AOL provides four progressively restrictive parental control settings -- "General Access," "Mature Teens," "Young Teens," and "Kids Only" -- to let parents "take charge of their child's online experience to ensure it is safe, fun, and enriching." It allows parents to limit their children's email, control online chat, block instant message notes, prevent downloading of files and software, and restrict access to the World Wide Web.

Parents might think that these controls block access to web sites of "hate groups," or those which contain pornography, sexual discussion, or extreme violence. What they may not realize is that parental controls also block web pages of American colleges and universities, government agencies, libraries, and major political parties. Yet they often do not block access to the sites of gun shops, beer distilleries, and some sexually descriptive material.

I tested the parental control settings on October 23-24, 1999. The "mature teen" setting, suggested by AOL for 16-17 year olds, seems to function as it is described. It enables the online user to access, as far as I could tell, any site except those with explicit sexual material and images.

When I attempted to explore the Web as a "young teen," I did not find the experience "safe, fun, and enriching" -- it was confusing, frustrating and disturbing. As a "young teen" (the category AOL suggests for people aged 13-15 years), I found practically no way to search the Web with search terms at all. Users may enter search terms into the space for URL addresses or into a small keyword search box, but almost every term searched that way yielded only the message "The keyword you entered was not found. Please check your spelling and try again." Those few terms that were acceptable all seemed to lead to sites set up by AOL. There is also a search screen entitled "AOL Find," which gives pretty much the same results. When I tried to open the search screen available to "mature teens" and adults, what appeared was the following message:

WEB RESTRICTED

I was to view this message many times during my experiment. So as a "young teen," I was essentially unable to search the web by subject, and could only rely on links provided by AOL for news, entertainment, or information. To access anything else, a "young teen" must know or guess at the URL address of the web site they want to view.

So I tried entering some URLs. I began by exploring the home site of Northwestern University. The home page was available, but the page for athletics at Northwestern was blocked. The links to the Law, Medical and Business schools were all blocked, but oddly, the page for the Dental School was accessible. On the University of Michigan site, the situation was similar; the Law School page was accessible, but the pages for Medicine and many other science departments (such as the Physics Department) were blocked.

I further tested the "young teen" setting with a list of political sites from the Government Documents Department of the Ingram Library of the State University of West Georgia (http://www.westga.edu/library/depts/). Surprisingly, the page with this list was not blocked by AOL, so I was able to simply click on the links provided. With the "young teen" setting:

• of the page's 33 working links to political parties, I was allowed to access 13
• of the page's 34 working links to "Non-Partisan Sites" such as the Federal Election Commission, Common Cause, Gallup Poll (not blocked), and the Center for Responsive Politics, the Food and Drug Law Institute, and Junior State of America (blocked), I was allowed to access 8
• of the 13 working links to "Media Sites & Publications" such as C-Span, Congressional Quarterly, and The Hill, I was allowed to access 6
• of the page's 162 links to "Political Action Groups" such as the AFL-CIO, Boycott Nike, and the Christian Coalition (not blocked), and the Alliance to Save Student Aid, Child Support Reform Network, and Students for a Better America (blocked), I was allowed to access 50

I was unable to figure out the possible criteria for blocking or permitting access to a site. Some sites, such as the ACLU web site (which includes articles on sodomy laws), are entirely accessible, perhaps because of the perceived clout of the organization and their perceived ability to challenge AOL's decision to block access. In other cases, the choices are mystifying. The site for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is accessible, but not the Center for Auto Safety. The site for Ozone Action is accessible, but not Save Our Sky. And sites for organizations primarily involved in youth rights activities, such as the National Youth Rights Organization, YouthSpeak, Peacefire, and Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions, were all blocked.

Remember that this setting is recommended by America Online for people up to the age of 15, an age at which many young people might be expected to start considering colleges and universities, or becoming politically active. America Online seems to consider such activities inappropriate for 15 year olds.

When I used the "kids only" setting, which AOL suggests for people aged 12 and younger, the library's web page with the list of links was no longer accessible, so I had to enter every URL manually. The results were even more limited:

• of the 33 working links to political parties, I was allowed access to 9 (the Republican National Committee was permitted, but the Democratic National Committee was not!)
• of the 34 working links to "Non-Partisan Sites," I was allowed access to 2
• of the 13 working links to "Media Sites & Publications," I was allowed access to 5 (but many articles were blocked on two of these)
• of the 162 working links to "Political Action Groups," I was allowed access to 31 (but many internal links were blocked on 7 of these)

The "kids only" setting is better than the "young teens" setting in one way: a search screen is available which actually permits kids to explore the Web using search terms. The search screen looks different from the screen provided for adults and "mature teens," with bright colors, bold block letters, and links to special AOL sites for kids. It does provide a space, however, to enter subject terms to search the Web.

The results of those searches may be less than satisfying. The search for the term "bully," which yields 607 hits when performed by a "mature teen" or an adult, yields only 7 hits when searched by a "kid." The results are supposed to appear in order of relevance, and they do. The top item listed in this search is an excellent site from the UK on how kids and parents can deal with bullies. The second item listed is about bulldogs. And the rest of the "hits" go downhill from there.

A "kid" interested in the topic of "curfew," which could easily serve as the subject of a school paper, will find one match when this search term is entered, a link to a citizen's handbook from the Parks and Recreation Department in College Station, Texas. An adult or "mature teen" entering this same term finds 162 matches. A search for the term "puberty," which yields 331 hits for adult or "mature teen" settings, yields one hit for a "kid" -- a link to an article on epilepsy medication.

If a "kid" enters the term "drugs," 114 hits appear, which is quite a few, unless you compare it to the 10,716 hits that would have been found with the general or "mature teen" setting. The top match, which is supposed to be the most relevant, is a link to the "Drug-Free Children Program" of the Church of Scientology, which opposes the use of Ritalin and other prescribed medications.

So in the world of AOL, a child's first search screen is in fact a toy search screen, designed to introduce the concept of searching the web without actually permitting the real searches to take place. The "kids only" search screen is like an "easy-bake" oven with a light bulb used for heat, or a toy tool set with plastic hammers and screwdrivers, which let kids pretend harmlessly, without actually doing any cooking or home repairs.

Once a child is considered too old by AOL to merely pretend to search the Web, the toy is taken away, but nothing is put in its place! A "young teen" on America Online is no longer even allowed to use the kids' search screen, and must simply wait until the age of 16 to find the true wealth of information available online.

This article originally appeared in the Nov./Dec. inaugural issue of Youth Truth.