For the most part, parents do have a clue when it comes to helping their kids stay safe online.

FOSI commissioned Hart Research Associates to interview 702 parents of children eight to 17. The study, which has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.7%, found that “Nearly all parents surveyed (96%) say they have had a conversation with their child about what to do and not to do online.”

Controls have their place

But that’s not to say parental controls tools don’t have their place. Just over half the parents (53%) said that they do use some type of tool to control or monitor their child’s online behavior using products ranging from filtering programs on their PC that limit what sites a child can visit to services that monitor children’s activities online or on mobile devices.

Even though 47% of parents don’t use these tools, 87% of them are aware that such tools are available for personal computers, but parents are less likely to use and be aware of parental control tools on other devices that kids use to go online. For example, while 75% of parents feel very or somewhat comfortable about monitoring their kids’ online use, awareness of parental controls drops to 37% for game consoles (44% among parents whose kids use consoles to access the Internet). Just over a third (35%) of parents say they are “aware of parental controls offered by wireless companies” and only 39% of parents whose child uses a smartphone to access the Internet “say they know of parental control technologies,” according to the study. Just over half (51%) of parents said that their child uses something other than a computer to access the Internet.

Parents set rules

It’s good news that 93% of parents say they have set rules or limits on their children’s online with nearly eight out of 10 (79%) saying that they only allow kids to use a computer in a common area of the house rather than a bedroom. Of course, in an era when many kids are using laptops or even tablets and phones to go online, I’m not sure if parents can easily enforce that rule, but at least they’re thinking about it.

Three quarters of the parents (75%) have rules for how much time or the time of day their kids can be online but as kids get older, parents become more relaxed about these rules. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on the child. Many teens have pretty well developed internal “filters between their ears,” but there are some who actually take more risks than younger children. While monitoring teen behavior is always trickier than monitoring behavior of young children, it’s sometimes even more necessary, though often an occasional conversation is all that’s needed.

Family ‘Online Safety Contract‘

Ten percent of the parents said they have signed a “family online safety contract” that outlines rules and expectations. Several years ago I created separate online safety pledges for kids and parents.

(Source: Family Online Safety Institute)

The fact that nearly half parents sampled don’t use parental control tools isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When asked why, the most common reason was that they’re not necessary, “either because of rules and limits already in place (60%), and/or because they trust their child to be safe (30%).”

I completely understand where these parents were coming from. Even though I was one of the first people on the planet to test out parental controls in the nineties when my kids were young (and testified as to their efficacy in a federal court trial), my wife and I elected not to use them at our house because we preferred more old fashioned “tools” like frequent conversations with our kids and placing computers in public areas of the house.

Filters and monitoring tools can be a valuable resource and I urge parents to at least think about including them in their vast arsenal of parenting tools, but I also urge parents to never rely on them as the only safeguard. The best way to protect your kids online is to talk with them about their Internet use and anything else on their minds. Have dinner together as a family, ask your kids what’s going on in their lives and be as non-judgmental as appropriate so your kids trust you and confide in you. Studies have shown that – despite outward appearances – children and even teenagers heavily rely on their parents for advice and guidance.

Besides, with any luck your kid will someday grow up and move somewhere where there are no filters, no monitoring programs and no parents over their shoulder. Let’s just hope that, by then, that filter between their ears is well developed.

For more on internet safety visit Larry’s SafeKids.com blog andConnectSafely.org

Like technology itself, Internet safety has to evolve. Back in 1994, when I wrote the first widely disseminated Internet safety publication, I advised parents not to let kids put personal information or photos online and — because of what turned out to be an exaggerated fear of predators — I urged them to avoid online conversations with strangers. Back then, along with trying to keep kids away from porn, Internet safety was mostly about protecting children from dangerous adults.

But starting around 2005, a new phase of the Web — often referred to as “Web 2.0″ — prompted some Internet safety advocates to focus on ways kids could get in trouble for what they post on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. It was in that year that Anne Collier and I founded BlogSafety.org (later renamed ConnnectSafely.org) so we could provide a forum for discussing safety issues on the Web. It was also around that time that politicians and the media, especially the TV show “To Catch a Predator,” started whipping up fears of predators trolling the Web for vulnerable children.

