Parents need to be proactive about internet safety in the age of smartphones | Opinion

Talk with children about internet use

Children are starting to use the internet at a younger age. There are many benefits to allowing your child to use the internet and there are just as many risks. The internet can be used as an instrument of learning, socialization and entertainment. However, like any tool, it needs to be used in a safe manner.

Some tips to help ensure that kids can use the internet safely are to know not to share personal information, such as name, date of birth, address or where they go to school. Before posting a photo or sending a message via the internet, encourage your children to ask themselves if they are okay with everyone in the world seeing it. Another tip is your child should always treat people they meet on the internet as strangers, regardless of how long they have chatted or how well they think they know them.

It is important to talk to your child about who they are interacting with online and the nature of those interactions. Have conversations with kids about their internet use often and encourage them to share with you if they notice anything unusual or uncomfortable about an interaction or content they see online.

Rowan Schmieman, Richland

Reckoning what’s ‘great’ isn’t easy

Apparently “great” in MAGA doesn’t mean being humane or sensible. Since ICE couldn’t easily find sufficient “bad guys,” it has started workplace raids. Construction sites, hospitality businesses, meat-packing plants, farmers and ranchers are losing their workers.

Small businesses are hurt; some have closed; prices will increase. Arrests are made in courthouses; legislators are being manhandled and illegally detained. Students have been zip-tied or shackled. Families are being separated — parents taken from babies; U.S. citizens detained or deported. Conditions in some detention centers are worse than prisons.Legitimate visitors are detained or sent back; the U.S. has threatened some (supposed) allies. Thus, tourism has decreased; tourism dollars are down.Some say we are a “Christian nation.” But now anyone with a differing viewpoint becomes an “enemy,” “scum” or “hates this country.” Jesus, however, emphasized love and forgiveness. Media (especially right-wing) publicizes distrust, fear and anger of the “other side.” This eventually leads to violence, as seen in the murder and shooting of Democratic legislators in Minnesota by a Trump-supporting person.We deserve better: humane deportations of immigrants who hurt the country but keep the ones who help the country; more empathy, more dialogue, more unifying policies, more truth of reality.

Joyce Scherpelz, Richland

Trying to sort out what’s wrong now

In school I learned about our country arresting Japanese people in this country and putting them in a camp.That was wrong! It was a terrible time in our history!I’m so sorry that happened. Please tell me why the Trump Administration is doing it again with illegal immigrants in the Florida Everglades? It was wrong then and wrong now!

Deanna Whiteside, Kennewick

Washington’s 4th District needs a Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani scared some Democrats when he said he has a lot of criticisms of capitalism, but many Americans, especially those younger and less affluent, agree. Trump’s “OBBB” is a huge transfer of wealth from the millions of low income Americans to the most wealthy few.

It was voted in by lawmakers who are supposed to represent all their constituents but were intimidated or bought by the super rich who already benefit immensely from business subsidies, contracts, American infrastructure, and labor so cheap that workers have to rely on America’s safety net. They’ll be getting tax breaks they don’t need or deserve. The Bezos wedding happening in the backdrop of negotiations would have been ironic if irony wasn’t dead.

The odds of capitalism dying in America are zero, it’s in the air we breathe. The risk is that unregulated capitalism results in dangerous concentration of power in a few hands. Unfortunately that has already become reality.

This can’t be fixed by lawmakers like Representative Dan Newhouse. If Washington’s 4th District is lucky enough to have a charismatic candidate along the lines of Mamdani challenge Newhouse, voters should not let criticism of capitalism close their minds. Choose democracy over Newhouse.

Greg Carl, Richland