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Dear Subscribers:

Happy holidays, everyone! The newsletter will be on holiday break next week - to return to your in-boxes January 5, 2001. Here's our lineup for this final issue of the year:


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All about you!: Subscribers' answers to Net safety at home, filtering law, etc.

Last year we started a tradition: In the final issue of each year we report on the results of our annual Subscriber Survey. What a great community you are to serve! Not only are your responses interesting, they're important because representative of a growing, increasingly influential, international interest community: the people who care most about kids' constructive use of the Internet.

First some basics: You're a wonderfully diverse group, geographically speaking, residing in more than 50 countries and throughout North America (we know this from the international top-level domains in your email addresses). By far the most survey responses came from North America, so keep in mind that the results are a bit skewed in that way. But we did receive responses from subscribers in Hong Kong, Mauritius, South Africa, New Zealand, Hungary, Japan, Ecuador, Australia, and the United Kingdom, too.

Ninety percent of you are parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives of online kids - 77% of you parents. You cited 27 different professions, with education and library sciences topping the list (24% of you). Most of you have one connected computer at home (68%), but 15% have two and 7% three. Sixty-one percent have been online for over two years. Seventeen percent of you have high-speed connections at home.

Seventeen percent of you have at least one child who spends more than 10 hours a week online and another 10% spend 6-9 hours/wk, indicating that more than a quarter of you have children who spend 6+ hours a week online.

Your single greatest concern about those kids' online experience is sexually explicit content and sexual predators (49%), followed by online privacy (14%) and hate/violence (12%).

Your family Net-use rules:

Fifty-eight percent of you have a family online policy in place, 20% don't (the rest abstained). In those policies of yours, the rule that shows up most is "Don't give out personal information online," or at least not without a parent's permission. Here are other family rules/policies you have (in order of popularity):

Most of you prefer the "human touch" for protecting online kids, choosing to rely strictly on parental guidance or a family policy instead of technology. Thirty-seven percent of respondents simply abstained from the safety tools question, mostly because they're not parents or their children are either very little or all grown up. Of the 63% of you who have kids between the ages of 8 and 18 (those more likely to need some parental or technological caretaking), the majority (58%) choose human guidance only; 42% add to that some online-safety software or service.

In the software and services category, you cited four options that all got about the same number of "votes": client-based filtering (PC software), server-based (filtered ISP), kids' browsers (PC software), and AOL's Parental Controls. The filtering software products you cited were Net Nanny, Zeeks, Guard Dog, WinGuard, and Cyberpatrol and SurfWatch (both from SurfControl).

The most resounding response of all was to our question about a law requiring filtering in schools and libraries (just signed by President Clinton - see Web News Briefs below). A whopping 85% percent of those of you who answered the question are for it - 69% wholeheartedly (no qualifications). Fifteen percent added qualifiers, e.g., "for certain ages," "in schools not libraries," or "only if the filters can be improved," etc. And 15% gave a decided "no," some citing censorship concerns and others the flaws of filtering technology. Twenty percent of you abstained, either because you live in other countries or you said you needed to understand the implications better.

Please email us, via feedback@netfamilynews.org, any comments you'd like to make on one or all of these issues. You are a wonderful subscribership to work with. Thanks for all your support for kids' and grownups' wise Web literacy!

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Family Tech: Chat help in-depth

"Millions of children engage in chat and instant messaging every day, and the overwhelming majority are not victimized," writes SafeKids.com's Larry Magid in the San Jose Mercury News this week. "Still, of the 32,000 leads reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC's) CyberTipline, 3,262 are 'online enticement' cases, and the vast majority of those started out in a chat room."

In "Help child know the risks of chat rooms," Larry goes into much greater detail than the newsletter could last week on the risks to kids and how to avoid them. Those NCMEC stats he cites give the picture in North America. Larry also points out something European parents in particular need to be alert to: mobile phones - very popular among UK and European teens - as a potential tool for pedophiles, who often use online chat as only a starting point in long-term "conversations."

Please see "Subscribers write" just below for a police officer's perspective on online chat and kids.

We always appreciate hearing your own experiences and comments on the Family Tech column - email them to us!

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Subscribers write: Chat dangers

Coincidentally, we heard from two subscribers in Connecticut this week, both emailing in response to our feature last week on ChatDanger.com.

