Blue Whale and Schools' role

There are lots of debates and round table discussions on how to monitor children's Internet surfing activities, particularly in the past few days during which two teenagers committed suicide after watching the online game 'Blue Whale' in our country.

In a discussion telecast on NDTV, I heard the participants (adults) coming up with a wide range of solutions which proved that many of us are good in commenting about things which we don't know much; I mean Application aspects of Internet and Cyber security.

One of the main culprits are the schools themselves. Many elitist schools assign homework and projects by specifically asking children to do Google search.  When they do so, two odd things happen: children's creativity is severely compromised and they are given unreasonable green signal to visit websites.  One way of averting the problem would be to let children use the Internet meaningfully during lunch time in the presence of teachers in the school itself.

It was disappointing that none came with the following simple solution in the NDTV programme: Ensure that children don't delete 'Browsing history' in any circumstance until you (parent, guardian or any responsible adult in the household) visit the websites yourself and monitor children's surfing activities.

It may be time consuming and some times monotonous, but the excercise is very effective.