Which is better at protecting children online: technology or education? This may seem like an odd question to some, but it’s one that gets asked in online safety settings.
What I find interesting about this idea is that in the worlds of online privacy and online security — the technological/social problems that are the most similar to online safety – there is no such “education is better than technology” debate. No one seriously argues that we can best address spam, hacking, privacy, or malware only with “education” – it’s a given that technology is part of the solution. Anti-spam software is part of the solution to spam, anonymizers and privacy settings are part of the solution to privacy, etc.
That said, security professionals will tell you that technology alone cannot solve security problems, and that user education must be part of any comprehensive security solution. If users aren’t educated in how to recognize fake e-mails with links to malicious websites, a defense-in-depth solution of anti-spam, filters, firewalls, and anti-malware software will eventually fail when something inevitably slips through and a user clicks on a malicious link and downloads malware.
I find it hard to understand why anyone would think that the problems of online safety – exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, online sexual solicitation, sexting, etc. can be addressed only with education.
When seeking to protect children from sexual solicitation, of course we need to educate kids on how to stay out of shady neighborhoods – online and offline – but doesn’t make it sense to restrict the access of kids to online neighborhoods like Chatroulette, where 14 percent of users are exposers?
So what’s the answer: education or technology? Of course, the answer is both. The “education vs. technology” online safety debate is a false dilemma. We shouldn’t be discussing which approach to use, but rather what’s the best way to use education and technology together effectively. Technological/social problems like security, safety and privacy need combined education and technology solutions to be most effective.
–David Burt, CISSP, CIPP
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Couldn’t agree more, David, that it’s a false dilemma and that both are needed. But I was on a panel with the writer of that commentary, Justin Reich, recently, and I don’t think he’s saying do away with school filtering altogether. As an educator himself now working on his PhD at the Harvard School of Ed, he’s just helping readers see what it looks like from the inside – in schools and districts (the knee-high fences metaphor). IT directors I follow say similar things, and even Ofsted (the UK government’s education watchdog) says that more thoughtful, “managed” filtering in schools is better for students’ long-term safety than “locked down” filtering (see this post of mine http://www.netfamilynews.org/?p=28736). Some unfortunate red tape has built up around filtering in this country because of schools and districts seeking easy, one-click compliance with CIPA which makes it very hard for classroom teachers to unblock (or get unblocked) sites they want students to go to for educational purposes, and then you see what Justin says about the student workaround reality where non-educational sites are concerned. Thanks for this great service.