Safe search for kids

The Washington Post says "the next target for fed-up parents" after parental-controls software is "Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo," but I think parents have been thinking about what young Web researchers can stumble on with search engines for a long time. Before social-networking and blogging came along, that was a big reason why there were (and are) parental controls – especially for kids and tweens. Certainly it's true that "the upside of the modern-day search engine - an index of Web sites on the Internet - is also the downside": the bad stuff that's accessible along with the good. The Post features NetTrekker, "a child-safe search engine featuring 180,000 sites that are regularly reviewed by 400 volunteer teachers" and being used in some 12,000 schools. A home version is now available. The Post doesn't mention Kidsnet parental controls (described in this newsletter a couple of years ago), also drawing on a database of only human-reviewed Web sites and with its own kid-friendly search engine, Hazoo.com. But there's also something to be said for a simple, one-task product like NetTrekker that can work with any filtering software (the company says). For other options, see "Kid-friendly search engines."

For kids who just want to get their homework done – find some sites that describe black-footed ferrets or list all the native American tribes in English a 4th-grader can understand - these safe search engines' biggest selling point is relevance. Even filtered Google turns up *way* too many results irrelevant to kids in K-6.