>Bullshit. I work at a kids' technology centre, teaching them computer and Internet stuff. This is in the Netherlands, ages 8-18. (no filters, but they are supervised and we can see what's on their monitors at all times)

The only stuff I have seen them accidentally stumble upon is the odd bikini image in Google Image Search.

I can't imagine any scenario how a four year old could accidentally stumble upon rape porn (which is the type that's supposedly psychologically damaging, right?). In particular because they can't type (they lack the motor skills).

(actually I'd question how four-year-olds "surf the web proficiently" at all, for any definition of "proficiently" and any reasonable definition of "the web". Public libraries are easier to use, they're not proficient at those either)

In a hypothetical thought experiment, give 1,000,000 four-year-olds a tablet with a browser opened on a child-friendly start page, and let them play for an hour. None of them will stumble upon rape porn. The "proficient" ones will find something fun and colourful to play with. Your biggest problem is the ones that don't, get stuck on something boring, and start crying. Good luck with that.

My 4yo stumbled on porn so this is my personal experience. A co-worker of mine says his 5yo that has also.

>Also not true. I put this to the test back when we still had these filters enabled. The two smartest kids (ages 11-12) couldn't do it, there's just too many hurdles, passwords, blocking, safeguards going on. It's horrible software, really cripples the machine (which is one of the reasons why we got rid of it, favouring simple supervision). It's quite hard to disable even if you are the administrator of these PCs. Super easy to set up, though. It's a real trapdoor.

I have to admit I believe that they might have had a better chance if they could read English natively. At age 11-12 Dutch kids can read English, but not fast enough to do proper research on the English language web (so the solution would be for English parents to install Chinese filters, they got the experience anyway :-P).

Kids ages 8 or lower couldn't do it no matter the language. There may be the odd (extremely) high-functioning exception, but we were talking about most kids.

And by the time they're 16 it doesn't matter if it's a parental filter or a government one, they can--and will--get around government-grade censorship too. But then, a 16-year-old mind can think of depravities with or without help of the Internet.

Just because children get better at computers than their parents all the time, doesn't mean developmental stages suddenly disappear. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_development_stages

I personally got around more than one of them when I was 12 so again, this is my personal experience. I recently looked at these softwares and they are no more secure than they used to be. Add bootable live linux cd's and mobile devices and you can forget about this approach altogether.

>Sure! Education. Of the parents. Way before they're parents. It'll take a while before it pays off but when it does, oh boy, just look at all those bad statistics just evaporating!

If you really care about the children you'd put all the money spent on this and other bullshit into improving their education.

Parents can't be forced to be good parents or be educated in this way. They make more and more bad choices for themselves and their kids as the ages roll on.

Kids education is highly agendaized and liberally biased these days. It's a govt job, of course this would eventually happen.