Beside the positive influence that Internet has had in society, it has also had its share of negative corollary. The emergence of the Internet has changed the interaction between all individuals and media. Adolescents are no longer passive recipients of media materials but are now selecting what they view and from there being influenced by those materials. They are influenced by interpretation of their previous experiences in combination with the materials they view online. This debate over censorship of content available to children began again and this time most companies decided that they would not regulate what was available online but would educate parents on how to protect their children from unwanted content and thus empowering them to chose what their children viewed. Gone were the ratings that were used previously for movies, and television and introduced were filters and programs that block access to certain files that parents can use to attempt to keep their kids from viewing inappropriate material or engaging in dangerous online activities. These filters and programs compiled lists of sites and key words that the companies that developed them felt were not appropriate for viewing. This had a negative effect on the parenting styles and actually took away from empowering the parents because most programs don't reveal what sites and words are compiled in the lists of banned materials. Major Internet players such as Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo quickly acknowledged these flaws. These companies refused to promote Internet censorship and therefore developed their Internet software to include features such as parental controls that were flexible to the needs of the parents. They do not dictate what content is appropriate for the children in the household but rather guide the parents towards making an educated decision on what they allow their children to view. The parents then have a direct role in the influential conte...