If you believe an informal survey by AT&T Learning Network, 98% of sixth-graders know that no one owns the Internet, while a surprising 60% of CEOs think someone owns the 'Net, and 23% of CEOs think Bill Gates owns it (come to think of it, maybe they're right!). Joan Fenwick, the Learning Network's director, had fun showing us this great divide between sixth-graders and CEOs for the Digital Kids audience in San Francisco on June 23rd.
As Joan illustrated, some very sophisticated media meisters are clicking around our digital desktops and asking for our car keys these days, and they're the ones Digital Kids is all about. It is the premier industry conference about online kids, hosted by 'Net research firm Jupiter Communications. Web producers and executives representing media conglomerates and tiny startups turn up to hear from each other about what works for kids - fantasy? reality? content by peers? stories by adults? community in chat rooms? or community in other forms? Web pages or Web "environments"?
David Britt, CEO of Children's Television Workshop, set the tone with his keynote about family as the most basic community, and what the Web can do to network families (more on that in "What we learned"). David's idealism struck us. It said something about his organization, yes, as well as about the young users we were all discussing, but it also said something about the sense of promise - and childlikeness - expressed by very seasoned professionals about this new business. The Internet is a humbling thing even for giant media companies. We met Web developers from huge companies who had fought for months through layers of management to get permission to create modest sites with very small budgets and big dreams. We also met wealthy philanthropists who were putting up large amounts of their own money to create Web services to empower and educate kids. And we met representatives of small, bootstrapped Web startups bold enough to compete with the likes of Disney and The Cartoon Network.
All this for our kids. Sure we need to be wary of what big-time marketers and TV programmers want to do with data they collect from child Web users. But we can also acknowledge what some of them are trying to do for the world's children in an expensive new medium....
Here's what we've got for you this month:
- Interview with Web publisher Joanne Roberts of Getting Real!
- The latest numbers on us online families!
- Sites we saw (at Digital Kids)
- What we learned
- A parent asks Jeeves
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She knows teens
For this issue's interview, we spoke with Joanne Roberts, who participated in a panel discussion about online community at the Digital Kids conference. A former teacher and children's TV producer, Joanne is co-founder and COO of Kidsites3000, creators of Web sites for teens. In her television development work, she's worked with Children's Television Workshop, Nickelodeon, ABC, CBS, the Fox Network.
As we listened to her presentation of Getting Real! (see our review in "Sites we saw" below), we liked what we heard. Getting Real! provides a genuine service to teen Web users because it gives them a voice, as well as information they're interested in and can genuinely use. The 16-month-old site revolves around nine real teenagers who represent (and are specialists in) areas of particular interest to teens - e.g., music, sports, college, and technology. These featured teens write diaries and post them in the site, so visitors can follow their lives and interests - including all the information they generate (it's not just a soap opera!). But visitors, too, have a voice - they generate as much of the site's content as its teen writers, in e-mail to writers and on the discussion boards where they can discuss issues that come up in the writers' lives and especially their own lives. Because the site-generated content is so relevant to its visitors, visitors like to respond, so they provide a lot of the content. Also driving traffic is partnerships with other heavy-traffic sites: ABC.com, Channel One (TV for schools), and Astronet (one of the busier sites on AOL).
But Getting Real! isn't Kidsites3000's only site. There's also 89-week-old Citizen Phoebe, a site that was developed quickly for CBS News to help get teens interested and involved in the last US presidential election. In contrast to Getting Real!, the characters in Citizen Phoebe, including Phoebe herself, are all fictional, played by actors (so there are still "real people" behind the characters - not the case with all fictional Web content). But there's a lot of reality in this site, too, because Phoebe (who ran for president) and her team "interact within the context of the news of the day," Joanne said. Phoebe works hard to solve issues because she believes teens could do a lot better job of running the country than any of the adults in Washington, and DC needs their input.
