Is your child watching the right content on the TV and over the internet? To what extent can parents look over the activities of their kids? This poses a significant problem for parents around the globe! Even at the tender age of five, kids are not spared from advertisements that keep popping up, which are not meant for them.
First, let me mention a few categories of content meant only for adult viewing – gambling, dating services, and sexualized imagery., There is a wide range of things we need to protect our children from. Unfortunately, most of these cannot be filtered by parents, which is the primary way parents adopt to prevent their children from viewing forbidden content.
According to research conducted by Adblock Plus, on average, a person comes across 500 such online advertisements which adults can quickly identify as different categories of content which, according to Till Faida, cause confusion and distress when viewed by children.
He says that the growth in online gaming and interactive websites means children as young as five can navigate the internet competently. Many parents are happy to let their children log on unsupervised, as they believe they are free from accessing adult material due to installed web filters.
A recent report from Ofcom into media use and attitudes amongst parents and children highlighted that of those surveyed, 85 percent had online controls in place to ensure against their child accessing adult content, as well as teaching them online safety.”
He further says that this is all well and good, but parents need to realize such measures do not go far enough. The growth in online advertising means marketers and advertisers are operating in a very competitive field and are becoming much more aggressive in their tactics to ensure their message is seen and clicked through.
As a result, a child could be innocently clicking away when something pops up that gets their attention, and they click through, opening up to the content of a very adult nature. We recently surveyed consumer attitudes toward online advertisements, and our results indicated that 75 percent of surveyed participants felt that the online advertisements seen by children display inappropriate content.
It’s therefore clear that parents recognize the concerns around online advertisements. However, there’s now the challenge of teaching them how to assert measures and control them.
In conclusion, he said To combat this, ad blocking software is widely available and is a creditable way of blocking pop-ups and intrusive online adverts. Currently, interest and adoption of ad blocking software and technology are steadily growing; we alone at Adblock Plus have over 40 million registered users and over 100 million downloads.
The appeal ad blocking holds for the community and users is that they can benefit from quicker loading and cleaner-looking web pages free from advertisements, lower resource waste, and privacy benefits gained by excluding ad delivery platforms’ tracking and profiling systems.
Currently, no web browser offers ad-blocking capabilities as part of its child protection tools. However, the software can easily be downloaded, giving the power back to the parent, ensuring that the child is free to use the internet without the risk of exposure to inappropriate content.
This has become a significant cause of concern for parents worldwide, but I’m sure we can conclude if we work to gather. So what do you say?
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