Raising Kids Online

• Share

(5 of 6)

Many other filtering systems work differently from AOL's, dumbly applying a list of forbidden words against the content of any site the user tries to see or simply blocking access to a list of sites ruled obscene or otherwise objectionable. In both instances, the filter will almost always work like a blunt instrument. If you tried to get to the home page of the Almaden Valley (California) Youth Soccer League and you had a filter, you would be blocked because the filter, tuned to look out for pedophiles, might have the phrase "Boys Under 12" on the proscribed list. If "sex" is labeled taboo, you can't read the poet Anne Sexton. Katherine Borsecnik, the senior AOL official involved in the development of the service's generally laudable parental controls, acknowledges that "if I have a middle school child who's going to do a research report on breast cancer"--a child with kids-only AOL access can't view sites with even straight medical information about breasts--"I might want to turn off the filters" while helping the child with the research.

Yet the most advanced filters available make it unnecessary to do so. CyberPatrol, a piece of retail software from the same company that manages AOL's Web filters, is a customizable system that allows parents to choose which types of sites to block based on the parents' criteria. I may not want to block my children from information about gay and lesbian politics, but let's say you do: CyberPatrol accommodates. So does Net Nanny.

Many parents don't realize that a simple click on the "history" tab on a browser tool bar will produce a list of links to every site the computer has visited recently. It's true that any canny 13-year-old knows how to delete potentially incriminating evidence from the history files. Already, though, there are several programs available, such as Cyber Snoop (at least the manufacturer doesn't euphemize), that create a tamperproof database--a trail of bread crumbs, as it were--so parents can examine every Web address the computer has visited since the last time Dad checked in. But consider this evidence of the complexity of the privacy issue: Susan Getgood, a vice president of the company that makes CyberPatrol, suggests that monitors have their own problems. "If a preteen is a child of an alcoholic parent," she asks, "and goes to a website that discusses alcohol abuse, and the parent finds out, what happens then?"

Many Internet service providers offer filtering services. But because of the need to appeal to the largest audience, they may go much further in their proscriptions than some parents would want. Amy Bruckman, a computer-science professor at Georgia Tech, points out that "a lot of these filtering companies are not making clear what their values are, their method for deciding what is acceptable and what is not." That's why it's so important to buy a filter that can be tuned to your family's values.

The Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington advocacy organization, is leading a campaign to make information on the growing pool of safety tools more widely available on the Web. Parents need to be able to find this information in a central, organized place, says executive director Jerry Berman.