In a time where society moves at a pace faster than most would agree is normal just about the only way to keep up is to be a part of the ever growing internet community. You can do anything from chat with friends to research a history project to buy airline tickets online. At the moment, the Internet is the perfect example of our first amendment, free speech. It is a place where a person can speak their mind without being punished for what they say or how they choose to say it. But also on the Internet, are a huge collection of obscene graphics, Anarchists' cookbooks, and countless other things that offend many people. Almost everyone would agree that this is a big problem. Many people would say that the solution to this problem would be government censorship. This, in my opinion, is not the true answer. The government should not be the ones to censor the internet; it should be the job of a parent to make sure their child does not see anything they shouldn"t.
Government censorship of the internet is not the answer to the problems many see with the internet. First, government censorship is a violation of free speech. The constitution guarantees all citizens the right to free speech. If the government put limits on what can be said or viewed on the internet then they would be going back on the foundations of this country. Second, the government has its hand in too much already; the internet does not need to be added to this long list. People complain all the time about how the government intervenes in more than enough aspects of their life, so why should they be involved in one more?.
The best way to solve this problem is by parental censoring. There is a myth that "the Internet is a vast, anarchic forum uncontrolled and uncontrollable" (603). This is not true because there are programs available such as Net Nanny and other filtering software that can be installed on home computers to prohibit access to certain sites deemed unfit for children to look at.