[TorqueDog]

I don't have kids either, but I'll reflect on my own childhood.

The restrictions on what I did was very inconsistent.

My parents let me play on the computer as much as I wanted, when I wanted, unless I was grounded for some reason. Internet use, I was never supervised and I knew far more about the computer than my mom or dad did, even at the age of 8. I saw tons of stuff that - by societal norms - I shouldn't have seen at that age. Pornography, violence and gore, anarchist's cookbook, etc. What it did was desensitize me to it, it didn't make me a sociopath or anything like what you hear people suggesting that sort of stuff does to children.

Interestingly, I now make a living working with computers, so I guess being given free reign wasn't all bad.

My parents did limit the sort of games I was allowed to play on my Sega Genesis, however. (I rented Mortal Kombat 2 once and my dad freaked out.) This angered me quite a bit since I already owned a copy of the original Mortal Kombat for PC which had blood and gore unlike its console counterparts (Sega had a code to enable it).

Movies and television was similar to my internet access, I could watch anything I wanted if I could find it in the house or on TV, or if I rented it from Rogers Video.