Parental Filtration Software 1

Does parental filtration serve its intended purpose and reduce online risks or does it
increase curiosity?

Zunaid Hossain
1110130030
Eng: 105, Sec 10
Course Instructor: Abdus Selim
Date:

Parental Filtration Software 2

INTRODUCTION

On this technology based era, under-aged children are exposed to the internet at a
much younger stage of life than the children of older generation. This, of course, increases
their knowledge and learning abilities. However, there are several contents over the internet
which is not appropriate for their tender age. This creates the need and demand for parental
filtration. Content-control software and web filtering software are terms for software
designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader. Parental
filtration software determines what content will be available or perhaps more often what
content will be blocked. Popular parental filtration software mainly restrict pornography,
violence, alcohol, hacking, and gambling for teenagers and also sex education,
heterosexuality, abortion, illegal drugs, weapons, social networking for pre-teenagers.
The main objective of this report is to observe the limitations of parental control in a
todays environment. The aim is to find a coherent approach to parental control, i.e. to find if
they have a disappointing result that show using filtering tools is not associated with a
reduction in childrens exposure to online risk.
This research could be used to shed some light over the true effectiveness of parental
filtration software and determine its importance in our social life and childrens psychology.

Parental Filtration Software 3

AREAS TO BE STUDIED

To conduct this research the age group concerned would be children between the ages
of seven to seventeen. For better analytical results, this age group would be further divided in
two segments of ages seven to twelve, and ages thirteen to seventeen. This would help
distinguish the differences between pre-teenagers and teenagers regarding internet filtration,
if there is any. The following questions will be answered through this research:

What are the main contents that are considered age inappropriate for each age group?
What are the main sources that of these contents?
Does parental filtration limit the internet use for a child or reduce his online

opportunities as well?
Do all parents support the use of this software?
To what extend are the children of the concerned aged group and their parents an
aware of the available content control software in Bangladesh?

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HYPOTHESIS

It is not very clear whether parental filtration software actually serves their intended
purpose and restricts exposure to online risk. It might increase curiosity of the children to see
those contents blocked by the software.

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METHODOLOGY

For primary research, a survey of a representative sample of the general public in

Dhaka and their perspective about content controlling software over the internet in
Bangladesh will be conducted. Hence, a questionnaire with various types of questions to get a
range of useful data which will help to provide answers to the research questions would be
designed. To support the claimed hypothesis, several means of communication would be
used, such as personal interviews of target group of children and their parents.
For secondary research, the resources would be books and magazines, if available, for
articles about parental filtration in Bangladesh. Other significant resources would be online
documents, journals, standard reference sources and databases, government documents,
media and academic web-sites and any other forms of supplementary materials, etc.

Parental Filtration Software 6

DATA REPRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

These are the main sources of my research. The questionnaire that I have prepared is
shown in these graphs. I have presented each question with one graph to show how the
answers varied from person to person. These graphs also show the different response of
different people. The X axis shows the number of people answered which option and the Y
axis shows the options of each question.
Simple and robust reporting tools
According to Satterfield (June, 2007) 13% of children who were upset by an online
risk say they have used reporting tools, and two thirds of those who used them found them
helpful. Country differences are considerable: 35% of children who were bothered by an
online risk have used reporting tools in Turkey, but just 2% of such children in Hungary.
Children are more likely to use reporting tools when upset online if they come from a poorer
home, if they are a girl, if they experience psychological difficulties, or if they are more
active online. This suggests the tools meet a need and should be promoted more widely.
Limited ease of use and effectiveness are likely to impede take-up.
Age-appropriate privacy settings
43% of 9-16 year old SNS users keep their profile private, 28% have it partially
private and 26% have it public. Children who have their profile set to public are also more
likely to display their phone number or address on their SNS profile. More efforts are needed
to promote the use of privacy settings and make them user-friendly. Children are more likely
to have a public profile if they cannot understand or manage the privacy settings, if they are a

