You are doing research for an assignment. You type up your search into Google, click on your first result, and boom! It’s blocked. Ever had this situation before? I certainly have. Sometimes it seems like there is nothing on your computer that you can actually use because it is all blocked. Web and computer filters are too restrictive because it prevents you from using valuable resources, and it restricts the computer’s abilities as a whole. Firstly, computer restrictions prevent students from using valuable resources. When the students are doing research for homework, they can get very frustrated when the websites they want or need are not permitted. They can’t get their homework done if their websites are blocked. Something that can also be frustrating is when a teacher asks you to go to a certain website for their homework assignment. However, sometimes the website is blocked. Not only is this frustrating for students, but it is also frustrating for …show more content…
Restrictions are good things. They protect you from the bad things that you can run into on the Internet. I’m not saying that I disagree with that. Yes, filters are good. Filters do protect you. But you can’t block everything. There is such thing as too many filters. Schools also need to trust students a little bit more. As the American Association of School Librarians says, “Filtering websites does the next generation of digital citizens a disservice. Students must develop skills to evaluate information from all types of sources in multiple formats, including the Internet. Relying solely on filters does not teach young citizens how to be savvy searchers or how to evaluate the accuracy of information” (Schulten). This is very true. Sure, filters are still good, but it doesn’t teach the students how to properly search for good resources. There won’t be filters when you are an adult. We should lessen the strength of the filters, so then we can prepare for the adult