Parental control applications do not protect children on internet

A new study suggests that adolescents should be helped to be their online safety agents, while continuing to fear that teenagers fall victim to unimaginable dangers over the Internet.

Now that mobile phones and tablets are in the hands of all children and young people, they can easily use the Internet, which can expose them to many dangers. Hence the idea of ​​parental control applications, which are important to parents. , Where such software makes it easier for parents to monitor and protect children from some negative aspects of the Internet.


However, such applications that display websites visited by a child and prevent certain Web sites from working and limiting screen time may not be effective, according to preliminary results revealed by a new research study conducted by the University of Central Florida and the distance between Parents and children.

This study was based on a survey of 200 mothers and fathers with at least one child between the ages of 13 and 17, half of whom recognized parental control applications. Surprisingly, adolescents with parental control applications were more likely than adolescents Others to read explicit content, and were harassed while connected to the Internet.

Based on these results, it can be concluded that these applications are not very effective, and then the researchers moved to the Google Play Store where they reviewed comments published by parents and children (ages 8 to 19) on about 736 parental control applications available to install on Android devices, where parents often gave applications a good review.

While children's assessment of these applications was two or less of the five stars in 79 percent of the cases. The children felt that these applications were an invasion of their privacy and affected the relationship between parents and children by encouraging them to reduce communication between the two sides. That parental control applications have prompted parents to pursue and stalk children.

Parents seem to put a lot of trust in these applications. The study suggests that instead of using them to find out what their children are doing on the Internet, parents should be more involved with teens, find out about the websites they visit, The Internet, which affects them, talk about the risks they may face when using the Internet.

This study helped to conclude that the parental control applications currently available do not guarantee the safety of children using the Internet, noting that adolescents need some space to learn how to develop "coping mechanisms" that will help them throughout their lives.

The report recommends that the next generation of parental control applications include features to keep parents committed to their children, and teach teens how to deal with Internet risks.

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