Parental Filtration Software 7

boy, if their parents have banned their SNS use, or if they experience psychological
difficulties.
Wider use of content classification
According to Bradwell (2012), 14% of 9-16 year olds have seen sexual images on
websites. This included 8% of 11-16 year olds who saw images of people having sex and/or
genitals, and 2% who saw violent sexual images. 32% of all 9-16 year olds who had seen
sexual images said they were upset by them. Among 11-16 year olds upset by seeing online
sexual images, 26% hoped the problem would just go away, 22% tried to fix it, 19% deleted
unwelcome messages and 15% blocked the sender. Only 13% reported the problem online,
though most of those found the result helpful.21% of 11-16 year olds have seen potentially
harmful user-generated content such as hate sites(12%), pro-anorexia sites (10%, rising to
19% of 14-16 year old girls) and self-harm sites (7%).Those with more digital skills are more
likely to encounter these content-related risks.
Wider availability and use of parental controls
One in three parents (33%) claims to filter their childs internet use and one in four
(27%) uses monitoring software. Overall, only a quarter of children (27%) and a third of
parents think parents are effective in helping to keep children safe online. Parents are more
likely to use filtering if they are regular and/or confident users of the internet themselves, if
they are worried about online risks toothier child, or if their child is younger and/or less
experienced in internet use.
Although it seems that the more filtering, the less online risk, this is because younger
children encounter less risk since they use the internet less and are more subject to parental
controls advice versa

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Age Range: Basically I have surveyed young people who are studying in school. Age group
of below 18 represents the school and college going students who are the people who will
face the unified method of education.

70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
Yes

30.00%

No

20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Parents
Children

Figure 1 Awareness
For my research I have surveyed 60 people in total. To get an equal response from
both the gender, I have chosen 30 children and 30 parent respondents.
63.3% of the children and almost a 37&% of the parents only were available about
parental filtration softwares.
For the availability of cheap calling cards can call each other frequently. Most of them
said they call almost every week said that they call each other every day even its for a couple
of minutes.

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Do they Use these software:

80.00%
70.00%
60.00%

Yes

50.00%

No

40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Parents

Figure 2: Usage among Parents

This is a column chart relates monthly income with the usage of the aware parents.
The X-axis states response and the Y-axis states the percentage of the sample.
Of the 37% aware parents, only a mere 27% use these software. The rest do not. This
graph is helpful to find the impact of parents. However when asked to name software none
were able to answer properly. The one is cheaper than other methods usually. Not everyone
can afford other method for high cost. Another reason behind this is most of the middle class
families are unaware. The students of influential content controlling software schools mostly
come from higher income level because the education cost of affluent is very high for our
country. Students of most of the public schools are mainly aware. The only one that stood out
is the AVG Family Safety in iPods.

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13-17 years
IM/online chatting
Illegal drugs/ Alcohol
Educational Purposes
Social Networking
Gaming
13-17 years
Sex education
Gambling
Hacking
Violence
Pornography
0.00%
50.00%
100.00%

This is a column chart which represents what subjects are interesting to my sample.
This graph helps to find the interests of the students from different education method. The
horizontal axis states the subjects and the vertical axis states the interesting rate where 0
being the most interesting.
To the students, the most interesting were the ones they were restricted to see.
Naturally students find it the most interesting subject. But they find this software useful
enough. If we analyze subject wise, it is more useful for parents.

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They do not find mathematics interesting as they are not given proper guidance in this subject
because of lack of knowledge of parents in mathematics. It is interesting to Children content
controlling software students as they are reading their text book which is really easy and not
compatible with the world. So more emphasize should be given in this subject.

Teenagers whose parents blocked certain sites

60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%

Teenagers whose parents

blocked certain sites

10.00%
0.00%

This is a bar chart which represents what subjects are difficult to my sample. This
graph helps to find the difficulties of the students from different education method. The
vertical axis states the subjects and the horizontal axis states the difficulty rate where 0 being
the most difficult.
The graph indicates that, Parents students find mathematics and science difficult
among their subjects. Curiosity seems to be easy to them. Though we are social beings,
Children content controlling software students find difficulties in social studies. And
curiosity seems to be easy to them. If we judge the graph in another aspect, we see that,

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curiosity is more or less easy to every category. Social studies are difficult for Children
content controlling software.

