Disturbed by her child’s search history, SC mom wants more filters on school devices
Nicole Dozier was surprised when she saw what her first grader was able to do with his school-provided laptop, and not in a good way.
The Chapin mom was upset when she realized her son was spending school time on virtual-learning days during the pandemic watching YouTube videos. But she was more upset when she checked his search history and found out what he was watching.
“He was searching for Grand Theft Auto, Slender Man, Pennywise,” Dozier said. “He searched for ‘girl’s butt,’ which probably just sounds funny to a first grader but can send you to completely different things on the internet.”
The most disturbing, Dozier said, was a search for “how to meet someone.”
She brought the issue to the attention of Chapin Elementary School and the Lexington-Richland 5 school district. She said the IT department told her protections on the Chromebooks provided for students who were not learning face-to-face full time during the pandemic should not allow students to open inappropriate material, and that the problem may be on her home internet settings.
But Dozier took the laptop to the principal’s office and opened the same pages her son was looking at on the school’s network. “He was surprised,” Dozier said.
The school district told The State it does have filters in place for both its on-campus and off-site devices, including a “safe search” feature on Google, and restricted mode on YouTube.
“Students do not have unlimited access to the Internet, and when additional safeguards are created (for YouTube or otherwise) we implement those,” said district spokeswoman Katrina Goggins.
Parents nevertheless have to sign an agreement when they take home a school-issued device, agreeing to monitor their children’s internet use and talk to them “about the values and standards (they) expect them to follow as they use the Internet, just as they talk to them about their use of all other media information sources such as television, telephone, movies, radio, etc.”
But Dozier knows that what you tell a child to do and what they actually do can be very different.
“The only way to ensure they’re protected is to not have personal devices at all,” she said. “One of the older kids at school taught him how to use the dictate tool to search Google, since he can’t spell.”
Her son has since gone back to class five days a week, and the school district said it will review the device to ensure all its filters and protections are in place.
While the use of YouTube has been a topic of discussion among educators, teachers have relied on the video-sharing site as a way to share educational content with students who need ways to learn outside the classroom.
“For School District Five, the drawbacks to not utilizing YouTube were significant: Teachers would not be able to use online videos for their lessons and classroom instruction, and students would not be able to access videos for their own research and learning,” Goggins said.
But for parents like Dozier, the online risks may outweigh the rewards.
“There’s nothing so valuable on YouTube that you couldn’t supplement it with another program,” she said.
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