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On the occasion of the International Children's day that took place on November 20th 2019, the French President Emmanuel Macron explained that he wanted parents to gain more control over their children's use of digital technologies by changing the Internet operators voluntary process to install parental controls to an obligatory default setting. The head of the state then gave the Internet actors six months to propose robust solutions, after which a law would be passed to ensure them. When the general public of French parents were asked if they believed it was an essential measure, a total of ** percent agreed, compared to ** percent who stated that it was a useless measure.

First exposure to pornography

With the quick digital evolution, porn is free to access online and on all types of devices. Already in 2016, half porn viewers used their mobile phones to access these platforms. Reports of 2018 showed that the average age of exposure to pornographic content lied between the ages of 13 to 14 years, which goes in line with the age at which French children receive their first smartphone. This does pose a problem for concerned parents who worry about how to make sure their kids don't get in trouble online, as most of now adults thought they were too young and too shocked, when exposed to porn for the first time. Even though default control settings are seen as an advantage to control the exposure to sensitive content on the Internet, ** percent expressed that it is the parent's role to manage the restriction. Others (** percent) mentioned the importance for Internet operators to install protection measures.

Role of parents and institutions

As of 2019, many believe adult websites should be prohibited before the age of ** to 18: ** percent of French people stated that access to adults content should be paid for, where even ** percent rooted for their ban.
Along the same line, parents in Sweden have expressed the concern about restricting pornographic contents in networks over which they have no control over. According to them, schools, after school care and pre-schools are institutions who should have filters against those types of sites. What parents themselves can do is have an open discussion about porn.
Apart from geolocation services that are able to track every movement of a person or a child as a real-world security measure, in terms of protecting a child from online threats, there are other tools that monitor all the photos, emails, and text messages a child sends or receives and alert parents at the first abnormal sign.

But when do you cross the line between parental duty and the police?