Profanity Filter and Cyber Safety Mistakes You Should Never Make

The fast development of internet technology has successfully attracted not only adults but also children. These days, more and more kids have become interested in accessing the internet as a fun new way of socializing. However, this predicament breeds fear and anxiety for most parents because they realize that internet is not only entertaining and educational, but also risky. When kids surf the web or play online games, they can easily be exposed to profanity and unsuitable content.

Pornography and adult content can easily be accessed by kids as such content are usually widely available. Bullying also often happens to kids online through social network. Joining a social network enables kids to meet people from around the world easily so that chances to be bullied by friends or strangers are high.

Because profanity, pornography, and bullying can badly harm kids, parents should protect their kids online. In this case, parents can urge social media sites to start using a profanity filter to keep profanity at a bay. It has become a clear fact that one the ways kids learn is through imitating. Kids usually imitate things or actions that happen in their surroundings. If kids are often exposed to profanity, they might adopt profanity as their habit. To prevent this, most web service providers actually have a policy already in place that dictates the appropriate age of the visitor.



Unfortunately, most moderation strategies applied by web service providers are not effective in protecting kids from profanity and unsuitable content. There are a number of moderation strategies applied by web service providers. Minimum age requirement is used to control users in which only users at a certain age is allowed to join or access a site. For example, the largest social network, Facebook, has determined that 13 years old is the minimum age to set up an account. However, research indicates that this minimum age requirement does not work because many parents set up an account for their children. While parents could certainly stop setting up accounts for their kids, it is unlikely that this alone would prevent children from accessing these sites. A better alternative it seems is for kids, parents, and businesses to tackle the problem together.

For parents, this means providing supervision and restriction when possible. This type of authoritarian rule is bound to lose its effectiveness as the child becomes older and gains access to more devices with Internet capability (cell phones, tablets, etc.). Thus, it is also the parent’s job to educate children about dangers online, and help them develop savvy cyber habits. Since many studies reveal that young kids are often unsure about how to handle specific situations online, one precautionary measure is to ensure that the child feels comfortable asking a trusted adult or website for advice.

At the same time, the crowdsourcing moderation strategy that is used by popular social networks fails to fully protect kids from profanity and pornography because the moderation criteria used by individual (often anonymous) employees tends to differ from the needs of the client. There is not any standard that can become a guide to determine whether a certain image is unsuitable. A good solution for this is professional image moderation. Parents can teach their kids about professional image moderators and encourage them to use websites that have them in place. If the child is old enough, it will be helpful to explain that the purpose is to protect them from people who intend to harm them, rather than to restrict their activity online (save that conversation for another time!). Further, web service providers usually create a content filter and let users to filter content they want to post or see as they wish. This moderation strategy is not suitable for kids who have not yet known much about technology. In other words, this feature does not help protecting kids online. In this case, parents can set the content filter for their kids. Parents need to keep supervising their kids while their kids are online so that parents are able to know what their kids do on internet.