60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
Yes
30.00%

No
Maybe, but keeps our
parents happy

20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Reduces online risks

As I said before, the parents of Parents are not well knowledgeable about mathematics
and science. So they find these subjects to be difficult. Therefore they lag behind in science
and technology. As they lead their life solely on Islam, so they do not find religious studies as
a difficult subject. Children content controlling software students have to memorize a lot in

Parental Filtration Software 13

Children and social studies. So they find these subjects difficult. It was a surprising response
from the content controlling software students that they also find difficulties in mathematics
and science. But they study in more practical ways. Memorizing should be eliminated and
more efficient parents should be provided to overcome these difficulties.

Importance of internet to blend-in

100%
more than 50%
less than 50%

This is a column chart which represents what kind of job people want to do or they
do. This graph helps to find which method creates what type of candidates of job. The X-axis
states the types of jobs and the Y-axis states the percentage of the respondents.
Most of the only above 10% of my respondents want to do business in future which is
rare for Parents people. Children content controlling software respondents emphasize on
technical jobs mostly. They do not want to be a business owner although most of the domestic
business owners of Bangladesh are from Children content controlling software background.
Parent respondents choose because it is the most feasible option for them as they are
dedicated to religious views. Teaching is a prestigious and knowledgeable job which is

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preferred by good students from any category. Business needs risk which results in low
number of respondents in this type.

Parents' concern about online exposure

50.00%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%

Parents' concern about

online exposure

20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
Extremely concerned about youth exposure to sexual materials online

This is a column chart which represents what percentage of people wants to settle
abroad for different purposes. The horizontal axis states education method whereas the
vertical axis shows the percentage of the respondents.
Content controlling software and Children content controlling software respondents
are level out in the question of settling abroad.
They think it is wise to settle abroad. But there is certainly an opposition whose
opinion contradicts with them. Some patriots have not lost faith on their motherland. They
think we have to stay here for any cost. Some may disagree with the above four reasons and
be optimistic about own country. But some of my respondents never think about settling
abroad because they cannot live there. They have some reasoning also. Mostly they are from
Parents background. They feel language as a barrier to settle abroad. They are satisfied with

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their current country as they can practice their curiosity effectively. This varies from people
to people.

Does this limit learning abilities?

50.00%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%

Does this limit learning

abilities?

Yes

No

Very Little

This is a bar chart which shows the level of knowledge about other curiosities. This
graph helps to find our views and knowledge about other curiosities. The vertical axis shows
the knowledge level of the respondent and the horizontal axis percentage of the respondents.
The graph shows that content controlling software respondents has moderate and
above moderate knowledge about other curiosities. Children content controlling software

Parental Filtration Software 16

respondents have more or less knowledge about other curiosities. Most of the respondents
from Parents have poor knowledge about other curiosities though they study a particular
curiosity mostly.
The result shown in the graph is a matter of concern for us. Most of the educated
people of our country do not clear idea about other curiosities. Only content controlling
software students have a moderate or more than moderate knowledge about other curiosities
as they are more exposed to cross-cultural and cross-religious people. But students from
content controlling software background are little in number if we consider whole
Bangladesh. Children content controlling software students come from different family
backgrounds which makes the fluctuation of their knowledge about other curiosities. But
most of the respondents from Parents background have a poor knowledge. When I tried to
clear the question verbally to them, they firstly said that Islam is the best curiosity. It took
time to make them understand that it is not about the best or the worst; it is about the
knowledge about other curiosities. How can one say what is the best without knowing the
other options? Thus students are having a blind belief about their own curiosities and some of
them have hatred towards other curiosities.

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Does this Forbiddence increase your curiousity?

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0

Does this Forbiddence

increase your curiousity

This is a bar chart which tells us if the respondents feel privileged over other people
from different background in Bangladesh. The X-axis shows percentage of the respondents
and the horizontal axis presents the different education systems.

