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14. Findings, Conclusions, and Future Needs
Pages 355-388

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From page 356...
... Prepublication copy - subject to further editorial correction 14-26 /
From page 357...
... But the Internet poses many challenges for which there are no precedents, and much of the controversy about inappropriate sexually explicit material on the Internet arises because of these differences. 14.1.1 Social Dimensions What is the issue to be addressed?
From page 358...
... Further, concerns over obscenity may well be a proxy for the desire to suppress access to other sexually explicit or sexually oriented content that would not be judged legally obscene. Internet exposure of children to inappropriate sexually explicit material is also only one dimension of inappropriate or potentially dangerous activities in which youth may engage.
From page 359...
... Certain other sexually explicit materials (obscenity, child pornography) enjoy no First Amendment protection at all.
From page 360...
... regulation of their behavior (through public tin this context, responsible behavior refers to actions taken to reduce the likelihood that children will obtain access to inappropriate sexually explicit material. To illustrate, one method of inducing Web site operators to act responsibly is to establish codes of behavior to which they must adhere under pain of government enforcement actions (whether civil or criminal)
From page 361...
... Such teaser pages allow potential customers to sample what would be available with payment, but children have easy access to the free content. The sexually explicit material provided by the adult online industry is available to children through a variety of routes, including mistyped Web site addresses, links returned by search engines in response to search terms with sexual connotations, and spam containing links to adult Web sites.
From page 362...
... 14.2 ON THE IMPACT ON CHILDREN OF EXPOSURE TO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIAL AND EXPERIENCES As described in Chapter 6, factors such as certain ethical and legal considerations, an increasing conservatism of university review boards that approve research studies involving human subjects (institutional review boards) , and a lack of research funding have contributed to a paucity of research regarding the impact on children of exposure to sexually explicit material.
From page 363...
... In contrast to the diversity of views about what material must count as obscenity or obscene with respect to minors (and hence a diversity of views on what harm might result to children from being exposed to such material) , there is a much broader social consensus that child pornography results in harm to the children depicted in such images and that child pornography is morally wrong as well.2 Over the past decade, the incidence of child pornography has risen as new communications channels such as the Internet have facilitated the exchange of child pornography.
From page 364...
... In the committee's view, this focus is misguided: neither technology nor public policy alone can provide a complete or even a nearly complete solution. As a rule, public policy aimed at eliminating sources of sexually explicit material can affect only indigenous domestic sources, 3Are there any circumstances under which involuntary exposure might be beneficial?
From page 365...
... For these reasons, the most important finding of the committee is that developing in children and youth an ethic of responsible choice and skills for appropriate behavior is foundational for all efforts to protect themwith respect to inappropriate sexually explicit material on the Internet as well as many other dangers on the Internet and in the physical world. Social and educational strategies are central to such development, but technology and public policy are important as well and the three can act together to reinforce each other's value.
From page 366...
... , strongly filtered Internet access in middle childhood (i.e., access based on extensive "black lists") , less filtered Internet access in preadolescence and early adolescence (i.e., access based on a slow reduction in the number of categories deemed inappropriate)
From page 367...
... Choosing the right combination of social and educational strategies and technology-based tools depends a great deal on the nature of the problem that parents, teachers, and librarians are trying to solve. For example, recall from Chapter 8 that deliberate access and inadvertent exposure to inappropriate sexually explicit materials pose different protection problems.
From page 368...
... Such complexity manifests itself in many ways, but nowhere more prominently than in understanding the trade-offs involved in the development of any comprehensive approach to protecting children on the Internet from inappropriate materials and experiences. 50ne example of a "sting" operation is an exercise in which a law enforcement official assumes an online identity corresponding to that of a minor, and engages potential predators seeking to entice a minor for the purpose of initiating a sexual encounter.
From page 369...
... Second, the fact that trade-offs exist for any given method suggests that a mix of methods may well be more effective than exclusive or primary reliance on any one method. To illustrate these trade-offs, the next few sections discuss trade-offs that decision makers must address in considering the use of social and educational strategies, technology-based tools, and public policy actions.
From page 370...
... Perhaps the most important trade-off associated with using social and educational strategies is that they may conflict with other pressing social and educational needs. For example, most K-12 curricula are already overloaded, and information and media literacy curricula must compete for time in the schedule with physical education, art, music, sex education, consumer literacy, and a variety of other pressures on the curriculum.
From page 371...
