The human learning process begins with birth. The person who starts to understand their body, organs, environment, and the world in this first stage enhances their skills by practicing them within the limits of the capabilities that God has given. With the help of the senses, such as “hearing,” “seeing,” “touching,” and “smelling” the amount of knowledge proliferates rapidly. Every warning and message that reaches us is an important factor in helping learning, developing consciousness, and becoming aware of life. While the development of the intelligence and mental activity of children who lack sufficient warnings and messages becomes slower, the development of the ones who are overloaded is dispersed. It must be kept in mind that the fastest growing system in a child’s body during the first three years of life is the nervous system. Therefore, appropriate messages must be provided very early on, even from the very beginning of the pregnancy.

Messages that are received through the sense of hearing have a significant importance in child education. The mental development of children who have received ample and appropriate messages is more significant and positive. It is a well-known fact that even in the earliest stages of pregnancy the baby can distinguish the mother’s voice, and is relaxed via the sense of hearing; this sense starts to develop at the very beginning of pregnancy. Unfortunately, some parents turn the television or the radio on in the baby’s room, frequently letting them listen to it. However, what is best for the baby is to have suitable audio incentives that can be easily understood. On the other hand, to remain silent when with a baby for a long time will negatively affect the language learning process. A conversation between parents in a relaxed and gentle tone, talking about pleasant things, for example, a beautiful poem, the sound of someone reading the Qur’an, or the sound of the adhan coming from the minarets, are all useful messages for babies.

Messages received through the sense of sight are as important as those received through hearing. Humans recognize nature and themselves by seeing, touching, and trying. Although the visual capabilities of a baby develop in the womb, it takes some six months for sight to reach an appropriate level. Babies accept everything that they see during this time as training material. Everything that is seen has an important role in forming the baby’s personality. Parents must always be good models for their children, acting in commendable ways. It is a well-known fact that babies pay attention to their parents’ behavior. Since imitation is one of the earliest learning techniques; parents should remember to behave in a way that they want their children to behave. Helping each other, forgiveness, responsibility, hard-work, empathy, and correct behavior are qualities that parents should demonstrate. Seeing a parent working hard, reading, and praying will help the conscience of the child to develop. Fighting, noise, and angry words will negatively affect the development.

Messages sent through meta-communication are more effective. For example, in an advertisement of a certain product, the fact that people using that product are smiling is more important than the properties of the product. This is because such behavior attaches the message “you will be happier when you use it.” For children, living in a positive environment helps them to observe correct models. Since they use the very first form of learning-imitation-providing good examples of behavior is extremely important. In the learning process, sight is one of the most frequently used methods. Therefore, parents must display appropriate behavior to help their children to learn. Displaying correct behavior is more effective than explaining what correct behavior is.

The environment in which we live has a great importance in the education of children. The school that is chosen for children must be considered from different aspects. Most people never forget their first teacher; this is one of the milestones in our lives. The teacher starts to shape our personalities at an early age. Therefore, choosing the right teacher, someone who is not only capable, but is also virtuous and pleasant, is of great importance. The teacher’s style of dressing, way of talking, their reaction to stimulus and their behavior tells us more than the teacher can; these are also the most effective means of sending messages to our children.

The children’s group of friends is another environment that needs to be monitored carefully. Having the right friends positively affects the development of the personality of the child, while having inappropriate friends will have negative effects. Many parents cannot attain positive results, despite all their efforts in education, merely because they have forgotten the importance of the peer group on the child. Starting form the ages 6-7, the effect of friends increases gradually, peaking in the teenage years.

The effect of the media on children is indisputable, especially in today’s world. We can see violence, fear, and a lack of moral values in our children; these are all the effects of media. It is known that in cases where babies spend much time watching television these children fail to develop their linguistic skills and become withdrawn from society. The massive visual or audio input from television can cause significant problems in the psychological development of the child. Some parents allow their children to watch advertisements, as they are unaware of this fact. In child education, especially in the early stages, parents must be very careful to combat the inappropriate stimuli of the television and computer. During that period the baby needs the parents’ interest, love, conversation, and physical closeness more than they need the picture on the television or computer. Parents must remember that every stimulus during these stages has a long-lasting effect throughout the child’s life. Therefore, the stimuli given to the child must be appropriate.