But after carefully reviewing available research, statistics show that the likelihood of a young person being harmed by an online stranger is quite rare, and sexual solicitations and harassment are most often from peers. And to the extent it has occurred, it affects teens, not young children. Based on studies by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, the overwhelming majority of crimes against youths continue to take place in the “real world,” mostly by adults known to the child.

But that doesn’t mean that the Internet is a risk-free zone. It’s just that young people are far more likely to be harmed by other youth or the consequences of their own online behavior than by adult criminals.

Their interactions are largely with people they know from the real world. As danah boyd (she prefers a lower case d & b) observed in her doctoral dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (PDF), “teen participation in social network sites is driven by their desire to socialize with peers. Their participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer culture; teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize almost exclusively with people they know.”

This understanding of youth risk led to a whole new phase of Internet safety education focusing on such things as cyberbullying and urging youth to avoid posting material that could be embarrassing or get them into trouble with authorities and potential future employers. Recently, the focus has turned to the emotional and legal consequences of “sexting,” — kids sending nude pictures of themselves via cell phones or the Web. But Anne Collier observed in NetFamilyNews.org, we run the risk of “technopanics” over sexting and bullying.

What we’ve learned from observing how kids use the Net, mobile phones, gaming devices and other interactive technology is that there is really no distinction between online and offline behaviors. Technology is woven into their lives. They don’t go online, they ARE online. So it’s really about youth safety — not Internet safety.

It’s about helping young people make wise choices not just in how they use technology but in how they live their lives. Internet safety is more than just the absence of danger. It also includes finding ways to use technology for learning, collaboration, community building, political activism, self-help and reaching out to others.

These are not just philosophical arguments. They’re pragmatic because preaching about safety or trying lock down the Internet doesn’t protect kid. Trying to instill fear — especially based on myths — actually increases danger because it causes kids to tune out good advice.

Sure, there are technologies that can keep kids from using social networking services or visiting inappropriate Web sites. But, like fences around swimming pools, the use of filters at home and school can’t protect them forever. That’s why we teach kids to swim. Not only does knowing how to swim help prevent drowning, it empowers them to thrive in the water instead of fearing it. The same is true with technology. As kids mature into teens, we must pull back on the technological controls in favor of self-control.

In an email interview,  Dr. Larry Rosen, Professor of Psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills and author of Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation observed, “sadly, too many parents think that using technology to track their children’s keystrokes or restrict access to certain websites is sufficient parenting.  It is not.  Parents must be involved with their children’s virtual lifestyles developing trust, being aware of any potential problems, learning about the technologies they use, and communicating often.”

A long awaited report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concludes that children and teens are less vulnerable to sexual predation than many have feared. The report also questions the efficacy and necessity of some commonly prescribed remedies designed to protect young people.

The task force was formed as a result of a joint agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general.

Over the past couple of years, several state AGs have been looking into potential dangers to youth, and some have called for social-network sites to use age verification technology to confirm the ages of users in an attempt to prevent adults from or interacting online with minors. The task force includes representatives of Internet and social-networking companies, security and identity authentication vendors, and nonprofit advocacy organizations. It’s chaired by John Palfrey of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Disclosure: I served as a member of the task force, representing ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit internet safety organization I co-founded along with Anne Collier. ConnectSafely receives financial support from MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and other Internet and social-networking companies. I am also founder of SafeKids.com and am on the board of directors of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is represented on the task force.

Based on data analyzed by its Research Advisory Board, the task force concluded that “actual threats that youth may face appear to be different than the threats most people imagine” and that “the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated offline encounters.”

While the task force found that youth risk from predators is a concern, the overwhelming majority of youth are not in danger of being harmed by an adult predator they meet online. To the extent that young people have received an unwanted online sexual solicitation, data from a 2000 study and a 2006 follow-up from the Crimes Against Children Research Center concludes that “youth identify most sexual solicitors as being other adolescents (48 percent in 2000; 43 percent in 2006) or young adults between the ages of 18 and 21 (20 percent; 30 percent), with few (4 percent; 9 percent) coming from older adults, and the remaining being of unknown age.”