  1. A police officer's perspective

    "I enjoyed reading the interview with Stephen Carrick-Davies regarding safety tips for children in the chatrooms and getting the parents involved. The safety tips were excellent for a child of high school age.

    "I am a police officer who investigates Internet-related crimes against children and provide child Internet safety presentations to parents. My experience has lead me to believe strongly that children don't belong in chatrooms. A child sexual predator, like a good fisherman, will go to the right place (child chatroom) to catch his prey. The same is true for a child completing a (member) profile. The profile leaves the child exposed to a predator to use that profile information to break the stranger/danger barrier.

    "I found interesting your article 'Parent sued in Internet case'. I knew it would be a matter of time until someone tested the ability of the Internet. An obstacle I encounter in about 80% of the investigations is the parent's lack of knowledge concerning the child's screen name and password. That information is very important when a child receives an email from another child that contains sexual overtones or some type of harrassment. The person using the screen name can't be identified without obtaining a subpeona and commanding the Internet service provider to provide the subscriber information….

    "There are so many parents that are afraid of the computer and the Internet because it is new to adults. The criminal activity on the Internet is becoming an epidemic partly to due to the fact there isn't any CyberPolice watching the activity. It is up to each local police department, and a lot of those administrators don't recognize the need for cyber training."

  2. An incident in Connecticut

    Subscriber and mother Susan emailed us:

    "If you are not aware of the Web site 'ezboard.com,' … it is a popular site among kids in our town in Connecticut and the local schools. [There was an article in the paper recently] about a death threat that was made on the chat room. The public middle school sent letters out to all parents with the Web address and information on safe sites…. After the police investigation the forum for that school disappeared. I don't know how or if it is permanent. Another [geographically specific] forum remains that I would like to see disappear also.

    She later emailed us a tip for fellow parents:

    "One thing that many parents, including myself, did not know how to do which is very helpful is to check history files by pressing Control H [when the cursor is on] the address line in [Microsoft's] Internet Explorer."

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Web News Briefs

  1. School filtering is now US law

    It was tabled for most of the US's protracted presidential election, then all of a sudden got passed right before Congress left town for the holidays (even people who were following the bill's progress closely didn't notice till this week!). We're talking about the "Children's Internet Protection Act," part of a $450 billion federal spending bill that President Clinton signed yesterday (12/21).

    The law requires all schools and libraries that have received federal "e-rate" funding to use filtering software (or other technology) that protects minors from accessing sexually explicit Web content). According to USAToday, the American Civil Liberties Union said it would file suit to block the law on grounds that it's unconstitutional. The law's sponsors say they wrote it in a way that ensures its constitutionality. Ironically, some software makers disagree with the law, too, reports the New York Times. It adds that educators and civil liberties group protesting the law say that some of the filtering companies track students' Web movements and sell that data to market research firms. Some conservatives also object to the bill, USAToday reports, "because it takes local control away from communities who run schools and libraries and doesn't provide new money to buy or maintain the software."

    Interestingly, an overwhelming majority - 85% - of you support the law, based on this year's SafeKids/NetFamilyNews subscriber survey (see "All about you!" above). Parents, teachers, librarians: Do send in comments on mandated filtering - we'd love to publish them in the newsletter for everybody's benefit.

  2. Filter disabling just got easier

    In direct response to the school filtering law's passage, anti-filtering organization Peacefire has come up with a way to get around it. According to CNET, this week Peacefire released a software program that disables seven popular filtering programs: Net Nanny, Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, Cybersitter, X-Stop, PureSight, and Cyber Snoop. Other filtering products and other online-safety technologies, services, and information can be found at GetNetWise.org. In protest against "censorware," Peacefire has been posting instructions for disabling individual filtering programs on its Web site for several years; this is just its first single piece of software that disables multiple filters on a PC. Peacefire's now working on software that can disable filtering on a network as well.

    The filtering discussion is by no means black and white. For another view on the opposing side, pls see our Sept. 29 coverage of the Digital Freedom Network's "Foil the Filters" Contest and the links therein. For intelligent views from other parts of the spectrum, please see Netmom and former librarian Jean Armour Polly's view on filtering in libraries and the FilteringFacts.org archive. The American Library Association's position is covered and linked to from "US schools, libraries: Mandatory filtering" in our Oct. 6 issue.

