Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

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. Along with the positive aspects of Internet use come risks to safety, including the dangers of sexual solicitation, online harassment, and bullying, and exposure to problematic and illegal content. The Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking asked this Task Force to determine the extent to which today's technologies could help to address these online safety risks, with a primary focus on social network sites in the United States.

To answer this question, the Task Force brought together leaders from Internet service providers, social network sites, academia, education, child safety and public policy advocacy organizations, and technology development. The Task Force consulted extensively with leading researchers in the field of youth online safety and with technology experts, and sought input from the public. The Task Force has produced three primary documents: (1) a Literature Review of relevant research in the field of youth online safety in the United States, which documents what is known and what remains to be studied about the issue; (2) a report from its Technology Advisory Board, reviewing the 40 technologies submitted to the Task Force; and (3) this Final Report, which summarizes the Task Force's work together, analyzes the previous documents as well as submissions by eight leading social network sites regarding their efforts to enhance safety for minors, and provides a series of recommendations for how to approach this issue going forward.

Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies contains the Task Force's Final Report and appendices of the Literature Review and the Technology Advisory Board report.