Out of the Mouths of Babes

I recently read with great interest the findings of a survey into what kids are looking up online.

The results were surprising, to say the least.

“Sex” doesn’t get a look in until after You Tube, Google and Facebook.

And “Boobs” (#28), “Naked girls” (#86), and other X-rated stuff only accounts for 9 of the 100 items on the list. Yep, apparently less than 10% of time spent searching the public arena involves private parts.

Seems kids these days are more interested in the funny stuff than any funny business, if you know what I’m saying.

That’s good to hear, in a world where the F-bomb is dropped a little too easily for my liking, and mainstream television provides an education that was totally taboo when I was a kid. My mum used to turn the TV off altogether if there was even a hint of something ‘rude’. To this day she still does the “tsk” thing if something raunchy is depicted while we’re in the same room. (Doesn’t stop her reading all those romance novels though does it, hmm?)

Perhaps I lived a sheltered childhood, but the most risqué thing we kids did was when the boys of the class punched the numbers 58008 into the calculator and turned it upside down (in my case it was 55378008, but that issue’s well and truly behind me these days...or rather, the proof to the contrary is way out in front).

The wildest we ever got was giggling whenever the word “bloody” appeared in the history books (whilst conspiratorially whispering the accompanying rhyme: “Bloody’s in the Bible, bloody’s in the book, if you don’t believe me go and have a bloody look!” *snigger*).

So it’s somewhat reassuring to see that of all the possible paths a kid could be taking on the information superhighway, there’s still some innocence at play here.

I bet the folk who ran the study had a few raised eyebrows at the results, but in a good way, mind you.

Yes despite the fact that the youth of today have questionable taste in music (something that’s never gonna change), and are also easily amused, judging by the searches for 'Fred’ (‘Figglehorn’, on YouTube, FYI)… it’s nice to know that the children aren’t being exposed to too much adult content, by choice anyway. (Who hasn’t been well and truly surprised by some of the results one gets from supposed innocent enquiries?!)

It’s certainly good news for any parent concerned about what the kids are doing once they sit in front of a computer screen.

Although you may wanna worry if you’re the parent of a child who types “Google.com” into a search site. (Seriously, using a search engine to find a search engine…what’s up with that?)

As it happens, the day I found my stepson had been searching for “pron” (sic) was the day I knew we had nothing to worry about.

That was one time we were happy he’d never won a spelling bee. Lord knows I wasn’t going to be the one to show him where to find www.dictionary.com!

Jx
©2009