A Quarter of UK Parents Use Content Filters from Broadband ISPs

A new Ofcom report has found that 61% of parents are aware of the existing network-level internet filtering (Parental Control) tools provided by big UK broadband ISPs, yet only 27% have actually chosen to use them. Meanwhile, 6% of children have circumvented parental controls and 5% used a proxy server to avoid them.

The results from Ofcom’s latest ‘Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2022‘ have particular relevance this year because of the Government’s new Online Safety Bill (OSB), which seems to be laser focused on making the UK the safest country in the world for children to go online. But this in turn requires significantly more aggressive censorship of legal online content, which will impact everybody and not just children.

As a result it’s easy to forget that all of the market’s largest mobile and broadband ISPs (e.g. BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and more) have, as part of an earlier agreement with the Government, already adopted a system of network-level filtering that blocks potentially harmful websites across all connected devices from the gaze of young eyes. Customers can disable this if they so choose (it’s enabled by default).

Overall, some 91% of parents with UK children aged 3-17 were aware of the many different types of technical tools and controls mentioned in Ofcom’s survey (i.e. everything from ISP filters to software, Google SafeSearch, app controls etc.), and 70% had used any of them. As above, these results reduce to 61% when talking specifically about familiarity with network-level filters from broadband ISPs, with adoption of just 27%.

In addition, some 56% of parents of UK children aged 3-17 who had their own mobile phone were aware of a block on adult or 18+ content that can be put on their child’s mobile, but only 35% had the block in place on their child’s phone.

Among those who were aware of, but did not use, network level filters from their broadband ISP, the most common reasons were that they trusted their child to be sensible or responsible when online (45%) or that they preferred to supervise their child’s online use by talking to them and setting rules (44%).

However, up to a fifth of parents questioned their usefulness: 18% said that ISP filters block too much or get in the way, while 11% said they don’t block enough. And while 17% said they were too complicated to use (this makes no sense as they’re enabled by default), a further 7% said that their child could find a way to get around the filters.

The survey also included some feedback from the children themselves. When asked which measures they used to protect themselves online, some 35% of children aged 12-17 reported using measures which might in fact have put them more at risk, because they could enable them to come across potentially harmful content. This included those who had surfed in incognito mode (21%), had deleted their browsing history (19%), and those who had circumvented parental controls put in place to stop them visiting certain apps and sites (6%), or used a proxy server to access particular apps and sites (5%).

Interestingly, there were some big differences by nation on the views of the content filters provided by home broadband ISPs. Parents of children in Wales were less likely than those in Northern Ireland to trust their child to be sensible or responsible instead of using these (47% vs 33%). And parents of children in England were more likely than those in Northern Ireland to prefer to supervise their child’s online use by talking to them and by setting rules (40% vs 29%).

We should add that any future rules (i.e. Online Safety Bill) to block websites at ISP level will almost certainly suffer from some big flaws, since ISPs have no ability to remove the content posted on remote web servers and thus the blocks they’re able to enforce are akin to placing a “do not enter” sign on an open bedroom door. This is not the fault of ISPs, it’s just a facet of how the internet itself works.