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 as a major 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.
Most of these unfortunately cannot be filtered by parents which is the primary way adopted by parents to prevent their children from viewing forbidden content. There is a wide range of things we need to protect our children from. To start with let me mention a few categories of content meant only for adult viewing – gambling, dating services and sexualised imagery.
According to a research conducted by Adblock Plus on an average a person comes across 500 such online advertisements which can easily be identified by adults as different category of content which according Till Faida causes confusion and distress when viewed by children. He says “The growth in online gaming and interactive websites mean children as young as five can competently navigate their way around the internet. 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 per cent had online controls in place to ensure against their child accessing adult content, as well as teaching them online safety.”
He further continues to say “This is all well and good but parents need to realize such measures do not go far enough. The growth in online advertising mean marketers and advertisers are operating in a very competitive field and are therefore 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 content of a very adult nature. We recently conducted a survey into consumer attitudes of online advertisements and our results indicated that 75 per cent of surveyed participants felt that the online advertisements seen by children displays 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 In order 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 is 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 through the exclusion of the tracking and profiling systems of ad delivery platforms. 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 major cause of concern for parents all over the world but I’m sure we can come to a conclusion if we work to gather. So what do you say?
Kruti, thank you for this informative piece. I have a 2 y.o. daughter who occasionally watches cartoons on YouTube that we select. However, I was amazed that even cartoons have adverts within their content too! I shall certainly be looking into adblock now that she is more aware of the content she watches. I will add that everything she watches is within close proximity of us when we are working so she is fully supervised in that sense!
Zoe xxx
http://www.zoealexanderuk.com