So Citizen Phoebe went up fast for the election, but Getting Real!, Joanne said, had more time for market research. She told us that what the teen focus groups said was, "We don't want content developed by adults; we want to go to a place where our voices can be heard - real teens and real lives." With content like that, they feel a sense of ownership - they create the content - simple recipe for a site for teens. And the proof's in the pudding, at least one type of proof: Getting Real! was one of 11 sites to win a Global Information Infrastructure award this year.
We asked Joanne if the Web, as a more interactive medium than TV, requires more rounded, multi-dimensional characters than TV. She told us that, unlike the one-way medium that TV is, in a chat room, the Web "can be a 25-way medium. Users want to be able to talk back, get involved, express. They need a springboard for that. So with Phoebe and the fictional characters in her site," Joanne said, "Phoebe's dealing with real issues in the news and can talk about how those issues can affect teens in their own towns, cities, schools" - issues like cigarette smoking and guns, issues with parents, and so on. "The Internet," she added, "is a very personal medium, so it's about the user's own experience.... Phoebe raises questions that the users can answer from and in their own lives. In Getting Real! they can showcase their own content, their own Web sites right in the site. It goes beyond ideas and opinions - they're presenting their own creative work."
Finally, we asked Joanne if she had any recommendations for parents as the Internet becomes more prominent in their teenagers' lives. "I think there's a mass-hysteria that people need to get over," she said. "There's a lot of negative press about the Internet. It's a really valuable experience for kids, and as long as you teach them basic safe behavior outside of the house, the same rules can apply inside the house, using the Internet. Give them information about safety, but don't become paranoid."
What does she think of filtering and monitoring? "For little kids, their parents should offer some guidance, certainly. For very little ones, parents are probably using the 'Net right with them. As for teens, well, we use filters in our chat room - language filters - and I think those are appropriate. But parents could be more effective by recommending positive places for their kids to go rather than telling them what not to do."
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The numbers on us
A research partner of Jupiter Communications, NFO Interactive (a division of NFO, the US's largest market research firm), does in-depth, primary research using an interview pool of 175,000 online households. At Digital Kids, NFO unveiled some interesting research on our households. Here are the highlights:
We're getting significant (to marketers). In the second quarter of '98 there were 31 million online households - 30.8% of all US households (this figure is drawn from their parent company's research pool, a much bigger, more general population that mirrors the US population as a whole).
When media are new. NFO found that, in the first 13 years of each medium (TV, cable TV, VCRs, PCs, and Online), online surpassed cable TV in penetration of US households, with online reaching 54% and cable 52%. (Online's first-13-years figure was projected, because online is right now just eight years old.) Only TV and VCRs surpassed online's penetration in their first 13 years - at 89% and 80%, respectively.
Marketers love us (watch out!). Our (online households) mean income is $60,850, representing 40+% of all US income. The figure for non-online households is $35,042. In addition, 43.8% of us have had at least four years of college, as opposed to 15.9% of non-onliners; and 57.3% live in large urban areas, with 40.3% of non-users in such areas.
Online use is closing in. Kids are now spending 11 hours a week watching TV and 3.6 hours a week online. Girls are just slightly ahead, with an average 3.7 hours, and boys at 3.5 hours.
E-mail's the killer app for young people, too. For the under-13 crew, favorite online activities go in this order: e-mail, games, surfing, homework, entertainment sites, sports, instant messaging, and music. For 13-to-18-year-olds: e-mail, chat, homework, surfing, music, games, instant messaging, entertainment sites, and sports.
About us parents. When NFO looked at our concerns about online safety and privacy, they found that, for parents of kids of all ages, nearly 70% are "somewhat concerned" and about 26% of us are "very concerned." Interestingly, there's little variation between parents of teens and parents of kids under 13. About 28% of us are "very concerned" for girls, vs. about 22% for boys.
So we're "cracking down." For kids, our rules are (and the message we're sending Web publishers and marketers): "no personal info" (for 70% of us), "no shopping" (64%), "no adult sites" (51%), "time limits" (43%), "no chat" (42%), "only homework" (35%). For teens, our rules are "no personal info" (for 61% of us), "no shopping" (60%), "no adult sites" (55%), "time limits" (31%), "no chat" (20%), "only homework" (15%). For kids, only about 7% of us pose no limits, and for teens about 18%.
