Internet filters block porn, but not savvy kids

'Nannyware' can help, but the best parental control is still a parent, experts say.

By Tom A. Peter | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 11, 2007 edition

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Like any mother, Mary Kate Dillon had concerns about her preteen son using the Internet. Still, she didn't go beyond looking over his shoulder every now and then. "He's a really good kid," says Mrs. Dillon, who lives in the Boston suburb of Needham. "This is not a risk-taking, overly mature 11-year-old."

Then the Dillons' computer repairman inadvertently discovered that her son had visited a number of websites featuring real-life violence. "The pictures were more gore than anything appropriately medical," says Dillon, a nurse.

She decided it was time for a more aggressive approach and began using additional features on Norton Internet Security, already installed on her computer, to monitor the websites visited. If he wanted to look at something questionable, his mom had to open the site with a password.

"I felt like I was empowered," Dillon says. "I always have access and can look up anywhere that [my son] goes on this computer, so [he] needs to make wise choices."

As a generation of children often more technologically savvy than their parents grows up with the Internet, improved content filters can give parents the ability to block objectionable material.

They may be a good option, now that a federal court has overturned Congress's attempt to restrict Internet pornography. Last month, US District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. reversed a 1998 law that called for prison sentences and fines against owners of websites with "harmful" content if they didn't require "effective" age verification to block access by minors. Internet filters offer a better solution, Judge Reed argued, because they are less restrictive and don't violate adults' First Amendment rights.

"Just because you want to protect kids doesn't mean you can ban the information for adults," says Carl Solano, a partner at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis LLP, who specializes in First Amendment and appellate law.

Already, a majority of families use Internet filters to curb the cyberworld's free speech so it mirrors their own standards of appropriateness. A March 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 54 percent of families with teens who go online said they used a content filter.

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