If we look back a couple decades, many parents might wonder what parental control would have been like then. Today, parental control seems to take on a different definition. Tech users are no longer just adults with access to company computers and networks or college students and their first network experience. Tech users are as young as 5 years old (sometimes even less) and their gadgets come in quite a variety.
In the 1950s the most popular children toys were Mr. Potato Head and silly putty. The 1960s were taken over by G.I Joe, Lego’s, Candy Land, and Monopoly. Fast forward a couple decades and the popular toys for the 1990s were Power Rangers, Furby, and Tickle Me Elmo. The 2000s arrive and we have seen a change in the type of toys children are playing with. They’ve gone from toys to gadgets. The most popular ones include iPods, gaming systems, kid computers, and animatronic figures developed by Disney.
However, 2010 marks a different decade. We still have the top gadget toys as in the 2000s, but these gadgets are more advance, expensive, yet very accessible. The top gaming consoles in this decade according to consumersearch.com include the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DSi, and Sony PSP. These gadgets are more advanced compared to those of the 2000s because of the incorporation of the internet, built in Wi-Fi, built in cameras, and much more. Thus with such new gadgets, parents’ concern for privacy, control, and security have never been so important before.
The concern for parental control has been on the rise recently because with so much accessibility, children and teenagers are vulnerable to receiving information that might not have been so accessible to children and teens of the 1950s. There used to be a time, when finding the definition of something meant going to a dictionary if not a library to read up on what it meant. Nowadays, one can simply search for it on the web if not use the thesaurus built in to our computers. Thus, companies have invented software and phone applications that can child-proof certain gadgets and parents can exercise some kind of security control. For instance, some companies like Website Rating and Advising Counsel Inc (WRAAC) offer a parental control internet bar where parents can block and filter certain websites that they don’t want exposed to their kids. This is very important nowadays because about 50% of children admit that they are not being watched when using a computer and the average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years of age.
Software for computers is not the only thing that can help with parental control; phone companies are also including services such as usage control, family locator, content filter, and service blocks to help protect their children from “sexting” and such. Privacy is not so private for the children and teens using the gadgets if they are being monitored by concerned parents. But there still are a great amount of children who are not being monitored at all. According to a study done by webwisekids.org in 2007, 25% of teenagers state that their parents know "little" or "nothing" about what they are actually doing online and 41% of parents of online teens do not know where their children are going online. In addition, 47% of homes with teens ages 15 to 17 are using some kind of filtering software whereas parents with children younger than15 use filtering software more often. This raises the issue of security. If parents are not monitoring or setting rules about the usage of the internet or gadgets that use the internet, many children are not aware of the dangers involved. The same webwisekkids.org study stated that8% of teens posted their cell phone numbers online and that 47% of teens are blasé about the information posted online and the negative affects it can have on their future or what others might do with their information.
This is very concerning, not only are kids posting information about themselves that is personal, but can also affect their parents. Privacy becomes a privilege for those who openly accept the internet and its wonders. But, if the user is underage, then parental control and security is vital.
http://www.parental-control-software-top5.com/internet-statistics.html
http://www.slideshare.net/believekids/most-popular-childrens-toys-by-decade
http://www.webwisekids.org/index.asp?page=statistics
http://wraac.org/about.html
Julia, excellent job. I found the statistics about parent monitoring fascinating yet, in some ways, questionable. From personal experience talking to other parents, I wonder how many parents who THINK they are "monitoring" really are not. Even if one puts "blocking" software on the home computer, what about other computers in schools and libraries or even web browsing on a personal "smart phone?" I know from experience that "parental controls" on Apple products don't catch EVERY search returned by Google. (Some kids quickly find ways around the blocks in some cases, especially when it comes to sites that aren't appropriate or offensive.) And for those parents who ARE monitoring, the challenge is to keep up with new technology, software and strategies....
ReplyDeleteI think it is very nerve-racking to see how times have changed technology and the danger there is today on the internet. These technology users have started as early as the age of five, and use an array of things such as the latest versions of Sony Playstation and Xbox. Although companies have developed software (such as WRAAC) to monitor/block what their children are doing on the internet, the parents for the most part are still misinformed and do not know what is going on on their Children's computers, (It said that 41% of parents of online teens don't know what their children are doing on the computer). It also said that a lot of the kids were posting their cellphone numbers and information that could harm them in the future. This needs to stop and there needs to be better restrictions coming from the parents such as by using software.
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