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Sites we saw
Here are the Web sites presented or talked about at Digital Kids. Some are new, some have been around a while. And below the lives ones is a group of sites not-yet-debuted. All are high-quality sites parents should know about - mostly for kids, of various ages, some for teachers.
Ask Jeeves for Kids - The most innovative Web search tool for kids that we've yet seen. It allows them to ask questions in plain English and pulls answers from Jeeves's "knowledge base" of Web sites reviewed by the company's own researchers. If that doesn't answer the question, the child can then scroll down to a manageable number of matches produced by regular search engines like Infoseek or Alta Vista, but they've been filtered by Jeeves using standard filtering software. Another innovation, as told us by Penny Finnie, Jeeves's director, is: "Our researchers learn what the questions are that we don't answer and can then add that info to our knowledge base. So Jeeves gets smarter and smarter the more usage he gets." (For a parent's review of this site, please see "A parent asks Jeeves" below.)
BONUS.com the SuperSite for Kids - more than 1,700 activities and games "to play, color, explore, inspect, and imagine." They don't give an age range, but they have categories for "young" and "advanced" kids. Bonus includes curriculum-enhancement ideas for teachers (could the teachers among our subscribers tell us what you think - how much value teachers can really derive from this site?). Please e-mail us.
Children's Television Workshop - For details, see introduction above and "What we learned" below. What's new is sponsorships by Ford Motor Co., providing a parents' guide for Safe Cruising on the Web, and Kellogg's, offering a Delicious Fun activity area for parents and kids. Much more rolling out as CTW's and WebCrawler's joint content efforts kick in in over the next few months.
Cyberkids and Cyberteens - We reviewed these sites (visited by 150,000 kids and teens a month) in our May issue, and you can also find them on Sage's links page.
Cyberspace Explorers - This is an award-winning TV show and Web site for kids 8-12. The Explorers, says Golden Road Presents, Inc., the production company, "are a group of seven young boys and girls who act as tour guides taking other adventurers through the wild territory that is the Internet. In the Web site, users can ask the Explorers questions, find out bits of Internet information, build their techno-vocabulary, and interact among each other...."
Disney's DIG (for "Disney Internet Guide") - The brand-new safe Web directory for kids we told subscribers about in our June 25 Sage Extra!. Because Disney has to be in all media all the time to all kids, it had to do this and do it well. And they have. But it's not the most innovative use of Web technology. For a more innovative search tool (that is search engine as well as directory), see Ask Jeeves for Kids above. The Associated Press has the story on how Dig fits into Disney's Internet business strategy.
Getting Real! - see interview with Getting Real!'s developer Joanne Roberts above.
GirlSite - GirlSite is about empowering girls through collaboration and support both online and offline. This brand-new L.A.-based organization is partnering with local organizations in NYC and L.A. and national ones like Boys & Girls Club, CityKids, and YWCA to develop safe and productive ways to introduce girls to technology and the Internet. Web content includes chat, e-mail, information that demystifies Different Learning Styles (DLS), "Creative Girl" for exploring one's artistic abilities, and "Personal Well Being," giving girls opportunities to interact with professionals about their emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological health. Another feature that really sets this group apart from other girls' programmers is "My Planet My World," aimed at providing young people with community service opportunities by connecting them to nonprofit organizations around the world.
Headbone Zone - "Kids own the bone zone" is the motto of Headbone Interactive, which offers an entertainment Web site for kids 8-14, CD-ROMs distributed by The Learning Co., and the Headbone Derbies ('Net research adventures) for the classroom. It's a popular kids site, showing up as No. 6 on the 100 Hot kids's sites list.
MaMaMedia - We reviewed this children's site for you in our May Kids & Chat issue, which included information on chat safety.
