal avenue that allows them to earn more by increasing sales to 14 year olds.

Do the game manufacturers really believe, deep down in their soul, that it’s ok for young children to sit at a game console for hours playing games that depict rape, murder and other violence?  In fact, the games reinforce the behavior, granting points and bonus rounds for the more violent acts the player commits. And it’s already been established these games can be addictive and more and more research points to how such repetitive play rewires an individual’s brain, especially a young brain!.

So Judge Scalia, in his infinite wisdom, father of 9 and grandfather to 28, likened the ban on violent games to “restricting children to the  ideas to which they are exposed” — a role he apparently believes is only for a parent to play. Let’s say I can overlook the concept that the violence in video games is equivalent to an “idea” like ideas about religion, politics or sexual orientation. Even if I agree with that part of the argument (and I do not), then I still wonder why he upholds the right of the CHILD to make the purchase. Because even with such a law in place, parents could still legally buy the violent video games for their children and keep their right to expose their children to ideas of violence, as Scalia thinks they should be able to do.

The law was obviously intended to prevent children from buying such games without their parent’s knowledge. We all know that, in reality, the average parent is not always aware of what their child is doing on the computer. Kids today have access to money, shop on their own, and enjoy far more privacy then kids of the previous generation.

Consider what kinds of content is being dealt with in the law:

It defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that was “patently offensive,” appealed to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

The objective of one of the games that was examined in the case is to rape a mother and her daughters. Scalia compared this to reading Grimms Fairy Tales. For the life of me, how an educated man can compare the evil stepsisters in Cinderalla to a 12 year old boy virtually raping women on his game console to acquire points leave me dumbstruck. Even without the psychological research proving the potential harm this can cause to a child’s emotional development, it’s hard to fathom how the US Supreme Court can find it right to allow minors to have access to such interactive content without their parents needing to be involved.

As games become increasingly interactive, we are not far away from gamemakers presenting even more reality-like features. Without spelling out the details, if we can swing virtual rackets at virtual tennis balls, build virtual gyms in our living rooms with virtual personal trainers, you can imagine what game makers can do with violence and sexual deviation.

We here at Optenet PC are not only committed to helping create a healthier Internet experience for all. We want to keep you aware of important related  issues that have a potential significant impact. For those not aware, there was much recent controversy over Amazon’s release of a book entitled, “The pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure”. Let it suffice to say that the small sample of the book’s content made public, was enough to upset anyone. Continue Reading

Five leading neuroscientists went on a wilderness vacation together recently to reflect on how digital technologies are changing the way we think and behave. They wanted to do this by doing something very simple – or at least it used to be simple – getting away from it all.

Today, it is almost possible. Even the remote lodge where they stayed, did not have television but had a wireless Internet connection.But as they head into the real wilderness where checking email or receiving phone calls is not possible (yes, there are a few of those places left!), they are going to find that they sleep better, can unwind, and have lost the nagging feeling of what messages await them. Yet still, until the last possible moment, one of the travelers is still checking email – for something urgent he is expecting.

Technology has redefined what “urgent” actually means. In the case of the scientist, he was hoping to receive an important email. But it was not something he would not be acting on – so nothing would change if he received it on that day or a few days later when he finished his vacation. But expectations have changed. If we send an email and expect a response, the expectation of a response starts as soon as we hit “send”. It does not matter that the other person may be away, sleeping, sick or whatever. We don’t need to catch people when they are next to a land line anymore. We will catch them one way or another – email, cellphone, IM, Skype, Facebook . . . You can run but you can definitely not hide anymore.

More studies are being done on what happens to memory when we give our brains a break from all the devices we are plugged into. This helps to shed more light on what all of the new stimulation we put our brains through today is doing to us. Memory is crucial to healthy mental functioning. It is responsible for what we let in, what we retain and what we forget.A University of Michigan study revealed that people can learn better after taking a quiet walk in the woods compared to a walk on a busy street. This is no surprise to anyone who meditates or simply maintains a schedule that includes quiet time in nature on a daily basis. The noise in our lives is not natural and not something we were born to cope with.

