Video games: when parental control becomes the digital anxiolytic for mum and dad

We publish an excerpt from Luca Tremolada's book 'Tasto Pausa' published by Sole 24 Ore, 160 pp, in bookshops at 16.90 euro.

The concept of parental control, which you might also know as parental filtering, is perhaps a plastic and effective demonstration of why Gen Z is considered an anxious generation. These tools originated with the advent of the internet to monitor children's online activity, see what websites they visit, what apps they use and how much time they spend online. The first parental control tools were mainly web filters. In 1995, Net Nanny launched the first parent-run Internet filter software, effectively creating this category of software. This software filtered web and chat room content, blocked images and censored vulgarity.

Today, exactly the opposite is the case: parental control is basically software for mum and dad, which can help them manage their own anxiety generated by their children's use of the internet and social media. If you like, it is a tool that is not only useful but almost therapeutic, because it gives us the illusion that we can regulate our children's media diet inside the screens. Mind you, it succeeds in part: the filters work. I am not saying they are useless. But by now we should have realised, from the advent of social media onwards, how the exercise of digital control is technically complicated and is often reduced to being the perfect pretext for relying on external solutions.

That is, we entrust software to supervise our children's surfing simply because we cannot spend all our time with them peeking at what they are doing on their screens. We do not trust and so we delegate. Instead of trusting and demanding respect, we ask machines to adopt our educational model. In practice, we ask social and game consoles to listen to us as if they were babysitters noting our instructions on how it is good to behave with the child. Unlike humans, however, these technologies are 'babysitters' who do not interpret, do not take into account the context, just execute everything to the letter. And sometimes, they are so obtuse as to be easily manipulated.

As evidenced by several studies in the field of computer security and human-computer interaction, children and adolescents often demonstrate a remarkable ability to circumvent imposed restrictions. If we think of social networks, TikTok as well as Instagram, parental control tools, despite the efforts of the big tech companies, which have been very active over the past two years, struggle to keep up with the creativity of teenagers on the one hand and the digital content on the other. Despite the progress, there remain 'grey areas' where potentially harmful content is not filtered out, either because it is too new or because it is too clever. So, technically, there are no 100 per cent safe digital places.