The NFL's PlayFootball - This is a rich resource aimed at boys 8-14 with intentions to provide opportunities for fathers and sons to enjoy football together. There are games, pro stats, team information, fan polls, and NFL news. Michelle Kraus, CEO of Theatrix, the site's creators, told us that the Florida State Board of Education named Play Football an official site for kids to learn math. Now that's stealth learning!
Purple Moon - This is another site - specifically for girls - that we reviewed in our May issue.
Time-Warner's Teen People - print and online (the latter available only on AOL - key word: Teen People). We heard good things about this magazine: First, it's not trying to be People's version of Seventeen. Its reader/usership is 85% female, but it speaks to both sexes, uses no slang, no boy-crazy articles, no professional models (they go out and photograph "regular teens" only, presenting "all body types and ethnicities" in their pages). The magazine, launched last February, has already reached a circulation of 500,000 (in August that figure will be 800,000) - the most successful launch in Time-Warner history.
The Theodore Tugboat Activity Center - This is a site by Theodore Tugboat's creators, Cochran Communications (film & TV programmers for, among others, CBC, PBS, and Discovery). For Theodore's fans, the site includes interactive stories, a coloring book, episodes in RealAudio, collectibles (to purchase), and a link to the very popular (and useful) Berit's Best Sites for Children.
ThinkQuest - This is not just an education technology tool. It's a tool for better education - a very effective one (please see our June issue, under "The great ed-tech debate" for educator Neal Brodsky's comments on ThinkQuest). What is it? Here's how its creators describe it: "ThinkQuest is an annual competition that challenges students ages 12 to 19 [12,000 students in 60 countries, so far] to use the Internet as a collaborative, interactive teaching and learning tool." It is a very demanding competition that offers annual awards worth $1.5 million for students and their schools. To give you a feel for the quality of students' projects, ThinkQuest founder and benefactor Al Weiss told us at the conference, "The best teaching tool in the world for learning C++ [programming language] was built by teens, and it's on the ThinkQuest site."
Coming soon (we'll keep you updated)
Children's Television Workshop and WebCrawler's Kids & Family Channel - We mentioned this in our June 25 Sage Extra! for subscribers only. For Excite, owner of WebCrawler, the deal creates a relationship with a powerful player in children's media. For CTW, it's sheer traffic and a more full-service presence. Everybody's linking up with search engines (almost-has-been Infoseek recently struck the deal of the century with Disney), and there's a reason for that.
Discovery Kids - For now, see discovery.com. Michela English, president of Discovery Enterprises Worldwide says her company's current Web offerings are more for grownups (even though discovery.com is No. 2 on the Hot 100 Kids sites list!). So Discovery is working on a big rollout this coming year of multiple media offerings just for kids (including the reported renaming of its Nature Company stores to Discovery Kids).
electric SchoolHouse - a spinoff of Infonautics and the eLibrary, electric SchoolHouse, too, will be a subscription-based Web library and searchable database, but this one aims to be a safe education resource specifically for kids and teachers. Its builders tell us it'll be supremely useful to kids because they'll have access to "qualified adult mentors" from the Association of Retired Schoolteachers, one of electric SchoolHouse's partners. It'll be useful to teachers because, they say, it will be organized around actual curriculum requirements.
Gizmo Gypsies - The makers of CD-ROMs for children are coming out with a new product this summer that adds community. Instead of one child interacting with media in an offline environment, kids will be able to become an animated character and play collaboratively over the Internet in the Little Wizard Activity Center.
Highwired.Net - Another creative service for schools, Highwired.Net launches in the fall as an online school-newspaper publishing system. Schools will be able to use this tool free of charge to put an entire newspaper up on the 'Net. Highwired will make its money through advertising and sponsorships. The system includes a "Student Advertising Initiative" in which schools can sell online ad space to local sponsors and keep 100% of the proceeds. The only hitch we can see at this first glance is that the papers in the site will look a lot alike; but at this point it's probably unfair to ask Highwired.Net for total customization!