So what is the point? Let your brain relax. Make sure your kids are letting their brains relax. Make sure computers are not on all day and certainly not at night. Shut phones during meals and perhaps on weekends. Consider making certain hours or days digital-free.

Take a few minutes right now and look how wired your family is. At any given moment are your children either watching TV, texting, on the Internet or even doing a few things at once? Many children are spending much of their day connected to a device. Make sure they are giving their brains an occasional break from all that stimulation.

How to stop looking at porn

Looking at porn is as easy as checking the weather online. A Google search, a click and you are there. It is easy to access porn, it is available from anywhere at anytime, and it is easy to look at pornography without anyone knowing – at school, at home, at work, anywhere. Continue Reading

Facebook Addiction?

Ever wonder if you are the only one to have developed a compulsive need to check your Facebook account every 20 minutes? Did you think you are alone in changing your status 10 times per day? Well, you are not.  Thousands, if not millions of others are just like you, but maybe embarrassed to talk about it. The old expression ‘Get a Life” has transitioned to “Get a real life”, as people poke fun of those who can not stay away from Facebook and other social networking platforms, like Twitter.

And speaking of Twitter, we can now show you, in real time, what people around the world are revealing about their Facebook Addiction. Check out Facebook Addiction on Twitter . You won’t believe how serious and widespread Facebook addiction really is!

1. I am doing my homework and I just took a break to look at Facebook.
2. If I am not online, I can’t make plans with friends.
3. The assignment requires me to do the research online.
4. I am just downloading something.
5. I’m not really using the computer, I am just waiting for an email.
6. I’m the only kid in my class that has to get off the computer by 9pm.
7. If I do it online it will cost you less money.
8. None of my friends can get together so it’s the only thing I have to do.
9. Just a few more minutes (and then you fall asleep).
10. You are the only parents that limit time online.

dada, mama, enter

Research shows that our brains are changeable, over our entire lifetime. Without going into the neurological explanations, we can make the leap to the implications of this fact and safely assume that what we do, has an effect on our brains. And, in turn, what we do A LOT, can have a profound effect on our brains.

So when you compare a child that grows up with no exposure to the Internet to a child who grows up Continue Reading

Everyone is on Facebook. Among children and teens, it’s as much a part of their lives as after school sports and homework. And for some, it is an obsession and even the most important part of their daily routine, often interfering with school, sleep, physical activity or just seeing friends in real life!  Parents need to take action to make sure their kids are keeping Facebook and internet use in balance. Take advantage of our Parental Controls Back to School Promotion – Use this  $5.00 Parental Controls coupon to buy now! Continue Reading

Today, the homepage of CNN boasted the results of a new study claiming that children who play video games on average of 2 hours per day suffer more than their peers who play less or not at all, from attention problems.
While we use such studies to help us understand the dangers we face in overusing technology and not being involved enough in our children’s daily lives, I can not help but to be amazed that we need such studies. I mean duh! Why would anyone think it is good that a kid sit in front of a monitor alone for a few hours EVERY day? How did we get here? Continue Reading

Do you get Facebook friends requests from people you would prefer not have access to the intimate details of your life – that you share with good friends on Facebook. Or perhaps your boss has requested you become his”friend” on Facebook and now you are wondering whether to ignore him and resist insulting him or accepting him and fee forever limited in the waht you reveal about yourself on Facebook. These kinds of situations are more common that you can imagine. Continue Reading

Ana Luiza Rotta, special projects director at Optenet, was invited as a panelist to discuss online child protection at the Family Online Safety Institute’s (FOSI) third annual conference: “Building a Culture of Responsibility: From Online Safety to Digital Citizenship.” Rotta will lend her expertise on policies and technologies during a panel titled “Can We Legislate Online Safety?”, taking place on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 2:15 pm ET at The Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.
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