With the near nationwide deployment of broadband and millions of mobile devices infiltrating American homes, more and more children are going online everyday at home, in schools and wirelessly on the go.

The good news about our über-connected society is the infinite cultural, educational and entertainment opportunities that are now available for kids at their fingertips. However, the bad news is that the Internet is also full of content that isn’t kid-friendly.

In the good news category, most companies that help provide Americans their Internet experience have acknowledged that we must be proactive in our efforts to ensure that our children are safe and smart online.

To reiterate cable’s commitment to helping kids become savvier about being online, NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow today spoke to the Family Online Safety Institute’s (FOSI) annual conference here in Washington. [Read McSlarrow’s speech.] Teaching children how to use the Internet is about more than showing them how to navigate a computer or web browser; they must also be able to understand where they are going and where they shouldn’t go.

As McSlarrow said this morning, “Improving digital literacy is an important step toward helping all Americans become full-fledged digital citizens.”

But what can we do as a nation create responsible users of the Internet? NCTA has been encouraging Congress to spend $500 million of the $7 billion broadband stimulus funds to create and execute a national digital media literacy program. This program would help schools teach kids to be safe and smart in the digital world, and would help bridge the digital divide between schools that are able to offer digital literacy training and those that are not.

Also, Senator Robert Menendez (D–NJ) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D – FL) stepped up this summer and sponsored legislation to support online safety and digital literacy training programs.

With a push from the federal government through funding and/or legislation, online safety should be a real national priority. We think that tools could be created for use by teachers, students and parents. Funding could also support underserved school districts, as well as professional development for teachers.

We’ve been talking about this issue for a while, and we have a ways to go before every child is safe online. If you missed this from the summer, NCTA was part of a coalition of tech companies, child advocacy and parents’ groups, educators, and health researchers that put together a report on online safety best practices. Read our earlier blog post and the PointSmart.ClickSafe. report.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Online Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.