JuniorNet - Planning a fall launch, JuniorNet will be a subscription online service designed exclusively for kids - kind of a closed AOL for children (they won't be able to go out on the Web). Content partners they've signed up so far are Highlights magazine, Sports Illustrated Kids, the National Wildlife Federation's Ranger Rick, Consumer Reports's Zillions, Weekly Reader, and others.
kidBoard - The Minneapolis-based developer of award-winning SketchBoard (drawing tablet for the computer) and the kidBoard computer keyboard is building a Web site. It's a logical next step to create a site that presents online art galleries where kids and teens can share computer-created artwork. The site will also eventually include a music room, kids' musical jam-sessions, contests, and community.
PBS Kids - To be announced in the fall. Here's what John Holler, executive vice-president, PBS Online, told us at Digital Kids: He referred to the Public Broadcasting Service's decision to begin promoting "a singular message" and described a site that will have a lot of "kid-controlled action" and "high-quality visuals and sounds." Remember the old PBS show "Zoom"? Well, it'll be back and online in PBS Kids, bringing a substantial offering to 'tweens, all those pre-teens who right now are not well-served on the Web, John said. It sounds like the site is meant to have both fun and educational parts to it. For the latter, John mentioned CD-ROM-like treatment of Ken Burns's "Lewis & Clark." You heard it here! :-)
Popular Mechanics for Kids - We haven't heard much about this site's plans; we were just briefly introduced to the woman who's building it. We're looking forward to seeing this site, because it seems like a great concept for kids. For now, here's Popular Mechanics for grownups.
Turner Learning Web site for kids - Turner Learning (from the people who bring you CNN TV and CNN.com) is charged with educational outreach (K-12) for all the Turner networks. We didn't hear much about their future kids Web site from Turner Learning senior vice-president John Richards, but he made an interesting comment at the conference that clearly will give the site focus: "We need to focus on participation, not delivery." He was talking about the participation of kids in classrooms, not just sending them TV signals, which is the company's current focus. Look for a big Turner announcement in the fall.
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What we learned
Back to David Britt of CTW. In his presentation at Digital Kids, he demo'd how, pretty soon, kids who come to ctw.org can tickle Elmo (of Sesame St. fame, of course). It was adorable - Elmo giggles and squirms as you point the cursor and click your mouse, then finally he squeals, "That's enough!" But you know what? We think even a three-year-old will tickle Elmo a few times and then lose interest. Our theory, only confirmed in listening to large numbers of presentations, is that an interactive medium means relationship-type interaction between characters. Emphasis on relationship - with the character at the keyboard (you 'n' me) and the character on the screen, whether he's fantasy or a fellow real person in a chat room. In the online world, characters need to have lives, real or surreal. So, on the Internet, if Elmo doesn't change and learn and go night-night like our pre-schoolers, then our pre-schoolers will go to a site where lovable characters do have multi-dimensional, human-like lives to which they can relate.
Not a lot of Web developers seem to have thought about this - at least, not most of those making presentations at Digital Kids. There were many references to interactive games and activities, lots of questions about reality vs. fantasy, many gratifying mentions of responsibility, safety, and privacy. But only a few of the presenters had interesting things to say about characters. One was Andrew Cochran, CEO of Cochran Communications, makers of Theodore Tugboat for PBS. He said the Web is an intimate, personal, first-person medium where the heros don't have the distance and star-power of TV characters; they're more like us. This rang true. And this places quite a burden on TV programmers bringing their characters to the Web - because on the Web their stars have to be more like us, more complex and linear - more interesting and relevant to individual users. Story lines have to be richer. Not only will programmers/developers be creating multi-dimensional, changing characters, they'll be creating environments in which users and characters can interact - and develop relationships. This doesn't have to wait for cable modems. We all know people have been creating such worlds just with text, in MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and chat rooms. All this is mostly good news for parents - because the richer the experience the more value (education, role-playing, socialization, self-identity) children derive from it.
