I set up a blocking software named CyberPatrol to see how it filters the web content and to which extent. While installing, it provides various levels of blocking; it is possible to change the settings and manage the level of filtering for a child to a grownup person. I was curious to see how it works when I set the user type for a young teen and the environment for home. As you can see in the picture below in CyberPatrol Filtering level, high to maximum strength is considered for a teen. In addition, it is possible to set the time management for daily and weekly time limit, and monitoring which all web activity can be recorded. From the picture, the interesting point is that for a young teen gambling is less filtered than sex education.
While searching for different keywords I tried to find out how it is with dictatorship. Among the names of some dictators, the only name which couldn’t go through was Adolf Hitler, whereas almost all names of dictators were searchable including the existing ones!
In the category of sex education the keyword “get pregnant” is allowed while “not get pregnant” is filtered! “Make out” is filtered but “Made out” is allowed and give the same results.
In the Violence category, “kill”, “torture”, “death” are filtered while “murder”, “suicide”, “slaughter”, “assassinate”, “execute” and “stoning” are allowed and even horrible pictures can be accessed.
In my opinion, the filtering policy was very random and setting it up would have even worse effect on a teenager. Since the issue of trust and reliability between parents and child can be spoiled that is more important than setting up a blocking software! I suppose spending time with children and explaining everything to help them distinguish between right and wrong would have a better result.
Interactive Media 