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. In a 2009 Washington Post editorial, an educator opined that, “Filters stifle teaching innovations and don’t effectively keep students safe. The best strategy for protecting students online is educating them about Internet citizenship and safety.”
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.
An “education only” approach to the problem of inappropriate online content is like inviting your child into the world’s largest magazine store where Hustler is next to Highlights, then relying on instructions on how not to look at Hustler to prevent exposure. Wouldn’t it make a little more sense to also put Hustler in the Adults Only section?
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. It’s long past time to move beyond the unproductive “technology vs. education” debate.
–David Burt, CISSP, CIPP