... As a general rule, increasing the probability that a device or system will identify inappropriate sexually explicit material as such also increases the probability that some not-inappropriate material will also be improperly identified as inappropriate. If false positives are generally tolerable (i.e., one is generally willing to pass up useful information as the price of protecting against inappropriate material, as might be the case for many risk-averse parents~, then the automated assessment of content does have significant utility.
From page 372...
... This is important given the increasing ubiquity of Internet access points in many venues. When responsible and respected adults and mentors talk with these older children about responsible decision making and establish sanctions for inappropriate choices, they create an environment that encourages and supports responsible choice, which in turn is likely to be conducive to the development of positive habits.
From page 373...
... Thus, as one illustrative example from Section 9.3.2, the government might offer a grant of immunity from prosecution under obscenity laws to Web site operators that use age verification systems to prevent minors from accessing such material.6 In this instance, the trade-off is helping to protect children from exposure to certain kinds of inappropriate sexually explicit material (such a measure would help to reduce the inadvertent discovery of such material from commercial Web sites) in return for limitations on possible obscenity prosecutions.
From page 374...
... In the end, responsible choice which is foundational for safe Internet use by children is closely tied to the values that parents and communities wish to impart to their children, and that influence judgments about the proper mix of education, technology, and public policy to adopt. Box 14.1 describes some of the behavioral aspects of Internet safety for children that families, schools, and libraries might wish to teach.
From page 376...
... If technology is used to limit access, consider the ageappropriateness of the limits you wish to impose. · Interactive dialog (whether through e-mail, instant messages, voice and/or video, chat rooms)
From page 377...
... For example, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides one-stop reporting to law enforcement authorities of child pornography found online by the general public (http://www.cybertipline.com or 1-800-843-5678~. Local law enforcement agencies (e.g., state or town police)
From page 378...
... . For this reason, parental education about the Internet continues to be an important part of a comprehensive program of Internet safety education for children.
From page 379...
... · Transparency is a virtue, both for adult supervisors and child Internet users. Transparency can include an understanding of why a given site is or is not regarded as inappropriate, access to detailed information about what is deemed inappropriate, knowledge of instances when actions are being monitored or influenced, and the ability for on-site adult supervisors to override non-local decisions about inappropriateness.
From page 380...
... The segments of industry relevant to the issue include ISPs and online service providers, makers of access devices such as personal computers, software vendors, content providers, and the adult online industry. · ISPs and online service providers could: Provide easily understood and implemented parental controls.
From page 381...
... For example, upon initial installation of a software product, the software setup program could ask if the user wanted to view a screen of Internet safety tips for children, and if so, could display such tips or direct him or her to an appropriate Web site. Provide content creation tools that have been adapted to speed the process of content developers creating labels that can be used by PICSbased filtering schemes.
From page 382...
... For example, operators of adult Web sites could set up their home pages without sexually explicit material (i.e., the cyber-equivalent of a brown paper wrapper around an adult magazine) , and use the robot.txt protocol (described in Chapter 2, Box 2.3)
From page 383...
... For example, the committee heard from parents who did not trust the federal government to take actions to reduce children's Internet exposure to inappropriate materials. The striking aspect of this sentiment was that it was expressed by both conservative and liberal parents.
From page 384...
... This precedent gave ISPs incentives to refrain from exercising editorial control, and the Good Samaritan provisions of the Communications Decency Act never overturned in the courts eliminate such liability. · Promote media literacy and Internet safety education.
From page 385...
... · Support research in areas that are relevant to the issue of Internet safety. Some of the relevant areas are the impact of exposure to sexually explicit material on children at various ages; the Internet use patterns of children; and the in-practice effectiveness of various social and educational strategies, technology-based tools, and public policy at federal, state, and local levels at increasing the safety of children's Internet experiences.
From page 386...
... · The effectiveness of technology-based tools and social and educational strategies in practice should be examined and characterized. Chapter 12 discusses one aspect of evaluating the performance of filters, based on a "head-to-head" comparison of how filters performed in blocking inappropriate materials.
From page 387...
... · It seems reasonable that providing high-quality, age-appropriate information about sex and sexual health addressing the physical, emotional, social, and psychological issues on the minds of children would have a dampening effect on the urge of many adolescents to search for inappropriate sexually explicit materials. To test this proposition, longitudinal studies of children and adolescents who receive such information would be helpful.
From page 388...
... 388 YOUTH, PORNOGRAPHY, AND THE INTERNET stances. While technology and public policy have important roles to play, social and educational strategies that impart to children the character and values to exercise responsible choices about Internet use and the knowledge about how to cope with inappropriate material and experiences is central to promoting children's safe Internet use.


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