2. UK Kids Online - Young people, media literacy and the digital divide  Policy focused on benefits of the European information society  Challenge – to ensure children and young people ‘media literate’  Problems – digital inequality and exclusion; risk and safety  Also – just what do we want for kids online? And from whom?

3. EU Kids Online  A thematic network examining European research on cultural, contextual and risk issues in children's safe use of the internet and new media  Funded by the EC Safer Internet plus Programme (2006-9)  Aims to compare recent and ongoing empirical research in 18 member states  Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK –identify and evaluate available data on children’s use of online technologies –inform the research agenda, noting gaps in the evidence base –compare findings across Europe, contextualising similarities and differences –produce a best practice guide for methodological issues and challenges –develop policy recommendations for awareness-raising and media literacy

5. UK Children Go Online UK 9-19 year olds who use the internet at least once a week (N=1511, 2004)  90% do schoolwork  94% search for information  72% send/receive email  70% play games  55% instant messaging  55% (aged 12+) visit civic/political site  46% download music  44% (12+) search careers/education  44% completed a quiz  40% (12+) search goods/shop online  40% visit sites for hobbies  34% made a website  26% (12+) read the news  28% visiting sports sites  25% (12+) seek personal advice  23% info on computers/internet  22% voted for something online  21% visit chat rooms  17% post pictures or stories  10% visit a porn site on purpose

6. Social networking – the latest trend  MySpace 5.2 million UK users, Bebo 2.7 million; internationally, 12-17 year olds make up 12% MySpace traffic, 14% Facebook …  USA 13-18 yrs: 75 ‘friends’ on average (SNS), 52 IM buddies, 38 mobile contacts  Pew/Internet 2007: 55% online teens have SNS profile, mixing genuine and false info; to stay in touch with people they know (91%) and make new friends (49%)  Latest fad or exciting potential worth capitalising on? Little UK research …

7. What do we want for children online?

8. Scoping what’s available … ContentsServices Public sectorPSB (TV/educational) contentChildren’s search engines Museums, NASA, etcYouth helplines/ advice Civic/participation sitesE-learning provisionetc. Private sectorGoogle EarthChildren’s portals WikipediaMultiplayer games TV/film/sport-related sitesSearch engines (Google)etc. And what about: Neopets, Limewire, MSN, Habbo Hotel, LiveJournal, MySpace, Deviant art, and the many gaming sites, fanzines and more?

9. A Children’s Internet Charter?  Children should have content of high quality made specifically for them, and which does not exploit them. In addition to entertaining, this should allow children to develop physically, mentally and socially to their fullest potential  Children should hear, see and express themselves, their culture, their languages and their life experiences, through online content and services which affirms their sense of self, community and place  Children's content should promote an awareness and appreciation of other cultures in parallel with the child's own cultural background  Children's content should be wide-ranging in genre and content, but should not include gratuitous scenes of violence and sex  Children's content should be readily available to children and distributed via widely accessible media or technologies  Sufficient funds must be made available to make these contents and services to the highest possible standards  Governments, production, distribution and funding organisations should recognise both the importance and vulnerability of indigenous children's content, and take steps to support and protect it.

10. Thank you For more information, contact Sonia Livingstone (s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk) or see www.children-go-online.net www.eukidsonline.net