FOR children, using the internet can be like visiting the best theme park and stumbling across a toxic waste dump.It's a world of possibilities, but also hidden dangers, according to Australia's Catholic bishops.
Yesterday, the nation's bishops employed traditional and 21st-century communication techniques to give guidance to Catholics about the internet. They sent a pastoral letter to every church in Australia, and also posted a video on YouTube.
The four-minute video features the benign face and white hair of Wollongong Bishop Peter Ingham, flanked by a teenaged girl with a laptop and a young boy, warning about unwelcome websites, stranger danger, cyber bullying and financial exploitation.
Bishop Ingham demonstrates how widespread the internet has become with a story of a three-year-old girl learning the Lord's Prayer. She had it word perfect until the end: "Lead us not into temptation and send us some email," the girl recited (rather than "save us from evil").
Bishop Ingham, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference delegate on media issues, said the church had to take its internet safety message into cyberspace to reach young people. "If only a few people see this video message and think over the points raised, it will be most worthwhile."
The pastoral letter is for parents, grandparents and teachers. Young people's "reality has been formed by the internet and the mobile phone in ways that many of us from previous generations are still trying to understand. Together with the mobile phone, the internet has transformed the way that conversations are held, friendships are maintained, entertainment is sought and information is gained," the letter says.
Much of this change has been immeasurably for the better. But parents, educators, church leaders, psychologists and others are increasingly concerned about internet dangers, while the generational and technological divide often means parents feel out of their depth, it says.
The letter explains what the internet is, from email to social networking, and gives advice on avoiding pitfalls. Children should not have computers in their rooms, parents should install net filters and, above all, they should educate their children about the dangers and how to make "correct and informed" decisions and build trust.
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