Today the European Commission published a study on parental control tools. It is a follow-up to a previous study on the same topic which was published in 2013 in the context of the Safer Internet programmes launched in 1999. The study has benchmarked a number of parental control tools available on the market between 2012 and 2017. These parental control systems, which apply to PCs, mobile devices and game consoles, give users functionalities such as blocking and/or filtering content, monitoring activities, setting time limits, (setting daily time-slots for internet access) and quotas, (limiting the overall time of access). The study set out a detailed overview and evaluation of the support parents and carers can get from each of the tools available in the market in order to best match their needs.
The study found that some tools are good at filtering adult content, but they also over-block non-harmful content. In general, these tools perform poorly on blocking harmful content (for example, violence or self-harm). It also found that PC tools work better than tools for mobile devices and game consoles. Adittionally, the filters work better with English language content compared to other languages tested by the study, i.e. German, Italian, Spanish, French and Polish. Finally, these tools are not effective at filtering inappropriate user-generated content placed on social media.
According to the study, parental control tools can serve mainly for controlling the young users, who are not yet savvy enough to bypass the tool, and where over-blocking may not be seen as a problem. The context has deteriorated as young people rely more and more on user-generated content for which the potential protection offered by existing tools is even less effective. Effective parental control, however, vary according to the various social and specific family context; highly educated parents are more successful in using available parental control tools, while children of lower educated classes are more exposed to unsafe internet use.
Parental control system providers should make more effort to adapt tools to the growing expectations of users, taking into consideration children as a large and special group of users.
Policy makers should focus on awareness-building and communication strategies to boost the safe use of the Internet by children and adolescents. In 2008-2012 the European Commission worked under the Safer Internet Programme: no further actions on parental control tools are foreseen. The European Commission is committed to continue awareness campaigns and discussions on a better internet for children through the network of Safer Internet Centres active in all Member States.
Background
Making the internet a better and safer place for children has been a priority of the European Commission since the launch of the first Safer Internet Action Plan in 1999, responding to a concern of 88% of the parents regarding children safety in the internet. A dedicated web-site, http://www.sipbench.eu, provides parents with the main findings of the study, useful recommendations as well as a general overview of the existing tools and their effectiveness.