In the very first issue of Youth Truth, I wrote about the internet service provider America Online (AOL) and their "parental control" feature. AOL's parental control system consists of four settings: "General Access" (unrestricted), "Mature Teens" (recommended for 16-17 year olds), "Young Teens" (13-15 year olds), and "Kids Only" (12 or younger). I reported that the settings for "Young Teens" and "Kids Only" blocked access to important educational and political web sites.
I've been informed since then that the situation has changed - in particular, that the web site of my own organization, ASFAR (Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions), is now accessible. So last month, just about one year later, I repeated my investigation of AOL's parental controls.
I reported in my earlier article that the "Mature Teens" category seemed to block only those sites containing explicit sexual or violent images or descriptions, but otherwise seemed to have the same searching and access capabilities as the unrestricted "General Access" level. This time, however, I found three sites blocked at that level that do not fit the above description: the Creator's Rights Party <http://www.christiangallery.com/creator.html>, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Party <http://www.kukluxklan.org>, and Peacefire <http://www.peacefire.org>. I might have overlooked these last year, or the decision to prevent "Mature Teens" from viewing these sites might have been made since then. There could be many more such sites - neither pornographic nor outrageously violent - that are blocked to "Mature Teens" that I didn't come across. So I'm no longer so confident that the "Mature Teen" setting is similar to the "General Access" setting.
First, I repeated my test with two academic sites: Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. The latter site seems to be as accessible as it was a year ago - some departmental pages, such as physics and departments in the School of Medicine, are still blocked to "Young Teens" and "Kids Only", although most of the site can still be viewed at these levels. For Northwestern University, however, it seems that only the home page is accessible; every internal link I tried, with these two settings, was blocked (last year, at least some of the internal pages could be accessed).
I also repeated my test of four search terms. This test could not be done at the "Young Teens" level last year, because with that setting there was no screen provided to permit searching of the entire web. This year, however, the feature has been added for "Young Teens". The results, below, are not surprising based on what I found a year ago:
| Term | Hits for: General Access/Mature Teens | YoungTeens | KidsOnly |
| "bully" | 1367 | 395 | 12 |
| "curfew" | 306 | 73 | 2 |
| "puberty" | 630 | 137 | 3 |
| "drugs" | 21049 | 3964 | 126 |
While the number of hits was the same for the "General Access" and "Mature Teens" settings, it is quite possible that many of these links would be blocked at the "Mature Teens" setting.
The relevance of the matches at the "Young Teens" and "Kids Only" levels was questionable. For example, of the first ten hits listed for "bully", none were relevant at the "Young Teen" level; at the "Kids Only" level, only one was relevant, but it was blocked! The search for "drugs" did yield mostly relevant matches; anti-drug links seemed to be heavily overrepresented, but that is true of searches done without parental controls as well.
The first of the three matches for "puberty" at the "Kids Only" level was a Harry Potter books fans' site, which was blocked! (Out of curiosity, I also checked the official Harry Potter site, and found it was also blocked to "Kids Only".) The second was a link to something called gURLmAIL - also blocked. The third, not blocked, was a letter from a 39-year-old taking Tegretol for epilepsy. The results for "Young Teens" searching the term "puberty" were significantly better; of the first ten matches, eight were relevant and only one was blocked.
The search term "curfew" yielded the most surprising change. Last year, at the "Kids Only" level, only one match was found, a handbook of the Parks and Recreation Department of College Station, Texas. This year, that match was still the first one listed, but a second link was added - to the home page of ASFAR. And it was not blocked! This match for "curfew" was also found at the "Young Teen" level, although it was not among the first ten. With the exception of ASFAR's discussion archives (which do contain an occasional four-letter word), ASFAR's entire site is accessible at all levels of AOL parental control.
Two other youth rights organizations - the National Youth Rights Association <http://nyra.ecg.net> and Youthspeak <http://www.oblivion.net/youthspeak> - are still completely blocked. Since ASFAR, as far as I know, has taken no action to protest the blockage of its web site by AOL aside from publishing my article a year ago, I assume one of our readers must have gone to bat for us! (Thanks!)
The major part of the test was checking the links to political sites, using (again) the wonderful list created by the Government Documents Librarian of the State University of West Georgia's Ingram Library <http://www.westga.edu/~library/depts/govdoc/political.shtml>. The list has grown a bit in the past year, but it is similar enough, I think, to serve the purpose of retesting. My results were also similar to those of last year.
Of the page's 48 working links to "Political Parties":
"Young Teens" can access 15
"Kids Only" can access 13
Last year, the site of the Republican National Committee was accessible, while the Democratic Party's site was not! I felt certain that this was a mistake, and sure enough, this year, both are accessible at all levels of parental control.
Two other parties that are accessible at all levels are the Communist Party and the Socialist Party; however, the "youth" pages on both of these sites are blocked to "Kids Only" and "Young Teens".
Of the page's 31 working links to "Non-Partisan Sites":
"Young Teens" can access 8
"Kids Only" can access 4
At the site of Project VoteSmart, neither group can access their comparison of the candidates. Some youth-related pages are blocked in a site called WhiteHouse 2000, including a page entitled "Neglection 2000". However, a site called The Skeleton Closet was entirely accessible at both levels - even though it spells out in great detail the scandals reported or rumored about various political figures, including a suggestion that Pat Buchanan may have had a venereal disease!
Of the page's 15 working links to "Media Sites and Publications":
"Young Teens" can access 6
"Kids Only" can access 4
Among the sites blocked to both groups are the American Politics Journal and the Harvard Political Review. One notable site which is accessible to "Young Teens" is the Drudge Report; I found many of its internal links to be blocked, but not the one to a story about Paula Jones' nude appearance in Penthouse, or an item on which famous actors are gay.
Of the page's 193 working links to "Political Action Groups":
"Young Teens" can access 52
"Kids Only" can access 34
As I commented last year, the possible reasons for permitting or denying access to these sites are unfathomable to me. While such groups as the Center for Auto Safety, the Children's Rights Council, the Food and Law Drug Institute, and the National Coalition for the Homeless are blocked at both levels, the Christian Coalition, Doctors Opposing Circumcision, and the Taxpayers Assets Project are entirely accessible to both levels. The AFL-CIO and UAW sites are accessible, but not the Teamsters' Union. To "Young Teens", the Episcopal Peace Fellowship is accessible, but not the Lutheran Peace Fellowship!
I did not check each of these links at the "Mature Teen" level; from spot-checking it is clear that the vast majority are accessible (but at least two of the "Political Parties" are not).
While I am happy that my own organization can now be viewed all kids
using AOL, I must still report that using AOL with parental controls gives
about the same access to the World Wide Web as it did a year ago - not
very balanced and not very informative.