Internet Safety Article

Internet Safety Articles

I chose to read an article entitled The Message:
Mushrooms, Music, Movies, and Magazines by Elder Spencer J. Condie
of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. I chose to read it because the titled of poisonous mushrooms intrigued me and I wanted to now how they related media to poisonous mushrooms.

It was a really good article. It talked about mushrooms and how 70-80% of all mushrooms are poisonous, but the other 20-30% are delicious (I actually don't like mushrooms, but this particular person thought they were delicious.) Those 20-30% are delicious and beneficial to the body, just as good and uplifting media is good and beneficial to the body, but the other 70-80% of mushrooms are poisonous and come in different forms. The first form of poison is the "Doubtful" mushrooms that look poisonous and taste terrible, so even if a person were to take a bite of such a mushroom, they would spit it out immediately because of the taste. The other form of poisonous mushrooms are "Look-a-likes." Look-a-likes resemble edible mushrooms and might even look identical, so it's very hard to tell that they are poisonous. In fact, many of these types of mushrooms don't even affect the body until 15 hours later when the body has digested the mushroom and the poisons are released into the blood system. Then they attack and kill. At first they seemed so harmless, but then gradually they killed the person. This is just like media. Many movies, magazine articles, and songs seem so harmless at first and then they slowly release their evils.
This article taught me a lot about the media. There are many times that all of us, "Oh that movie was so good, it only had one bad scene." So really, was that movie good? Media may seem just like the "Look-a-like" mushroom, but really it may be very poisonous and even deadly. To protect ourselves we need to be like the mushroom hunters who developed safety checklists. The prophets have already given us a checklist, but we can continue to add more to our personal checklists.

The main thing I learned from all the readings is that we as parents need to be very involved in our children's lives, especially in terms of the media. Because Satan's number one goal is to break up the family and he is doing that through the media. We as parents need to first set and example of good media and then we need to give our children the tools necessary to make good media choices on their own. We shouldn't remove them entirely from the media, but help them make good choices, because there are good things out there. There is 20-30% of good in the midst of all the 70-80% poisonous mushrooms (media).

Now that I am going to be a mother soon all of these article really rang true to my ears. I will first of all put our computer in a high-traffic area, so my husband and I can monitor the things our children our viewing. We will set up a computer filter. Above all, we will spend time learning the newest fashions of technology, so we can educate our children on how to use them effectively and wisely. I want my children to have access to the many resources they are blessed with by having technology, but yet not invite poisons into their lives and into our home.

I must admit I need to work on having a positive attitude. I constantly find myself saying how bad media is and I try to avoid a lot of it. But really instead of trying to shut it out, like not becoming a member of facebook forever, I should have researched it and found out the positives and negatives of such a program, before just assuming that it is bad. I need to keep up to date with all the latest technologies.