What the task force did find is that “bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most salient threats that minors face, both online and offline.” Partially because researchers can’t agree on a definition of bullying and harassment, the actual risk is hard to quantify, but it is clearly much higher than the risk of being harmed by a predator. Some studies suggest that as many as 49 percent of youth have experienced some type of bullying or harassment. In many cases no serious emotional or physical harm occurred. However, a study by Michelle Ybarra and Janice Wolak found that “39 percent of victims reported emotional distress over being harassed online.”

There is also a widespread belief that deception is often involved where adults pose as teens to engage with young people, but research shows that that’s rarely the case. The report found that “although identity deception may occur online, it does not appear to play a large role in criminal cases in which adult sex offenders have been arrested for sex crimes in which they met victims online.” Interviews with police show that “most victims are underage adolescents who know they are going to meet adults for sexual encounters.” This does not imply that such relationships are healthy or safe, nor that we should blame the victims or tolerate the actions of adults who engage in sex with minors. But it does suggest that child safety advocates need to take a more proactive role in helping teens understand the risk of seeking engaging in relationships with adults.

Importantly, the task force found that online 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.” For example, “a poor home environment full of conflict and poor parent-child relationships is correlated with a host of online risks.”

The attorneys general who called for the task force were anxious for us to study the efficacy of using age verification to help limit inappropriate contact between adults and children online. To help in that job, the task force formed a technical advisory board (TAB) composed of technology experts from Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts, University of Utah, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Bank of America. This board looked at a wide range of technologies including age verification and identity authentication, filtering and auditing, text analysis, and biometrics.

What the TAB found was that age verification technology can be used to identify adults and therefore help prevent minors from engaging in adult-only activities such as accessing adult content or purchasing alcohol or tobacco. There were several technologies submitted by companies that could identify adults based on accessible records such as credit reports, criminal history, and real estate transactions, but these relatively automated systems cannot reliably identify or verify the age of minors because, as the TAB concluded, “public records of minors range from quite limited to nonexistent.” Documentation about young people such as birth certificates, passports, and school records are restricted by federal law for some very good privacy and security reasons.

Age verification options presented by some companies would allow parents to request that their child’s school verify his or her identity and age, but these proposals have their own critics including those who worry about the cost, the possibility of privacy or security leaks, and the financial model presented in some cases that includes providing marketers with information about kids.

The TAB also looked at “peer-based” verification schemes that “allow peers in a community to vote, recommend, or rate whether a person is in an appropriate age group based on relationships and personal knowledge established offline” but worried that with these methods “users can vote as many times as they wish to artificially raise or lower a peer rating.” There were concerns that “minors might organize against another minor in their ratings or recommendations in an online form of bullying.”

At one task force meeting, a company presented technology that tries to distinguish between an adult and a child by analyzing the bone density of the person’s hand. Another tool attempts to identify an individual through facial recognition to match that person against a database of registered sex offenders.

Although the TAB expressed “cautious optimism” about the possibility of using technology to protect kids, it concluded that “every technology has its problems” and that “no single technology reviewed could solve every aspect of online safety for minors, or even one aspect of it one hundred percent of the time.” The bottom line was that “technology can play a role but cannot be the sole input to improved safety for minors online” and that “the most effective technology solution is likely to be a combination of technologies.”

But even if these technologies can be employed effectively, there remains the question of whether they are necessary or helpful. Using technology to separate kids from grown-ups doesn’t address the fact that kids are far more at risk from other kids than from adult predators.

Another danger is that age verification or new rules could be used to keep kids off of social networks or require parental consent. But before issuing rules about this, authorities should explore possible unintended consequences such as isolating kids, causing them to go underground, failing to serve kids from dysfunctional families, and preventing kids from accessing vital services such as the Suicide Prevention Hotline or one of the many online self-help groups.

The task force report will have its critics, including possibly some attorneys general and others who feel that it underestimates the risk of online predators. Indeed, sting operations from law enforcement (as well as the TV show To Catch a Predator) demonstrate that there are plenty of adults who, if given the chance, would engage in sex with youth they meet online. But, based on the research presented to the task force, it appears that the vast majority of young people are savvy enough to avoid such encounters.

Still, there remains a minority of youth who–for a variety of psychological and social reasons–are vulnerable both online and offline. More research needs to be done to identify these young people and provide them with resources and protective services. The fact that most kids are safe is reassuring but it’s not sufficient. If even one child is in danger, then there is work to be done, and that is one thing everyone who cares about this issue can agree on.