essay - GMAT: Issue 16

"Nations should cooperate to develop regulations that limit children's access to adult material on the Internet."*

*The Internet is a worldwide computer network.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

Answer:
I strongly support the idea that nations should cooperate to develop regulations that limit children's access to adult material on the Internet. This belief comes from the necessity of preventing children from inappropriate materials on the Internet and the importance of worldwide collaboration.

I believe that we need to protect our children from violent or sexual materials on the Internet. As the Internet evolves, more and more such kind of sites is increasing in this world. And the development of search engines enables us to find out such kind of sites astonishingly easily. Furthermore, besides such kind of directly deleterious sites, there are a lot of Internet sites that badly affect children's behavior and mental and physical health, ranging for instance from free game sites to men and women's encounter sites. Therefore, I strongly agree with regulations or laws that limit access rights of children, as we do outside the Internet world. For instance, we prohibit children from purchasing some prone magazines and movies in the real world. Why must we not do the same thing in the virtual, Internet world? This is extremely clear for me.

I also agree with the opinion in terms of worldwide cooperation. As is widely known, the Internet makes it possible to grab any information from all around the world. For example, I, living in Japan, can enjoy the presidential election in US or regularly read someone's blog in Israel, and vice versa. Therefore, without tight international cooperation, it's almost impossible to introduce effective policies to improve the situation. For instance, even though Japanese government enacts a certain law to force the Internet service providers to limit its materials to children, some children might come to know there are similar kinds of site in the other countries.

I, however, would like to emphasize a dangerous aspect of such kind of laws. That is, bad policies are likely to hinge the development of good parts of the Internet, and excessive censorship breaches freedom of expression of human beings. Therefore, implementing effective laws and policies, we must be fully careful of excessive, irrational applications of the idea.

To sum up, I'm clearly on the side of supporting limited Internet access for children. I believe, however, it should be to an appropriate extent. With appropriate attitudes and thoughts, we can realize an ideal world even on the Internet.