Tapu Misa: The internet has transformed society for good and ill

Normally, I have no compunction about denying my children the pleasures of technology, but this school holiday it suited my purposes to allow them to keep company with the computer, the television and the Xbox.

Well, at least they were safe, I told myself as I carried on working. And quiet.

I wish I hadn't seen that TV One news item last week about a couple of primary school children in Upper Hutt who'd started a petition to ban a particularly violent video game called Grand Theft Auto. The game is rated R18 but it appears that children considerably younger have been playing it.

I agreed completely with the Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, when he said that, apart from being liable for prosecution, parents who allowed their children to play the game needed a good talking-to.

But if I'd been in any danger of being complacent about my own vigilance on that count, my children's reaction took care of that.

Oh yeah, they said when I told them about it, that's a terrible game. Very disturbing. Senseless killing, car-jacking, that kind of thing.

How did they know? They'd played it at the house of friends of ours, whose children are a few years older. They'd heard about it at school. They'd seen a review of it in a news programme targeted at young viewers. It made it look kinda fun, said my youngest, adding that, to be fair, the reviewer did look at least 18.

My 11-year-old wanted to sign the petition. "The R18 rating should be enforced. In the real world you have choices but in this game you have to do criminal things. It encourages you to kill people because that's how you win."

I was torn between feeling heartened that he'd worked this out for himself, and guilty for my lapse in parental supervision.

As if that weren't disquieting enough, statistics released last week by the Australian Broadcasting Authority and Australia's internet safety authority, NetAlert, indicated that nearly 20 per cent of children, some as young as 8, have been exposed to online pornography, most often through pop-up advertisements.

And about 40 per cent of them admitted finding websites they knew their parents would have forbidden them to see, and 3 per cent had communicated with strangers online.

According to the report, Australian kids are using the internet for longer, and from ever younger ages - prompting a warning that parents and teachers should keep updating their internet safety knowledge.

But this is not easy when the average kid is more internet and technology-savvy than the average grown-up.

My 11-year-old has already written instructions for the technologically challenged oldies in our household, the first and second rule of which is to holler loudly for him.

This didn't help when, not long ago, I was plagued by a particularly vile pornographic pop-up ad that swung into action whenever I opened my browser. I've no idea where it came from, but there was no way I was consulting the under-age techie.

I managed to rid myself of the offending image eventually, but I've no doubt that there are many others, imbedded deep within my hard drive, sourced from long-since deleted joke emails, and probably not too unlike many of the images which led to last week's police "porn scandal".

I have a feeling most of the 327 police men and women under investigation for possession of porn will turn out to be more hapless victims of technology than criminally liable.

Technology, as the upholders of the law are doubtless finding, can be a double-edged sword.

As Liz Butterfield, of the Internet Safety Group, told the Weekend Herald, the issue isn't just that of employees' behaviour, "but the tendency of a lot of people to act in ways with these technologies they wouldn't normally. We call it disinhibition".

My perfectly respectable friend who loathes pornography confesses to once checking out a website after her curiosity was piqued by an email that referred to activities she didn't believe were possible.

She was horrified to find they were.

Which is the thing about the internet. On the net, all things are possible and open to viewing no matter how sordid or bizarre. Once, we could all keep our impure thoughts to ourselves. Now, imagination comes a poor second.

Anything you imagine or fantasise is just a click away. Curiosity can be satisfied and fantasy realised, played out in high-definition detail, as close up as you like, as often as you like.

Time was when pornography was the domain of a few sick individuals who inhabited the shadows of society; now technology and the internet make voyeurs of us all. Once you had to actively seek it out; now it seeks you out, arriving unbidden, and requiring no more than a key-stroke to access.

I wonder how often this feeds and encourages behaviour that might once have remained in the realms of fantasy - how often a mild interest is fanned into an addictive obsession. Technology provides both the lure and the means to behave in ways that seemed unthinkable a few years ago.

There's no denying that computers and the internet have changed the way we work and study, even the way we relate to one another - and not always in a good way. I've known people who've formed intense relationships over the internet that would never have stood a chance had it not been for the easy, addictive intimacy - and the illusion of secrecy - that email provides.

In my work, technology is something of a mixed blessing. I'm grateful that I don't have to trek down to the library to research this column, but there's a downside. It takes much longer to check out the 63,000 references Google takes 0.23 seconds to come up with than to make a few calls. I get news highlights from newspapers around the world and then feel guilty that I haven't managed to read them all.

If everything knowable is on Google, do I have any excuse for not seeking it out?

In the same way, what once seemed an indispensable aid for the kids' homework now seems to soak up interminable hours.

How much research should an intermediate student do? On the net, the possibilities are endless.

A British study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard found that the constant distraction of technology can bring on a state of temporary mental fuzziness known as infomania.

Users addicted to constantly sending texts or checking emails, even when at home or on holiday, can drop up to 10 IQ points, more than twice as much as they would through smoking dope.

There are dangers in being caught up in a 24-hour, always-on society.