Could the internet filter increase the online risks to children?
The actual danger posed to children online is a function of two things: the actual risks that exist online, and the effectiveness of control measures that parents put in place to mitigate those risks.
Though the filter proponents seem unwilling to mention them, there are plenty of other risks to children in the online environment:
- Disclosure of private or personal information
- Contact with sexual predators in chat rooms or social networking sites
- Meeting unknown people met online in real life
- Exposure to bullying
One might plausibly argue that these risks are both far more likely and more damaging to children, than the unlikely event of their “accidental exposure” to RC-classified material.
To date, it has been the job of parents to evaluate these risks, and put in place controls that mitigate them. From what research has been done on this subject to date, this approach has been found to be problematic. When parents and children were asked “Have you / your child done these things on the internet”, there was a wide discrepancy between their experiences. As the authors of the paper linked to put it:
Strikingly, for a wide range of risky experiences, parents systematically underestimate the frequency with which their children encounter such risks. (Livingstone & Bober, 2006)
While it would be reasonable to assume that the understanding of parents of the risks their children face online would have increased in the years since the study was taken (2004), by no means would this understanding now be perfect. The authors even go on to state:
The intriguing and even unusual way in which internet expertise reverses the traditional generation gap, positioning parents as naïve and children as authorities, poses a second difficulty for parental regulation. Quite simply, many parents lack the expertise, especially by comparison with their children, to intervene in or mediate their internet use, whether technically (e.g. by installing a filter) or socially (by discussing contents or services with their child).
So what we have here is a complex risk environment which is poorly understood by parents, a large portion of whom lack the skills and knowledge to put in place effective controls. This is indeed problematic - but what happens when a ISP filter is introduced into this picture?
To date, regulation of the use of the internet has been confined to the domestic sphere. But as soon as they government involves itself at the ISP level in regulating the internet use of children, a new dimension of uncertainty is created for parents. Unless they are very internet-savvy, and have taken the time to actually learn the exact functioning and scope of the filter, parents - and this will be the majority of them - will not understand exactly how the filter works, the scope of what it filters, nor the protocols and services it applies to - if they know what a protocol is in the first place. This would seem to be even more problematic than just home-based regulation.
We know the filter will be nowhere near 100% effective. It won’t be able to keep up with an ever-changing number of objectionable sites nor will it have any effect whatsoever on peer-to-peer transfers, chat-rooms and social networking sites. Yet the government expects parents to navigate these extremely muddy waters, and somehow integrate the filter into their own practises for ensuring their children’s safety online? This is a quaint view, and wholly unsupported by the evidence about the ability of parents to do so.
Remember that the actual danger to children is a function of both the actual risks on the internet, and the effectiveness of the controls that are put into place to stop them. Livingstone and Bober have shown that parents both under-estimate the risks their children face online, and over-estimate the effectiveness of controls (almost surely including the mandatory ISP filter). This creates the very real possibility that parents will retreat from social controls of internet use, erroneously believing that the ISP filter will protect their children online to a far greater degree than it does. The government risks trading a small reduction in one of the risks on the internet for far greater increases in other risks - sexual predators, bullying, and other non-blacklisted content unsuitable for the young.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
- Livingstone, S & Bober M, Regulating the internet at home: contrasting the perspectives of children and parents. Originally published in: Buckingham, D. and Willett, R. ; Digital generations: children, young people and new media. Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006, pp. 93-113.
