Every year, as kids all over head back to school, I carve out some time to look at look how we’re progressing on raising a nation of kids ready to live with mastery of high tech tools. So here’s the State of the State of the Internet Report.

We Taught Them Well

For the past decade, the Internet safety conversation boiled down to a three-word phrase: Tell ‘em NO. A parent’s tactics, and, for that matter, the tactics of parental control tools, were to fence in the Internet. We taught kids (and we taught them well) to worry about stranger danger and online predators. It worked. They internalized the message, though we scared the bejesus out of them and ourselves. Even a second grader can now recite the litany: I shouldn’t give my name and address to people I don’t know.

Chat rooms—those online hangouts where predators did what predators do in relative obscurity—are being replaced by social networking, which offers kids considerably more control over who their cyberfriends are and what they’ll share. Under the threat of legislation, the social networking community of providers is responding to make sure that kids are well aware of exactly who they’re sharing what with on the web. Facebook, for example, now goes into excruciating detail, warning you what might happen if you think that all you’re doing is sharing a photo with someone in your network.

The Outliers Get the Media Attention

At the same time, the most horrific stories of abduction and violence involving the Internet are constantly in the media coverage limelight. The Megan Meier story is one of the most recent examples. In that case, 13-year-old Megan was bullied by neighbors posing on MySpace as a boy who was at first interested in her and then turned on her. Finally, the “boy” got all of her friends to turn on her as well. Megan committed suicide, just before her 13th birthday, because she could no longer handle the name-calling and taunts and jeers of her peers.

But Megan’s story is not the norm. The vast majority of kids get through their initiation to the world of social networking relatively unscathed. And they seem to be acutely aware of the differences between their online social life and their real world life of friends.
According to a study by the NBSA (National School Board Association), of the over 1,200 students surveyed, only 7% said that they have been the victims of cyberbullying. That figure is in stark contrast to a report issued a couple of months ago by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In a survey of 935 teens aged between 12 and 17, nearly a third of them reported that they had experienced some form of cyberbullying. Three percent of the kids surveyed by the NBSA indicated that unwelcome strangers attempted to communicate with them online. Two percent said that such a person attempted to arrange an in-person meeting. A miniscule .08% of the kids responding to the survey said that they went through with such a meeting without their parents’ permission.

According to the NBSA, most schools surveyed (52%) said that students being free and easy with personal information online has been “a significant problem.” Kids report “no problems,” but schools report significant problems. Hmmm…we’ve heard this one before, haven’t we? The next big move is to bring these two groups closer in line (not necessarily online). Schools need to respect the intelligence of their students to be a part of the conversation that finds consensus in policy generated together, not a policy that’s dictated. And kids need to share what they know about keeping safe online with parents and schools because, ultimately, they know a lot or can, at minimum, figure it out faster than we can. And parents and teachers need to be approachable and not rush too quickly to judgment when the kids show up to tell us about their Internet troubles. They can be serious and they deserve serious attention.

Know the Real Deal

Contrary to popular opinion, kids understand the difference in quality of real and online experiences. According to OTX and The Intelligence Group, teens spend about 11.5 hours each week on the Internet, but still say online behavior rates second to the real deal.

Ninety-one percent preferred real friends to online friends and preferred to date someone from school rather than someone on the Internet. Eighty-two percent would rather shop in a store than online. An exception: They’d rather get their locker vandalized than their homepage. Now that’s a healthy perspective.

Parents Are Having the Same Problems as Kids

Spam, phishing, malware, identity theft…the adult world of the Internet is a scary place even when you come to it with some life experience under your belt. The best thing that parents can do is use those moments of unsurety on the web as a teaching moment with their kids. Don’t be afraid to call them over to your computer and say, “Look at this. I’m not sure that it’s real and I’m afraid that if I click something bad might happen.” It’s the best way to reinforce the message that we think before we click.

Age Compression

Symantec recently hosted a morning session for the press during which they released the results of a study conducted by Associate Professor Sam McQuade at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The study showed that kids as young as second grade are reporting being bullied or bullying online. By the time they’re in 4th grade, they’re downloading illegal materials like music and movies from the web.

Kids Who’d Hurt Others

The old adage of the predator in the closet being the most dangerous thing on the web is being put in its proper perspective. Yes, there are still predators, but most of the web trouble kids find themselves in is caused by the kids themselves, often because they don’t realize the consequences of their actions.

Time Compression

When the computer sat on your desktop, you might have taken some inappropriate pictures at a party, but you had to go home and log in before you could post them. Today, the array of pocket-sized communicators—cameras, phones, and handhelds—makes communication instantaneous. In other words, they eliminate thinking time. Now a kid can be at the party, in the moment, being egged on by their peers to upload those photos that might look mighty inappropriate by morning.

Tools Are Becoming More Proactive

Symantec and McAfee both launched new versions of their products that are designed to work more proactively, warning you about a site that is suspicious in advance before you click. (When your screen gives you color codes like green to go and red to stay away as you surf, it’s much more effective than having to run software to rid your machine of a problem after the fact.) SafeEyes has made it easy enough for any parent who can click to keep kids away from inappropriate Internet sites. Verisign has migrated from a seal placed on a page to tell you that a site could be trusted to a more interactive warning right in your browser when it identifies a suspicious site. ESRB has gone beyond just rating the appropriateness of a site’s content to providing a seal to members who honor kids’ privacy. And kid-centric browsers like KidZui, which try to keep younger kids sequestered from the uncharted areas of the web, are using a visual environment that captures the sense of exploration the web should have, while keeping them safe from the wrong sites.

Kids as Influencers

I heard Vanessa Van Petten, a creator of OnTeens Today, talk to a roomful of adults at a Symantec day I attended. Vanessa likened social networking to “cotton candy.” Looks great, lots of it, sweet and sugary, but NOT the real deal when it comes to friendships. A recent college graduate, Vanessa dishes out advice for kids the way a big sister would warn her siblings about being a jerk. Parry Aftab’s WiredSafety program trains teens to take a leadership role in Internet safety and it works, too. Others look to them for the answers to life’s confusing Internet problems. And Larry Magid’s ConnectSafely site gives parents and kids sane and practical advice about social networking. A dummies guide for keeping safe on the Internet is being published by John Wiley and Sons. Author Linda Criddle (look-both-ways.com) is bundling the book with CyberPatrol, an Internet parental control product. Criddle’s approach is to use real-life tales from the teen trenches to teach kids to stay safe. These are just a few of the players you’ll meet when you attend the Kids@Play Summit in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. All of them have played a role in moving the Internet safety conversation beyond scare tactics and into a matter of education and tools.

Mobile Phones: The Next Frontier

This is going to be the year of the mobile phone app. Whether it’s a poker game or an SAT prep, it will be delivered to your kid’s phone (for a fee of course). In addition, these phones will be able to locate where you are and where your friends are in cyberspace. Recent studies show that parents are willing to pay extra to take advantage of a phone’s GPS to monitor their kids’ whereabouts. But it’s possible that the wrong people will try to locate your kids by mobile phone, too. And so far, phones have minimal to no protection from people you don’t want your kids communicating with. Service providers are being urged to adopt guidelines that specify what constitutes adult content. Already T-Mobile has created a plan to let parents monitor activity and provide kids with a phone allowance. Verizon will be launching parental controls shortly.