As a drop of water can shape a rock by falling on it everyday, so to can appropriate or inappropriate messages shape the personality of a child over time. All the messages must be suitable to the age; they must contribute to the child’s development. They must be neither too difficult, nor incomplete and insufficient. They must be in close relation with environment. They must not contain opposing messages, and they must not impose fear or despair.

As a result, in the education of the child, parents, educators and teachers must provide appropriate, sufficient, and positive warnings and messages for children.

The history of family life can be divided into two phases: “before TV” and “after TV.” Its affects on the whole family are so immense that they are outside the scope of this article. Instead, we will concentrate on the affects of television on children, and especially on children under the age of 3.

During our interviews with parents, almost all of them had one question: “What is the effect of television on our child?” The importance of this question can be better understood after we have studied the effects of television on our children. The effects of TV depend on how much the children watch TV, their personality, whether they watch alone or with adults, and whether their parents talk to them about what they have watched. Therefore, it would not be true to say that television is absolutely harmful or beneficial. If the necessary precautions are taken, it can be a useful source for both the child’s educational and social development, while, on the other hand, it can have very harmful and lasting effects on children if not properly monitored and if the child is left to decide when, how much and which TV programs to watch. The effects also vary according to the child’s age. This magic box has different effects on children of different age groups.

The worst, and unfortunately permanent, effects of television on children occur during the 0-3 age group. This is because some of the psycho-social attributes that are acquired in these years persist in a person’s character throughout life. Any problem that originates from this period will affect the rest of a person’s life.

The Effects of Television on the 0-3 Age Group

During this period some parents do not (or cannot) spend enough time with their children for a variety of reasons, and they leave their child alone with the television. Some of the reasons for a lack of time being devoted to the child may be socio-economic factors, the life-style of a working mother, problems between the parents themselves, the necessity of housework, parents working additional jobs, a chronic illness in the family, psychiatric problems of the parents, the child being the product of an unwanted pregnancy, the child’s physical illness, or dozens of other reasons – all of these can affect family life. Because of these, intentionally or not, some parents often cannot pay enough attention to their child; the only thing they are able to do being to keep up physical maintenance (i.e., feeding the child and keeping him or her clean). In these cases, TV comes in and fulfills the role of the parents, and the child ends up spending too much time in front of the television.

Experiencing full emotional sensations and the complete attention of the parents sets the groundwork in the first three years of life for a strong and healthy psychological make-up. Physical contact, talking to the child, making him or her feel that he or she is loved, playing with the child, spending time with the child all have a positive effect on the development of the psycho-social side of the child. Spending time with a baby prevents him or her from becoming alienated in relationships with other people and helps him or her to recognize the social environment, starting with the parents. Along with this relationship, a close tie between the child and the mother develops. This relationship starts in the mother’s womb and continues during infancy. The child begins to be able to communicate and express his or her needs. As time goes on, the child starts to be able to establish a dialog with other people.

Since the basic foundation of communication is speech, children have to learn how to talk. In order to be loved by people, they have to understand people and respond to emotional stimulation. Children need encouragement in order to socialize and develop communication, especially from those who are in charge of the upbringing. This encouragement and approval, attention to the child’s needs (food, clothing, hygiene, safety, etc), paying attention to the child’s problems, spending time with the child, kissing, caressing, talking and playing with the child all go towards helping the child feel that he or she is loved; these constitute an encouragement for the bio-psycho-social development of the child.

The reason we mention all these is so that we can better understand the television-child relationship. When the child is left for a long time in front of a device that does not respond to his or her words, looks and smiles – a device devoid of sensual and social stimulants, without emotion – and when the child is deprived of physical closeness to the person with whom he or she has established close ties – problems will occur as time passes. Although television provides sounds and images, the child is not yet of an age to interpret, accept and benefit from these. The problems developed here will appear later in the form of an incompleteness or inadequateness in the socialization, individualization and the psycho-social aspects of this person.

Why is TV more harmful for children? The child will not have friends or a social environment to make up for the social and sensual incompleteness mentioned above. He or she does not play a role in an interchange, and the child does not have a chance to contribute. Psycho-motor and psycho-social sufficiency has not had a chance to develop and he or she does not have an alternative environment in which to develop.

