IELTS Writing Sample Answer # Unsupervised Access
You should spend 40 minutes on this task.
Many young children have unsupervised access to the internet and are using the internet to socialise with others.
What problems do children face when going online without parental supervision?
How can these problems be solved?
Write at least 250 words.
21st century is marked by the internet revolution and with coming of personal computers, kids often gravitate to them to play games, watch videos, interact socially and learn from educational websites. However, allowing your kids to access internet without any parental supervision opens them to potential risk.
One of the biggest problem facing children all across the world with unsupervised access is that they might share information with people they shouldn’t. The risk associated with sharing personal information includes revealing identifiable information that could provide criminals with the child’s location or children can share their parent’s financial information online, like the credit card number. To solve this problem, parents and teachers need to come together to aware children about the possible risks of sharing information and teach them the nitty gritty of online interaction.
Another issue is the exposure of the child to cyber bullying. Cyber bullying involves online harassment and it might occur in chat rooms, on social media websites and through email or text messages. With unsupervised access your child might either become the bully or the victim. This kind of bully is slowly gaining momentum and recent cases of suicides have left people shocked. The problem could be addressed by parents taking care of what the child is doing in internet. The communication between parents and the child must be friendly enough that the child can tell his/her parents of the issues she/he is facing.
To sum up, although it is clear that unsupervised access causes some major issues, it is undoubtedly possible to start to tackle these issues and use the internet in a more positive manner. Parents and teachers must take the lead in dealing with this problem, otherwise a whole lot of young lives will get disturbed.