Trends Within the Children's Online Industry
Companies vying for parents and children's limited time and dollars are finding ways to ingratiate themselves into the home environment. Relying on the enthusiasm parents have for computers in general, the edutainment segment of electronic media is flourishing. Many content providers have managed to distance themselves from the fear-evoking reports of what is "harmful to minors," and instead have tried to encourage parents and teachers to embrace all of the worthwhile activities and experiences that the Internet has to offer young people. Companies are pushing children toward Web sites specifically designed for them or "gated play spaces" that try to guarantee that children will be exposed only to high quality content developed by reputable organizations and businesses. The section "Kids-Only Spaces and Portals" offers several examples of online environments that welcome children – and keep out unwelcome adults. Additionally, Web upstarts and established media conglomerates alike are pursuing technological fixes to protect children from inappropriate content. Filtering and blocking software programs are some of the most pervasive and popular technology "solutions" on the market. Secure child-safe browsers, which limit a child's surfing to kids' Web sites, and digital signatures and certificates, which attempt to verify that a parent has given a child permission to do something online, are two examples of other innovations that companies are eagerly hoping parents will adopt.
Over the last few years, there have been several high-visibility collaborations among corporations, educators and child advocates that have sought to address multiple issues around children's use of media. Some of these have taken the form of an event, such as the Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children, which was held in Washington, DC, in December 1997 and gave rise to other coalitions, such as America Links Up. Others have sought to have a presence on the Web as a resource for parents. Among these has been GetNetWise. There have been almost as many reasons for participating in these broad coalitions as there have been participants themselves, including educating parents, building corporate reputations, garnering publicity, finding common ground with parents and educators, and staving off government regulation.
Filtering on Home PCs
Though definitions of "obscenity" and "harmful to minors" have eluded even the Supreme Court, certain kinds of content have continued to concern parents, teachers, the Motion Picture Association, and video game retailers, as inappropriate for children. In the context of the Web, these concerns have led to the development of scores of blocking and filtering technologies. Sexually explicit material; hate speech; graphic violence including misogynist text and images; content promoting illegal activity, such as bomb-making; obscenity; deceptive and unfair advertising; information about alcohol, tobacco and illegal substances; and offensive language and profanity have been at the core of many discussions about children's well-being within popular culture. They also lie at the center of freeware, software sold online and in stores, and parental control tools championed by several Internet service providers. These tools, however, are by no means foolproof.
Although case law established in each of the areas listed above theoretically applies to situations arising online, there are few specific cases that have been settled in the context of interactive media. More importantly, strictly legal definitions of each of these types of materials may not be vigorous enough for some families. For instance, content that a family may find objectionable may be protected by the First Amendment and not considered obscene by the legal precedent. In the mid-1990s, companies began developing filtering software and blocking technologies in an effort to make parents comfortable by shielding young people from material thought to be inappropriate. More than 100 companies have since entered the market. By no means exhaustive, among the products now available are the following : Cyber Patrol, Cyber Sitter, NetNanny, SurfWatch, SOS Kidproof, WebChaperone, Bess, the Internet Retriever, I-Gear, Internet Watchdog and X-Stop. (These companies, and all others listed throughout this document, are for illustration purposes. Company names are intended to give readers a sense of products currently on the market and should not be misconstrued as endorsement.)
Differences among them aside, many of these filtering programs are Internet access management utilities sold and promoted to aid parents and teachers in their control of children's access to the Internet. Often, they sort content into categories, identifying for adult users what they may block young people from seeing. Rather than block access to certain sites – or sometimes in addition to a blocking function – other software programs, such as CyberSnoop, Cyber Sentinel and Spector, may be used to track where children have gone, generating a log of places on the Web they have visited.
The problem of how to establish an acceptable set of standards quickly arises when choosing to employ blocking software. Though parents may customize most of the software packages on the market – tweaking pre-defined categories, adding personal favorites and removing others – each program has underneath it a set of value-laden assessments and moral assumptions. One development that not only acknowledges this but makes it explicit is the recent entering of religious groups into the filtering competition. In addition to the scores of companies bidding to be parents' filter of choice, the Catholic church would like to be considered as well. Catholic Online and the Catholic Families Network, for example, are hoping to appeal to families and schools that share the Catholic faith, helping them make information choices. There are many other Internet service providers, such as Mayberry USA, SafePlace.Net, and PlanetGood, that offer similar filtering as part of their service and many more will be offered in the future. Filtering at the server level offers the convenience of not having to download software upgrades, which some parents may find appealing.
Although the state of the art of filtering software has changed – software programs supposedly have the sophistication to evaluate words in context, differentiating between "chicken breast," "breast cancer" and "big breast," for example and some companies have begun using artificial intelligence – the decision to use a filter is still a highly personal one. The decision is often a political one as well, as will be discussed in "Government-Mandated Filtering of Schools and Libraries".