If a child is less than 3 years old and stays too long (how long changes from child to child, but generally for more than an hour) in front of a television, and particularly if the parents have any of the problems mentioned above that prevent them from spending more time with the child, then some insufficiency and delay can be witnessed in the child’s psycho-social functions. These functions are those that are necessary for the development of social improvement (sensual interaction and responsiveness, adaptation to the social environment, taking an interest in people, showing sympathy to others, paying attention to other children of the same age, etc) and communication (talking, meaningful gestures and mimicry, spelling words out by syllables, perception, making sounds, forming sentences, etc). If such conditions occur, a child psychiatric must also investigate what other reasons may have caused such conditions. The replacement of time that should be spent with other people with time spent before the television has very serious drawbacks.

If the children stay too long in front of the television during this period, some psychiatric abnormalities may develop. The child may show symptoms of indifference to his or her surrounding, for example, he or she may not look around when called, the child may avoid making eye contact, or show indifference to other people and children of the same age, the child may experience difficulties in taking part in emotional or social communication, he or she may try to stay on his or her own, or may display repetitive behavior, like turning around or rocking back and forth, the child may become obsessed with objects, he or she may be slow to speak and construct sentences, or may display problems in establishing dialogue, or the child may be unable to respond sentimentally. Therefore, in order to prevent excesses, it would be appropriate for the parents to put a limit on television for the benefit of normal psycho-motor and psycho-social development in the child.

At the same time, it would be appropriate for both the father and the mother to spend as much time as possible out of their normal daily life with the child, playing with him or her, speaking to the child, showing the child that he or she is loved, showing an affinity with him or her, taking the child out, paying attention to his or her physical needs, paying attention to his or her normal growth stages, laying the ground for communication with other children, sparing some time only to be with the child, telling him or her stories. In short, parents do not have to ban television watching completely for their children, but the appropriate thing for the good of the child is to restrict and balance it with other activities.

However, the issue of privacy versus freedom of information has been with us forever. In world history, the recognition of privacy has deep roots.(2) The Qur’an (3) and the Bible (4) contain numerous references to privacy. Jewish law has long recognized the concept of freedom from being watched.(5) There also were protections in classical Greece and ancient China.

Privacy defined

Privacy is the interest that individuals have in sustaining a personal space free from interference by other people and organizations. It is a balancing act between the needs of individuals and society’s demands. There is a fine balance between the need for individuals to protect their privacy and the contending pressures of business, government, and the exigencies of modern life.

There are three main issues and areas of concern: How much other people may access our personal information, how much access should we have to our private information that is held by others, and how much access we should have to public information. Privacy, a topic of special concern to social scientists, is a complicated issue that cannot be discussed fully within this short article.

Even with the adoption of legal and other protections, privacy violations remain a concern. Beyond these obvious aspects of privacy, several important trends are contributing to privacy invasion, such as globalization (removing limitations to the flow of data), convergence (leading to the elimination of technological barriers between systems), and multimedia.

Types of privacy

Intuitively, privacy can be categorized into four separate but related concepts.

Privacy of communications or interception, which involves individuals desiring to communicate with other individuals and organizations through secure and private communications, whether these be mail, telephone, e-mail, or otherwise.

Privacy of the person, which is concerned with the integrity of one’s physical body and protection of one’s physical self against such invasive procedures as compulsory immunization, blood transfusion without consent, genetic tests, compulsory provision of bodily fluids and tissue samples, and drug testing.

Territorial privacy, which involves setting limits on intrusion and all aspects of behavior into the domestic and other environments, but especially with regard to various sensitive matters in both private and in public places (e.g., searches, sexual preferences and habits, political activities, religious practices, video surveillance, and ID checks).

Information privacy or privacy of personal data, meaning the establishment of rules governing personal data collection and handling. People claim that personal data on credit history, as well as medical and government records, should not be available automatically to other individuals and organizations.

