Do the Web Filters at Schools Hinder Students?

Students all over the country have to battle with web filters every day. Since the day you get your first new piece of school tech, you quickly run into the suffocating restrictions schools impose on you. Web filters are software which restrict certain sites on a network. Although they might have benefits, they also hamper students on a daily basis. Students may be doing research on projects or trying to watch an instructional video when they are met with a screen that says, “This site can’t be reached”. Schools bar off information that may be critical for that student’s project, research or how they perform in a class. Schools over the country block websites like Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, music streaming websites, some YouTube content, and several other things. These blocks also miss several websites that maybe should be blocked. Schools should take time to go over their web filter and prevent it from denying information to their students. Web filtering provides some benefits such as preventing loss of security and cyber attacks, but schools often go overboard and abuse the web filter. Students can change things by asking questions at their school. Every time you run into a blocked site and you are confused as to why it is blocked, send the people in charge of the web filter an email and your school may just unblock it.