Industry Content Ratings
Over the last few years, several industry initiatives have been launched that seek to rate Web site content. Because of the incredible difficulty of such an undertaking – determining who will rate, by what standards, and how the ratings will be used – these efforts have met with little success. Most recently, the Internet Content Rating Alliance, which has subsumed the Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet (RSACi), has been attempting to create a ratings system similar to the one used for video games. Although Web sites self-rate their content, the RSACi system is comprised of four categories of sex, nudity, language and violence, guiding the rater through a checklist of definitions and levels. Parents then set their browser, Netscape or Internet Explorer, to block rated sites according to content levels that they feel are inappropriate for their family. Although RSACi reported that over 120,000 sites had rated with its system by August 1999, the vast majority of sites have chosen not to rate, and most parents do not use ratings to guide their decisions.
Privacy Ratings
Like attempts to rate content along other criteria, privacy-oriented groups are also creating ways to identify and elevate the status of those sites that comply with set requirements. Although these do not represent all of the work in this area, the following are a few examples:
The decentralized nature of these efforts suggest that privacy ratings may not be the most effective in protecting children's information online. Other corporate efforts made to bring commercial Web sites in compliance with the new children's privacy law (discussed later in "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), may dominate the children's online marketplace instead.
Kids-Only Spaces and Portals
Industry efforts in the last few years have given rise to a spate of content areas, portals and search engines designed exclusively for young children. Currently, although some children are making use of the kids-only content areas, they also are visiting general interest sites in significant numbers. One of the challenges that industry faces is how to create compelling child content that young people will find just as captivating as content not made solely for them.
Attempts to rate Web sites along privacy policies and to block content according to filtering criteria will continue to spread but they may be undermined by larger bids to create child-safe areas. Referred to as "zones," "green spaces" and "safe playgrounds," these areas try to create virtual, easily identified places where children are welcome and safe. Some of these are open Web sites – the American Library Association's 700+ Great Sites and NetMom's Nice Sites are just two of many lists of links on the Web – while others are closed. Below is only a partial list of what is currently available as free and subscription-based spaces for children:
This area promises to expand as closed environments currently in development become public and other companies already online decide to expand their offerings.
Some companies are using portal sites as launch pads for children's online experiences. Content providers are aligning themselves with recognized brands and points of entry to the Web that generate significant traffic and put newcomers at ease. This does not change the nature of available content immediately, but it may have the effect of altering navigational patterns. Although there are dozens of education portals trying to appeal to K-12 teachers and students, there are fewer portals consolidating content for young people that is not strictly educational. Among those collecting and indexing activities and information for children are the following:
As these child-only spaces become more abundant and widely-used, it will be important for individuals and communities to consider the implications of their use. For example, will these smaller, confined worlds short-change young people? By limiting both the amount of information as well as the kinds of information to which children are exposed, will children's critical thinking skill be undermined? Will the fee-based services further class inequities, allowing only those families who can afford the subscription premiums to benefit from the content they keep locked?
Identifying Advertising
Parents and educators are increasingly concerned with the commercialization of the Web and the sheer number of online advertising and dot-coms aimed at children. Apart from the data collection aspects of marketing online, child advocates, educators, and to a certain degree, policymakers, are beginning to wonder if children need to be protected from overt, potentially manipulative advertising on the Web. Despite this trend toward commercialism and a greater acceptance of the presence of business in traditionally public areas, the Federal Trade Commission retains jurisdiction over deceptive and unfair practices. In an effort to preempt government action, content developers have devised a number of methods to make their marketing messages and branded environments more palatable to their would-be critics.
These techniques may be stopgap measures, falling short of the goal that older media have tried to reach of keeping advertising separate from editorial content. Perhaps these strategies will partially allay concerns in the near-term, but as the Web evolves, they may prove to be less effective. Given the seamless nature of the Web and the desired ability to navigate from one area to the next with little delay of time or few conscious stop signs, erecting these barriers may not work for long. Also, without the threat of government regulation, which has guided advertising in other media, they probably will not be adopted as an industry norm. The line between ads and content, therefore, is sure to become more blurred, making it difficult for children and their adult counterparts to tell what is being sold and when.
E-Commerce for Kids
In the last few years, and indeed, in the last few months, there has been a rapid growth of Internet-related products and services that have tried to facilitate online spending. There has been an extra layer of complications in the child and teen markets: namely, the majority of young people do not own a credit card, a necessity for making Web purchases, and young people need their parent's permission to buy online. A few sites, iCanBuy, RocketCash and DoughNet for example, are experimenting with electronic wallets as a way to circumvent the need for plastic. However, even auction and trade sites, such as Swap.com, that are quite popular among young people, require a parent's credit card in order to register. Regarding parental consent authentication, companies have produced a number of mechanisms intended to address parent fears, often attempting to make a profit at the same time. Though the products currently on the market do not compare to the promise made by futureware, which may depend upon fingerprints, retinal scans and voice recognition, many consider electronic verification to be the Holy Grail when it comes to children's privacy. While some companies attempt to sort out digital signatures and public key encryption technologies with the FTC and CARU, other companies are attempting to produce software solutions. There are many such products that range from Zero-Knowledge's Freedom software that claims to provide anonymity to Microsoft's Passport, which expedites how a user's personal information is distributed to companies.
Few, if any, of the products currently on the market offer answers to many of parents' most pressing questions on the subject of e-commerce and their children: Are Web promotions too personal and persuasive for young people? What limits should there be on online marketing? Why is it necessary for children to be able to buy online at all?
