Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies: Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States

INTRODUCTION
Many youth in the United States have fully integrated the Internet into their daily lives. For them, the Internet is a positive and powerful space for socializing, learning, and engaging in public life.

Minors use the Internet and other digital technologies to communicate with friends and peers, to connect with religious leaders and mentors, to conduct research for school assignments, to follow the progress of favorite sports teams or political candidates and participate in communities around shared interests, to read the news and find health information, to learn about colleges and the military, and in countless other productive ways. Most minors do not differentiate between their lives off and online, in part because the majority of online social interactions involving minors do not involve people who are not part of their offline lives.

Minors face risks online, just as they do in any other public space in which people congregate. These risks include harassment and bullying, sexual solicitation, and exposure to problematic and illegal content. These risks are not radically different in nature or scope than the risks minors have long faced offline, and minors who are most at risk in the offline world continue to be most at risk online.

In the past, however, the risks were primarily local, and ideally addressed by parents, educators, social services, law enforcement and others working together at the local level. In the online context, the risks implicate services from companies and access to audiences from around the world. The technologies involved also make visible risky behaviors and problematic interactions that were less visible offline, while allowing at-risk youth to more publicly and prominently display signs that they need help.

Parents and local community members often are unfamiliar with the relevant technologies and do not have direct experience with the way the risks evolve in the context of the Internet and interactive technologies. Addressing risks online therefore carries different challenges and requires broader collaboration to find innovative solutions. ...

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Internet Safety Technical Task Force
The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace.

The scope of the Task Force's inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users - including parents - can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary
I. Introduction
II. Methodology
III. Summary Report from the Research Advisory Board
IV. Summary Report from the Technology Advisory Board
V. Overview of Online Safety Efforts Made by Social Network Sites
VI. Analysis
VII. Recommendations
VIII. Conclusion

CONCLUSION
The Internet Safety Technical Task Force is grateful to have had this opportunity to advance the understanding of the risks to online safety for minors and to assess how today’s technologies can play a role in enhancing it.

The Task Force thanks the Attorneys General for their leadership and the many volunteers who contributed their time, energy, and insight to this compressed review process. The Task Force concludes our work optimistic that collaboration and innovation in this field will continue in ways that will directly benefit of the safety of children.

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