Engl. transl.: Inappropriate content

This chapter focuses on children’s and young people’s access to inappropriate content online. The term inappropriate content is not a well defined term and one can find variations across generations and across countries and cultures. Content that seems inappropriate from an adult’s perspective may not be perceived in the same way by children and young people. Furthermore, cultural differences may influence how we understand and categorize different types of content. This blurry middle ground can contain for example sexual content, as it is hard to achieve consensus on what is pornography and what is sexual information or portrayal. On the other hand, certain content is universally classified as inappropriate for children in all cultures - for example the depiction of violence or sexual abuse, and encouragement to harm ones’ self or others. Furthermore, some content can be classified as illegal (thus inappropriate), such as violent or sexual acts against children, and the promotion of racism and xenophobia.

Awareness of risk does not necessarily reduce risky encounters, and we need more research on children’s coping strategies and consequences. In chapter 16, Kirwil et al. examine different strategies of parental mediation. In Europe, content filters are one of the most widespread measures taken to minimise exposure to harmful material for personal and public computers, but even when these are used some basic issues will remain according to Price & Verhulst (2005). One is that the user will have to select filtering criteria and the lists to choose from will need to be very long if they are to fit all kinds of family structures, cultures, ideologies, etc. Another issue is that the content that is filtered out is subject to ideological biases, even though this might not be transparent to the users.