Teen Filter Use
Use of Internet filters has increased in households with teenagers in them, but not as much as you might expect.
Of course, it’s still an open question how well filters work at blocking kid non-friendly stuff from a PC’s screen, but some filter is better than no filter. More than half (54 percent) of American families with teenagers use an online filter to limit access to potentially harmful content, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That’s a 65 percent increase from the year 2000.
Who uses filters? The tendency is by parents who themselves are frequent users of the Internet (they know what’s out there) and who have middle-school-age children. Parents with older children and who are less tech-savvy are, as you might expect, less likely to use filters. But no one is really fooled – both teens and parents believe that teens do things on the Internet that their parents would not approve of.
Keep Reading
Most Popular

A quick guide to the most important AI law you’ve never heard of
The European Union is planning new legislation aimed at curbing the worst harms associated with artificial intelligence.

It will soon be easy for self-driving cars to hide in plain sight. We shouldn’t let them.
If they ever hit our roads for real, other drivers need to know exactly what they are.

This is the first image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy
The stunning image was made possible by linking eight existing radio observatories across the globe.

The gene-edited pig heart given to a dying patient was infected with a pig virus
The first transplant of a genetically-modified pig heart into a human may have ended prematurely because of a well-known—and avoidable—risk.
Stay connected

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.