Parents take initiative to monitor children’s online habits

Ho Yuan Zhuan, 20, who is concern about the growing number of graphic and disturbing images and videos that are being shared by irresponsible by netizens.

PETALING JAYA: Parents are taking proactive action to supervise their children when it comes to gruesome and unwanted graphic content online.

Tengku Mazlinda Tengku Mahmood, 37, a government-linked company manager, said she was concerned over the growing number of disturbing and graphic videos, which are easily available online, including on free video sharing site YouTube.

“There is so much inappropriate content lying around and there is no specific way to block them other than uninstalling the application on your tablet or laptop,” said the mother of two yesterday.

Tengku Mazlinda said she would try to monitor her children when they surf online, especially when it comes to watching videos or playing online games.

“I try to observe them as much as I can and some of the cartoon characters are fine.

“However, there are instances where they type certain words in the search engine and disturbing videos or graphic content will be shown,” she said.

“There must be some way for parents to block this type of content, which often gets lumped together with general content for children,” she added.

Journalist Charmaine Ng, 42, would monitor her children whenever they go online, but because of her challenging career, she said it was impossible to watch everything they do.

“So, I will try to teach them what violence and sex are. What is good and what is bad.

“I teach them to judge and decide. If they are not sure, they can always talk to me,” she said.

In the case of graphic videos, Ng said her children had chanced upon these many times and the second they see violence or adult content, they would sound the bell and stop watching alone.

“They would wait for me to watch together with them and explain to them or not watch at all, but wait for me to tell them why it is bad,” she said, concurring with other parents that there should also be some sort of control mechanism over such videos.

Student Ho Yuan Zhan (pic), 20, from Tunku Abdul Rahman Univer-sity College, said such videos were just a click away.

“Depending on the content, if I encounter videos showing murder, violence or anything showing someone physically hurting others, I will click out,” he said.