  3. Newest digital divide (in schools)

    It's definitely not good enough that 90% of the schools and 71% of the classrooms in the US are connected to the Internet. According to a just-released study by the Education Commission, these connections should be high-speed ones. The year-long study was about how best to equip schools for the information age. "Schools connected to the Internet but lacking instant, complete access to its resources will be left behind this century, just as those with dated textbooks were in the last one," reports the Associated Press, citing a new sort of digital divide in schools - that between broadband-connection have's and have-not's. in coverage of the results of a year-long study about how best to equip schools for the information age. Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) of Nebraska, chairman of the bipartisan congressional panel, said that it's now an ancient goal merely to have a computer - even one with an Internet hookup - in every American classroom." Here's the New York Times's coverage.

  4. Digital TV & kids

    They're working hard in Washington to make the new media frontier - digital TV - child-friendly. Forty children's advocacy, health, and education organizations and prominent figures in education this week called on the FCC to develop rules for DTV broadcasters to serve kids' educational needs and to protect them from unfair advertising practices in the new medium, according to Newsbytes.com. Among other things, the coalition told the FCC that the current three-hour rule (the amount of educational programming stations must broadcast) is not sufficient for digital television. One of the coalition's goals is to extend the protections of the Children's Television Act of 1990 into the digital realm. The coalition includes the Center for Media Education (CME), the National PTA, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the Consumer Federation of America, the American Psychological Association, and the National Education Association. The coalition's requests are detailed in CME's press release.

  5. Study: Cell phones not harmful

    There was somewhat qualified good news for highly communicative folk this week. USAToday reports on a just-released study by the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that there is "no significant risk [of brain cancer] from short-term use of cellular phones that use analog signals." USAToday adds, however, that the study "will by no means settle the debate." Its authors say more research is needed to determine the effects of long-term cell phone use.

  6. Console games and girls

    Nearly half of the top-selling console games contain negative messages about girls, a recent study by Children Now found. What's more, reports Wired News, a common practice among Sega, Sony, and Nintendo has been simply to make "girlie" versions of games designed for boys - adding female characters, making boxes pink, etc. "Over half of the games with female characters portrayed them as violent, while more than a third displayed unrealistic body images," Wired News adds. "Many of these characters also displayed stereotypical female characteristics, such as fainting and talking in high-pitched voices. For an insightful editorial on this subject, see "Hey - Don't Apologize for Pink" at Games4Girls.com. And email us your own views on the subject!

  7. A more clandestine 'Napster'

    Napster has been (or soon will be) replaced, it appears - by Aimster. According to TheStandard.com, the name of this file-swapping software, released just last summer, comes from AIM, for AOL Instant Messaging users. It allows them to set up their own file-swapping networks. Aimster is more clandestine (and thus a bigger problem for record companies than Napster) because "the index of files resides only on the hard drives of the IM buddy-group members" - not in a public directory in a Web site like Napster.com (which is why Napster and not its users has been sued many times by many parties in the recording industry).

  8. 'New economy': Textbook example

    For the business, economic, and Internet historians among you, the rise and significant slippage of Internet company CMGI is a quite a case study of the turn of the new economy this past year. CMGI is (was?) one of the most successful incubators of Internet companies, according to the New York Times in a thorough piece about the company. It spawned Geocities, which Yahoo! acquired in '99, and it owns or partly owns Lycos.com, Altavista.com, uBid.com (online auctions), and other lesser-known Net companies. The story is not just about the tanking of incomprehensible market valuations or how the rules have changed. It appears also to be about what's now required of business leaders. The new job description no longer seeks bold, risk-taking visionaries. It's looking for people who can run a business - most likely a struggling one!

  9. Grassroots e-commerce?

    According to WashTech.com, NationalGeographic.org is teaming up Novica.com to further "empower world artisans." National Geographic becomes a 19% shareholder and will provide Novica with marketing help and content. Novica.com, which sells handmade work from artisans in developing countries (paintings, furniture, tableware, folk art, etc.), seems like a natural e-commerce fit for the National Geographic Society. Wish we'd seen this in time for holiday shopping!

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P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

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