The volume of instantly recorded information based on credit card usage, Internet visits, hospital or pharmacy visits, filing tax returns renting video tapes and so on’all of which can be accessed by authorized and unauthorized persons’has changed the speed and ease with which others can survey much of one’s personal life and activities.(6)

Types of surveillance

Identification. With the advent of microprocessor technology, such a card’s type, function, and integrity vary enormously. ID cards could embed biometric information, defined as the process of collecting, processing, and storing details of a person’s physical characteristics in order to identify and authenticate.

In recent years, the underlying technology interests governments and companies because, unlike other forms of ID, they now can include such new information as digital fingerprinting, handprint scans, hand geometry, thumb scans, facial recognition technologies, voice authentication devices, electronic retinal scans, and such other biological markers as DNA identification.

Thus security personnel also will be able to identify more accurately those people accessing buildings, computers, or national borders.

Communications. All companies that develop digital telephone switches, cellular and satellite phones, and other developing communication technologies build in surveillance capabilities.(7) Nearly every country has some form of eavesdropping capability as regards telephone, fax, and telex communications for the use of law enforcement or intelligence agencies. 

Internet and black boxes. Internet surveillance is a revolutionary new technology that allows remote monitoring of an e-mail address and the contents of an e-mail message.(7)

A related effort for enhancing government control of the Internet and promoting surveillance is being conducted in the name of preventing ‘cyber-crime,’ ‘information warfare,’ or ‘protecting critical infrastructures.’ A number of countries are demanding that ISPs install ‘black boxes’ that can monitor system traffic.

In short, black boxes contain specialized software programs that run in a computer hooked into the network at a location where it can monitor system traffic. These sniffers can monitor the entire data stream by searching for such key words, phrases, or strings as net addresses or e-mail accounts. Network administrators can take screen shots in real time or on a schedule, by time and day or user, and store them for future review; run any program installed on a remote PC; shut down or restart any remote workstation; and view a list of applications stored on all network PCs, the frequency of Internet usage, and more.

Electronic Commerce. As consumers surf and engage in routine online transactions, they leave behind a trail of personal details, often without any idea that they are doing so. Corporations monitor the huge amount of personal information (e.g., e-mail address linked to messages posted on mailing lists, from newsgroups or domain name registration data, individual surfing habits, deciphering how individual work, and building detailed profiles of where they shop and what they like to buy).

The perceived value of this kind of information is behind the stock-market valuations of many dotcom companies. Marketers and advertisers use cookies to track personal preferences as the most pervasive tracking technology. The cookie is a very small text file containing an ID number downloaded from a Web site by your browser and placed on a user’s hard drive.

Television and T-commerce

The new field of interactive digital television has a huge potential. Users can send and receive e-mail, browse the Internet, buy goods and services, and play games through their television. The industry anticipates that such T-commerce (television commerce) will enable viewers to make impulsive purchases based on what their favorite star is wearing or on individually tailored ads appearing between the plots of their favorite shows or sporting events.

Audio. Audio surveillance allows people to eavesdrop (and/or record) conversations taking place at a particular location or on a particular telephone line. Advances in technology are making it easier and cheaper to conduct covert audio surveillance. These devices come in many shapes and sizes: from micro-engineered transmitters the size of an office staple to devices no bigger than a cigarette packet that can transmit video and sound signals for miles. A magic item of modern ingenuity, each audio stream is captured and analyzed on the fly, allowing intelligence agents to perform voice-pattern matches during an intercept. It also provides the names of speakers and access to their dossiers.

Video. By now, the use of video surveillance cameras, known as closed circuit television (CCTV), to monitor public and private spaces has grown to unprecedented levels. Most towns and cities are moving to CCTV surveillance of public areas. This technology enables the observation of individuals without their knowledge at the ATM, in stores, elevators, restaurants, school hallways, housing estates, car parks, and when stopped by police in patrol cars.

In addition to the obvious security applications, video surveillance technology is being used to measure traffic flow, detect accidents on highways, monitor pedestrian congestion in public spaces, compile consumer demographics in shopping malls and amusement parks, log routine maintenance tasks at nuclear facilities, and count endangered species. The numerous military applications include patrolling national borders, measuring refugee flows in troubled areas, monitoring peace treaties, and providing secure perimeters around bases and embassies. Their use on private property is also becoming popular.(8)