Beware

A very disturbing though not completely unexpected thing happened this morning with our seven year old. He was sitting beside me on our other computer watching what I thought were videos from a family friendly site about his favorite video game, "Sonic." The house was really quiet for once and even though he had earphones on, I could hear a bit of the video. Suddenly, I caught the sound of a nasty four letter word come from the earphones. I stopped what I was doing and looked over. The video seemed OK, but I sat and listened a bit longer and heard more words. I asked the youngest if he was listening to something bad and, bright kid that he is, he answered, "No Bubba." (His name for me.) I unplugged the earphones from the jack and the very nasty dialogue filled the room. It seemed he had somehow surfed over to You Tube and was watching videos of Sonic with the poster's own filth laden dialogue voiced over the film.

Needless to say, I was shocked, outraged and angry. Unfortunately for the kids, we had to stop our computer time and have a talk about lying to Bubba and the dangers of just surfing anywhere on the net. Thank goodness we have both our computers in the main room of our house where they can be monitored and steered away from such filth and the dangers that can so easily be found on the net. I'm still angry though. The video was made to entice kids like ours to watch and with earphones on (which our kids often have since the computers are in a high traffic area of our home) the video looked to be just fine for the kids to watch. It was only when my ears (a mother's hearing has to be very sensitive sometimes) heard the language that I was alerted.

Needless to say, the boys are banned from You Tube completely, and if I find them watching or listening to to anything like that again, they may lose the computer entirely. I also plan to complain to You Tube, though I doubt that will do much good. Thank goodness our computers are so close and we monitor where the kids go.

Parents beware, especially on You Tube. The dangers are everywhere.