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The dark side of the web

The Internet has changed the world for the better, but it has also brought many problems with it.The first one was spam — unwanted advertisements. And then there were viruses that could steal information from a user’s computer. There was also the problem of making sure that children didn’t go on adult websites. And now there are Internet trolls — people who write unkind comments on websites for fun.

Cyber bullying, where children use social websites to say bad things to other children, is a fast-growing problem. In England, for every three children that use the Internet, one child says they have been cyber bullied. And in 2012, five school children killed themselves because of online bullying. The youngest child was only thirteen years old.

A typical case is Tina, who posted a picture of herself on Facebook. She didn’t believe that cyber bullying could be so bad. At first, she got some bad comments from people she didn’t know. She still thought the photo was okay and didn’t care. But then her good friends started to write bad comments about the photo. That’s what really hurt her. Then people set up a Facebook page saying they hated her. She didn’t read it and asked Facebook to block the new Facebook page.

English schools are now teaching Internet safety to pupils so they can enjoy the good side of the web. And websites are also doing more to control what people can do when using their sites. Also the British government is blocking some foreign websites from the Internet, and the media are informing parents how to make their computers safer for children to use.

(Amended from unvw.cbsnews.com)