Family Forum / Parenting / Parenting / January 2006

Porn 'tidal wave' puts parents to test

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-29-porn-protection_x.htm

By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY

If your child surfs the Web, chances are he or she already has seen
pornography - maybe even hard-core porn.

More than a decade after the American public started cruising the Web,
it is clear that children can find everything from nudity to sites
featuring sexual violence and other extremes. For parents, this creates
challenges that never existed before: how to keep porn away from young
eyes, and what to do when safety measures fail.

"Kids are exposed to this at incredibly early ages, when their brains
are going through profound developmental changes," says Michael Bradley
of Philadelphia, a psychologist and author specializing in childhood
and adolescence. "This has caught parents off guard. (Porn) has always
been there, but it's always been in a lower volume."

In recent years, he says, "it's been like a tidal wave that has swept
over kids."

Questions emerged this month with the news that search giant Google is
fighting a Justice Department subpoena for its search data. The case is
part of the administration's legal fight to defend the polarizing Child
Online Protection Act of 1998. The measure would make it a federal
crime for a commercial website to put up materials "harmful to minors"
unless placed in areas only accessible to adults. (Related item: Google
battles government over porn investigation)

The government is subpoenaing data from search companies (Yahoo and
Microsoft's MSN have cooperated) in an effort to show that filters are
ineffective as part of its case supporting the online protection act.
It's not clear how the requested search data would show that.

The measure, which would make Web operators responsible for installing
age-verification systems, has never been enforced. A federal district
judge in Philadelphia blocked enforcement in February 1999, and the
Supreme Court has twice upheld that block. But it also sent the case
back to the lower court where the government must show that the act is
less restrictive on speech than Web filters or other screening methods.

The case is scheduled to return to court in October.

Regardless of where they stand on the law, experts agree that parents
need to take matters into their own hands by using content filters,
monitoring their children's use of the Internet and, most importantly,
talking with their children about online pornography.

"You have to sit down with kids at ages 6, 7, 8 and start to inoculate
them against this insanity by having these awkward conversations about
what they might see," Bradley says. "Parents have to get to these kids
first - not last."

That's just what Eric Gray, 53, of Los Gatos, Calif., has done. Gray,
father of two daughters, 14 and 11, works in Silicon Valley, managing
an advertising agency that specializes in high-tech companies, and is
savvier than many parents about the Internet. He has set up his
daughters' Internet search engines so that they filter out most adult
material (most search engines, including leaders Google and Yahoo,
allow users to set preferences so that adult material is mostly
blocked). And he has them bring their laptops into a room where a
parent can supervise them while they surf online. But he knows that no
filter is perfect and that his daughters might at some point come
across porn.

So he has talked to them.

"I had to tell them that there are things out there that they are not
even going to want to see - not just pornography, but violent sites
and chat rooms," he says. "You have to have several conversations about
it just so they have an understanding - so if they do accidentally
get there, it's not a complete shock."

There are steps parents can take. Internet safety consultant and legal
expert Parry Aftab recommends that parents allow children under 10 to
go online only through such Internet companies as MSN and America
Online, which offer protected, children-only areas.

When children are older - up to 14 - and if they're given access to
the Internet outside online companies, she recommends that parents buy
and install a software filter on their computer. (She specifically
recommends going with a filtering company that has been around for a
number of years, such as CyberPatrol.) But parents need to remember
that kids can get onto the Internet through many avenues, including
portable video games, schools, libraries, coffee shops and friends'
houses.

"There is no silver bullet," says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the
Future in Menlo Park., Calif. "There are so many ways that kids can
stumble onto stuff. Unfortunately, I think this is a moment in time
where the best answers are the most old-fashioned. You know: Talk to
your kids, engage with what they are surfing on the Web. Then, on top
of that, do whatever you can electronically."