Parents complaining about WHSmith need to grow up

Daily Mail comment writers and Mumsnet members were up in arms recently after the discovery that words that can be used in children’s books can also be used in porn.

Now it turns out the internet is literally full of sex-based content labelled with language even children might be capable of searching on Google. Who would have guessed? Not WHSmith, apparently, who have shut their website while purging it of anything offensive.

Imagine you’re a parent and you leave your kid alone in a WHSmith shop while you go and buy junk somewhere else. How long would it take before they stumbled across something their innocent eyes shouldn’t be seeing? It could be anything from fellatio tips in Cosmo or ludicrously inflated mammaries in Nuts, maybe even scenes of rape and violence in a Bret Easton Ellis novel. I would imagine it wouldn’t be long before you were having to face some awkward questions, not least “why weren’t you keeping an eye on your child?”.

Somehow people don’t seem to think the same applies on the internet. Leave your children browsing while you watch the One Show and frankly you’d be lucky if some iffy book titles were the worst thing they found. Rule 34 has no exceptions.

Yet now WHSmith find themselves the victims of an obviously contrived controversy, the antagonists in a tale of frankly neglectful parenting. Apparently, some people do actually think it’s everyone else’s role to make sure the internet is a safe babysitter.

I say f**k that. Parents: take the iPad away and give them some Lego. Whose responsibility are children anyway? Certainly letting them loose on basically the world’s largest masturbation facility is asking for trouble.

What do you think? Should WH Smith be more responsible or does the fault lie with the parents? Let us know in comments.