Safe spots for kids to surf the Web

Always a good resource to have (see title) if you have kids coming into the Internet years. Personally, I do not believe that kids having any business using MySpace at all.

Kids who google with abandon and publish intimate details of their lives on MySpace have become a major worry for parents in the Information Age.

[Podcast: Benjamin Pimentel interviews Industrious Kid's Jeanette Symons on safer surfing]

Concern over children being targeted by predators at online social networking sites or being able to access porn and other inappropriate materials through search engines has led to a demand for new laws and for more-secure, child-friendly networks.

It prompted two companies, led by two moms, to create technologies for safer Web-surfing for kids.

One, an Emeryville company called Industrious Kid, later this month will unveil a social networking site called Imbee.com, geared toward children 8 to 14 years old.

The other, Thinkronize, a Cincinnati company that created the netTrekker search engine for K-12 schools, began making its product available to consumers in January.

Children and their parents have to pay to use these sites, which make some educators and industry analysts skeptical that they will attract a viable customer base.

But the two companies apparently believe that online child safety has become such a pressing concern that there is a growing demand for what one industry expert called the walled garden approach to child Internet access.

Industrious Kid’s Web site hopes to serve as an online hangout for children, a place where kids can communicate with each other and create content.

The company wants to address growing concerns over MySpace, the popular social networking site that’s supposedly restricted to people who are at least 14 years old, but which has attracted younger children and adults who prey on them.

Jeanette Symons, chief executive officer of Industrious Kid and a mother of two, said the idea to form the company came to her after her 6-year-old daughter and, later, her 8-year-old son said they wanted to set up their own blogs.

“It sounded like a great, cute idea, but what I started to panic on was whatever they posted would start leaving a trail, and that trail would follow them forever,” Symons, who was also co-founder of Oakland’s Zhone Technologies, said, citing another concern over the often personal materials teenagers post on their MySpace sites.

Self-contained site

To accommodate her children’s request, Symons set up a server in their closet, which allowed them to create content that was not publicly accessible.

“They can create sites,” she said. But “it’s absolutely not public. It’s literally in the closet.”

That made her think: Why not create a self-contained site where young children can create content and interact with each other?

Symons and her team began working on the idea before the public discussion exploded over young people blogging and taking part in social networking sites.

“When we started this six months ago, it was a struggle to explain to people what blogging was and what social networking was,” she said.”

Then, MySpace, which has about 68 million members, came under fire for attracting child predators. The Los Angeles site, which says it signs up 250,000 new members a day, has implemented many measures to protect its users, particularly minors, spokeswoman Dani Dudeck said.

The site has removed about 250,000 profiles of underage users since it began in 2004 and has worked closely with law enforcers to make sure the site is safe for children.

But the criticism and attention continues. Last month, the FBI arrested two men in connection with separate sexual molestation charges involving two girls, ages 11 ages 14, according to the Associated Press. The men met the alleged victims through MySpace.com.

As a result of such stories, some lawmakers have pressed MySpace to do more to verify the ages of its users.

That’s what Industrious Kid plans to do by requiring users to have their parents sign them up using a credit card, even for access to the free sections of the site.
 Source: SFGate

[tags]myspace,information age,child-friendly networks,emeryville company[/tags]