Responsible use of the Internet

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RESPONSIBLE USE OF THE INTERNET
Nowadays the growing interest in the matter of the responsible use of the
internet is due to the abundant cases of uploaded images and videos in the
internet in which someone is harassed, amongst other reasons. This is of
particular significance as regards protecting the children’s security and well-
being.
Children and teenagers are commonly the most vulnerable victims in these
situations. That’s why a debate has begun about the degree of responsibility
that some webpages as YouTube should have in the control of the content of
their servers.
According to YouTube, ‘sites' policy is to remove clips that show someone
getting hurt, attacked or humiliated’ but there appears to be no clarity or
agreement about the legality or illegality of this practices. In fact, it does not
seem to be illegal to show these kind of videos.
Nevertheless, as far as I’m concerned, the responsible use of the internet is not
only a problem of the companies like YouTube, but an issue that all the society
should take into account. As far as I know the institutions that have something
to do with the education should work on this subject and with respect to the
family, solving this problem of the way in which the internet is used shouldn’t
be carried out only by the parents – children should be educated and aware in
the right values and warned about the dangers that a wrong use of the internet
could have.
To promote information campaigns in the schools could be a great way to carry
out this actions. This awareness campaigns could be optimized by modifying the
schools’ curriculum adding some subjects about moral issues, ethics, and
current social problems in general.
Once the population is aware and educated, the cases of irresponsible use of
the internet would decrease significantly.

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Furthermore, I think that the companies that dominate the internet and maybe
all the webpages that children and underage people usually use should control
more their contents and review their policies to protect them.
A problem that might arise after controlling more the contents on the internet
could be the lack of freedom for the users, and here is where the controversy
underlies. Maybe a balance between the contents and the freedom could be the
most desirable in this case, but this could be very difficult and perhaps to come
to an agreement would never be possible.
Anyway, these videos containing illegal materials could be used to report their
perpetrators to the police and in fact some webpages have nowadays the
option of reporting a content to the administrators and afterwards this content
is removed from the webpage. Here is where the censorship comes in, a very
controversial issue that can be seen from the point of view of the lack of
freedom that it can cause, or from the approach of a safe content in the
internet.
For the moment, all of these issues are in a legal vacuum and the only thing we
can do is to control personally the contents we want to see, personalizing the
options of our browser and educating our children at home to avoid that they
fall into the error of a wrong use of the internet.