Net will (not) be safe for children in 2 years

Sky News reported on a story today with the headline that the net could be safe for children in 2 years.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91221-1306904,00.html

The general idea is that although there are many types and brands of 'child protection' software available the parents feel overwhelmed by the choice and perceived technical overhead. And of course some parents don't install such tools at all.

The idea from the Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety is to have PC manufacturers pre-install such tools on all computers prior to shipping.

As a parent, a regular net user and someone within the online industry I am pleased to see the initiative, but sadly see it failing completely.

Pre-installing the software will not solve the basic problem that the web is absolutely stuffed full of content that us parents would rather our children weren't exposed to. I would also question who in the family is the most likely power-user - the children or the parent?

I am glad to see someone is thinking about this, but the solution won't be effective until you have a joint initiative between the ISPs, software companies and OS manufacturers, and an advancement in content monitoring tools that include sentiment analysis and contextual image scanning.

And of course parent's teaching their children about the real world and how to behave responsibly within it.

:~Dax~:

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