Parental Filtration Software 18

The graph is clearing stating that most of the respondents from each category think
that they are in the right track in terms of their education method. It implies that, most of us
are satisfied with our own education systems.
But the fact is that, we all are satisfied considering a certain area of life. But if we
consider those aspects together, we shall identify that we are lagging behind in many ways.
Parents have good religious belief in Islam which restricts them from evil deeds. Content
controlling software students are satisfied because of their international standard education
system and good spoken skills in language. Children content controlling software students are
close to Bangladeshi culture and can be easily admitted in public universities of Bangladesh.
In these aspects every education method has given privilege to its students. But ones plus
point is anothers weakness. So we need to establish a unified method of education which
will include all the plus points from different methods of education but also eliminate the
weaknesses of different education methods.
Surviving a long distance its not that easy. But I have got quite interesting answers
form the questionnaire as most of the people said that they have survived this relation for 612 months. Also some people have been surviving this relation for more than 1 year and they
think its worth it. The people who are in this relation for 1-3 months are basically the teen
agers.
When one sixth of the worlds population is connected with one social network then it
is so obvious that people will use that as via to communicate with the person they love. 26 of
my respondents said that they use face book and Skype for communicating usually. Face
book can actually tell them whats going on the other persons life and as Skype has the best
video quality so far and it is free so they use Skype frequently. Phones are another via which

Parental Filtration Software 19

is used by everyone. All of the respondents said that they call their boyfriend or girlfriend to
keep in touch.

RECOMMENDATIONS

46% of 9-16 year old internet users in Europe had experienced at least one risk
online, rising from 17% 9-10 year olds to 69% 15-16year olds.
New analysis of the data reveals that:
Childrens exposure to online risks decreases the more parents use restrictive mediation.
Childrens exposure to online risks also tends to be less the more parents actively mediating
their childrens use.
Parental active mediation of safety has no significant association with online risks for
children aged 11-12 but it is associated with more risks for 9-10 and 13-16 year olds.
Parental monitoring is linked to more online risks among 9-14 year olds (for 15-16 year
olds the finding is similar but not statistically significant).
Technical mediation shows no effect on reducing risks online (at any age).
Unexpectedly, parents active mediation of safety and monitoring is linked to more not
less risk. We suggest, therefore, that parents may do these as consequence of their child
having experienced risks
This would explain the positive association with online risk. Possibly, the experience of
online risks raises the parents awareness of online risks and so they deploy more strategies

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for safety and control. Both strategies appear to represent prevention strategies for further
risks, but their effectiveness in preventing further risks cannot be established without
measures of parenting taken both before and after risk encounters.
Importantly, while restrictive mediation is clearly associated with lower risk, there is
also evidence that parental active mediation of internet use - i.e. parents talking to their
child about the internet, staying nearby or sitting with them while they go online,
encouraging them to explore the internet, and sharing online activities with them can
reduce online risks, notably without reducing their opportunities.
Reducing risk, reducing harm
While reducing risk has been high on the policy agenda, according to Livingstone,
Haddon, Grzig and lafsson (2012) in EU Kids Online network argues that it is even more
important to reduce the harm that children results from online risks rather than simply
trying to reduce risk itself.
After all, exposure to risk (e.g. encountering sexual content or getting in touch with a
new contact) is linked with only a (generally low) probability of harm, and it is also
positively linked with online usage, opportuntitiesand digital skills. Moreover, exposure to
risk may even result in increased coping and resilience and, therefore, result in reduced not
increased harm Do the five measures of parental mediation predict online harm? We
measured harm by asking children if they have experienced something on the internet that has
bothered them in some way in the past 12 months.
New analysis shows that:
Parental restrictive mediation leads to significantly smaller probability of being
bothered or upset online (at any age).
Active mediation of use tends to decrease the experience of harm between 9 and 12
years, though there is no effect for 13 to 16 year olds.

Parental Filtration Software 21

Active mediation of safety significantly increases being bothered or upset from online
risks among 9-10 year olds and 15-16 year olds(with a similar tendency between these ages
which is not statistically significant).
Monitoring is not significantly linked to feeling bothered or upset at 9-10 or 15-16 but is
associated with increased harm between 11 to14.
Technical mediation has no significant impact between 9 and 14.

LIMITATIONS

Though my hypothesis has been proved correct, I am not fully satisfied with my
research. I would have been better if I could overcome the limitations of my research.
This research was solely conducted by me within less than 20 days. So shortage of man
power and time constraint are two vital limitations I could not overcome. Some of my
respondents have not filled the open ended questions sincerely. My sample size was 60 which
are not enough for the population of Bangladesh. Most of my respondents were from Dhaka
city. But we all know Dhaka does not represent the standard of the people of whole
Bangladesh. So I have to admit that, in case of sample selection, I was a little biased.
So if I had the opportunity to overcome these limitations I would be truly satisfied. If
Bangladesh government likes my short research, then they perhaps can do this kind of
research in broader aspect. Actually before implementing the unified method of education, a
good research should be conducted by surveying the rural people of Bangladesh.

