Parental control won’t stop teenagers from watching porn, here’s why

A new study shows that the use of internet filtering tools is widespread, but there has been no conclusive evidence on their effectiveness in preventing teenagers from accessing porn sites.

If you think that internet filtering tools, such as parental controls, will stop your teenage child from accessing explicit sexual content online then you may be wrong. A new study done by researchers from the University of Oxford in Britain, shows that the use of internet filtering tools is widespread, but there has been no conclusive evidence on their effectiveness.

“It’s important to consider the efficacy of internet filtering. Internet filtering tools are expensive to develop and maintain, and can easily ‘underblock’ due to the constant development of new ways of sharing content,” said co-author Victoria Nash.

The study also looked into how many households needed to use filtering technologies to stop one adolescent from seeing online pornography. “The findings from our preliminary study indicated that somewhere between 17 and 77 households would need to use internet filtering tools in order to prevent a single young person from accessing sexual content,” said co-author Andrew Przybylski.

The results from follow-up study showed no statistically or practically significant protective effects for filtering. The researchers noted that there should be more research done to solidify these findings. The findings are published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking.