One dose of aspirin doesn’t fit all

The struggle to shape the experiences young people have online is now part of modern parenthood. As children and teenagers spend increasing amounts of time online, a significant share of parents and guardians now use Internet filtering tools (such as parental controls) to protect their children from accessing sexual material online. However, new research from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford has found that Internet filtering tools are ineffective and in most cases, were an insignificant factor in whether young people had seen explicit sexual content. Though the use of Internet filtering tools is widespread, there has been no conclusive evidence on their effectiveness until now. 'It's important to consider the efficacy of Internet filtering,' says Dr Victoria Nash, co-author of the study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking . 'Internet filtering tools are expensive to develop and maintain, and can easily 'underblock' due to the constant development of new ways of sharing content. Additionally, there are concerns about human rights violations - filtering can lead to 'overblocking', where young people are not able to access legitimate health and relationship information.' The research used data from a large-scale study looking at pairs of children and caregivers in Europe, comparing self-reported information on whether children had viewed online sexual content despite the use of Internet filtering tools in their household.