Parental Filtration Software 22

CONCLUSION

Morning shows the day. A good base is needed to build a huge castle. Similarly, a
basic understanding is the backbone of a healthy, communicating family. Alike most of the
developing countries, Bangladesh also need a different system to build an effective
population with similar kind of core values. This will indeed enhance the development
process of the country. In addition to that, it will reduce the conflicts of values within the
same boundary of a nation. It should introduce study of other religions to reduce religious
conflict of values and opinions. We should recognize that memorizing is not earning
knowledge. More practical knowledge should be included. Then automatically students will
be attracted to censored objects. This method cannot be implemented in a short run. It will
take time to train the parents to adapt this method. This method is necessary for our country
to produce the maximized outcome. These are area that needs to be paid attention to. Again
this parental filtration software increases the curiosity in the children to see what is being
blocked by the parents so they tend to break the filtration to see those sites. Thus it creates
curiosity among the children.

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REFERENCES

Bradwell P. (2012, December).Parental controls and Internet filtering fact sheet.

Retrieved from http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/parental-controlsand-internet-filtering-fact-sheet
Keller D. and Verhulst S.G. (2000,October). Parental Control in a Converged
Communications Environment Self-Regulation, Technical Devices and MetaInformation. Retrieved from
http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/reg/minors/dvbgroup.pdf
Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Grzig, A., and lafsson (2011) EU Kids Online Final Report
Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Grzig, A. and lafsson, K. (2011) Risks and safety on the
internet: The UK report.
ONeill, B., Livingstone, S. and McLaughlin, S. (2011). Final Recommendations. Policy
Implications, Methodological Lessons and Further Research Recommendations
PostBlog. "SafeFamilies.org | Accountability Software: Encyclopedia of Urban Ministry".
Urbanministry.org. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
Satterfield, Brian (4th june, 2007). "Understanding Content Filtering: An FAQ for
Nonprofits". Techsoup.org. Retrieved 2009-03-19.

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APPENDIX

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Questionnaire for Teenagers

Questionnaire for Teenagers
The following survey contains questions about
Does parental filtration serve its intended purpose and reduce online risks or does it
increase pornography?
The findings gathered from this survey will be incorporated into a research paper on
parental filtration software and its usage to control the kinds if it actually helps or not. I
would very much appreciate your honest answers to the questions. Thank you for your
time.
Male
Age: ..

Female

Q. 1. What do you generally use the internet for?

Pornography
Violence
Hacking
Gambling
Sex education
Gaming

Social Networking
Heterosexuality
Illegal drugs/ Alcohol
IM/online chatting
Educational Purposes

 Q. 2. Have you ever viewed any xxx sites?

Yes.
No
Q. 3. According to you, what are the main sources of this information? Rank
in descending order of importance. (1 being the most important)

Books
Cell phones/ laptops
Social networking sites
XXX sites
Q. 4. Do/ did your parents block any adult sites for you?

Yes, and this prevents me from knowing much about it

Yes, but I used a proxy
Yes, so I used other sources to watch
No, they do not have any idea about these
No, they trust me
Q. 5. For how long does your filter block the undesired sites?

Site unblocked in a few hours

Block removed in within one to two days
More than two days but less than a week
After one week or more

Q. 6. Does the use of this software reduce online risks?

Yes
No
Not really, but keeps ours parents happy

 Q. 7. To what extend does do you think it is necessary to surf these sites in

order to make and maintain your friends?
100%
More than 50%
Less than 50%
Q. 8. As a child, how would you rate your parents knowledge and concern of
online exposure?
Extremely concerned about youth exposure to sexual material online
Low trust in what youth does online
High knowledge of what youth does online
Q. 9. Keeping modern times and globalization in mind, would you say this
filtration limits the learning abilities among teenagers?
Yes
No
Very little

Q. 10. To what extend you support the use of these softwares?

It is non-negotiable
Just to be safe
Indifferent to it
Oppose it
Q. 11. Would you say this forbiddance increases your curiosity and pushes you
to find ways around these softwares?

Yes, it rather increases my urge to know more

No, I know Ill learn in time
Yes, it diverts my attention every chance I get