But there was a lot more to David Britt's keynote than tickling Elmo. He was one of the few programmers to young children to talk about the relationship between parent and child. This is worth reflecting on for a minute:
David said that family is the most basic community. First he painted a somber picture, speaking of the growing isolation of US children, with 70% of 6-to-11-year-olds having TV sets in their own rooms, and more than 33% regularly fixing and eating their own dinners. He referred to all the single-parent and dual-earner families dealing with high-pressure, work-dominated lives. Time with their parents, David said, is our children's scarcest resource. But, in a heartwarming display of idealism, David said, we now have a medium that holds promise to change some of this and reinforce mutual respect (because in most families, children know more about the Internet than parents do) and togetherness (in a medium "tailor-made for spur-of-the-moment parent-child interaction," without all the prep required for outings and other planned activities). The keyboard just may represent the hearth of our grandparents' days or the kitchen table of our own childhoods, he suggested.
Then, expanding the family's horizons, David spoke of the "true, 360-degree community" the medium represents - enabling us to participate in "multilogues" on the 'Net - from child to parent and back to child, and from the family out into the world and back home again.
We also appreciated hearing David Britt say that this opportunity increases programmers'/publishers' responsibility, in making the Web a safe place for constructive experiences. But this last comment wasn't just idealism. He and all the other Web developers at the conference knew and acknowledged that if they don't take that responsibility they will not only lose the support of parents, the key to their market, they will also be regulated by government. Regulation could take away the spontaneity, and therefore the basic effectiveness, of interactive programming.
The other consensus we heard is something of which online parents are well aware: The Web is a yard sale. There's a lot of junk. Yes, one person's junk is another's treasure, but it takes some degree of intelligence and experience for anyone to pick out the treasures. That underscores how important parents and teachers are to the children on the Web. As David Britt asserted at the conference and as Joanne Roberts said in our interview, the littlest children need us right with them, and - having established that presence - we need to maintain it, in age-appropriate ways, as they grow up. [For some good guidelines for older kids, see our interview with parent and former FTC commissioner Christine Varney.]
Clearly, for parents, the Web will never be quite the babysitter that TV has become in many households - which suggests that the Web might actually cause families to learn and play together more with it than without it. We're not talking about just surfing and doing homework together. Could it be that, as a medium, online will be a very positive tool for family members' communication and personal growth?!
We'd love to get your responses to that question and anything else we've written here - especially any reactions you and your children or students might have to any of the sites we've reviewed - or give us your own favorites, if they're not on the Digital Kids list. With your permission, we'd love to publish your comments and reviews. Please e-mail us at feedback@sageway.com, as did subscriber and parent, Charles Frean, just below....
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A parent asks Jeeves
"I like Ask Jeeves on the whole - the concept is a good one. However, there are pitfalls when you wrap a powerful tool (such as a search engine) in a kid-friendly interface.The kid-friendly interface implies (at least to this parent) that this service will filter out inappropriate search results. What's 'inappropriate'? That's pretty subjective and variable, in my opinion.
"Unfortunately, we all know that filtering is hard to do, harder to do well, and impossible to do perfectly. My first use of Ask Jeeves is a case in point. For example, when I asked Ask Jeeves on June 9, 1998, 'What's going on with the Spice Girls?', its reply included several links to Spice Girl-related sites, including 'Stalking the Spice Girls,' 'What's wrong with the Spice Girls?', 'How to kill the Spice Girls: Prepare your weapons!', etc.
"I can just hear my seven-year-old daughter asking me, 'Daddy, what does stalking mean?' Some folks might hold that a discussion about stalking might be appropriate between a parent and their seven-year-old child. Others might argue the opposite.
"It's not clear that there's any good remedy to this situation, except to provide rigorously controlled Web access. It highlights the intrinsic vulnerability that children are likely to experience when given anything short of 'rigorously controlled' access to the Internet.
"A tool like Ask Jeeves goes a long way toward making the power of the Internet more readily accessible to kids, but while that online experience incorporates an open pathway to the Internet, it is also serving to make the less-kid-appropriate areas of the Internet more readily accessible to kids."
-- Charles Frean
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For our next issue, in September: an in-depth look at children's online privacy and safety.
