Web 2.0 and parents

Back at the turn of the year, "media convergence" was the buzzphrase. That has morphed into "Web 2.0," which actually says it much better. This new version of the Web we and our kids are experiencing actually involves a lot more than the mere converging of media – text, images, TV, film, and music - on the Web. It also involves more than the Web's arrival on all sorts of devices at home, anywhere (the Web we take along with us). Web 2.0 is all that plus multi-directional communication, publishing, and advertising. On this Web, kids are publishers, communicators, advertisers, connectors, filmmakers, pundits, etc., too. But this is so new that most of us haven't totally absorbed it yet. Even people in the tech industry and children's advocacy are scratching their heads and holding conferences to understand the implications, much less come up with child-protection solutions. The only part of this that has become a society-wide story is teen social-networking, because of a few widely reported, alarming cases of child exploitation (and because few households with teens don't have social-networkers in residence). Web 2.0 is still mostly a business story. Please click to my editorial this week to see why it affects everybody.