In one of the assemblies taking place in the U.S. regarding Internet, the Novominsker Rebbe told about a Jew who came to him and wept over having lost his father in the Holocaust, his mother through Stalin and now his son, through the Internet. "He added, `I will meet my father and mother after one-hundred-and-twenty in Gan Eden, but I won't see my son there!'"
HaRav Salomon, Mashgiach of Yeshivas Lakewood, participated in that assembly as well. Uncharacteristically, he rose and, begging pardon of the Rebbe for interrupting, said, "He will see his son, but he won't meet his parents because he was the one who maintained an unrestricted Internet in his home. How can he still believe that he will see his parents in Gan Eden, those people who rendered their very lives al Kiddush Hashem?"
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And if we even suggest that we are wise and saintly enough to understand [the dangers] and sufficiently fortified so as not to be tripped up, yet there is an additional problem. After all the gedolei Yisroel from all communities and circles forbade the open Internet even for the sake of livelihood and warned against it time and again, and there is not one who permitted its use even bedi'eved as default, and you presume and allow yourself to decide that what the rabbonim declare obligates you only if you see eye to eye with them and only if you choose to follow them and not go your own way. But what will you say to your children when these rabbonim say something regarding the laws of Shabbos, tznius, kashrus or anything else? Will your answer be, "I don't feel like it."?
In many homes which were eternally destroyed, leaving orphans in their parents' lifetime, they realized with hindsight when it was too late that the fences which the rabbonim erected were truly safeguards whose only purpose was to protect us.
Let us then internalize this before it is too late, and not wait until then.
