Searching the Internet and the ability to competently use search engines are increasingly becoming an important part of children’s daily lives. Whether mobile or at home, children use search interfaces to explore personal interests, complete academic assignments, and have social interaction. However, engaging with search also means engaging with an ever-changing and evolving search landscape. There are continual software updates, multiple devices used to search (e.g., phones, tablets), an increasing use of social media, and constantly updated Internet content. For young searchers, this can require infinite adaptability or mean being hopelessly confused. This book offers a perspective centered on children’s search experiences as a whole instead of thinking of search as a process with separate and potentially problematic steps. Reading the prior literature with a child-centered view of search reveals that children have been remarkably consistent over time as searchers, displaying the same search strategies regardless of the landscape of search. However, no research has synthesized these consistent patterns in children’s search across the literature, and only recently have these patterns been uncovered as distinct search roles, or searcher types. Based on a four-year longitudinal study on children’s search experiences, this book weaves together the disparate evidence in the literature through the use of 9 search roles for children ages 7-15. The search role framework has a distinct advantage because it encourages adult stakeholders to design children’s search tools to support and educate children at their existing levels of search strength and deficit, rather than expecting children to adapt to a transient search landscape.

Searching the Internet and the ability to competently use search engines are increasingly becoming an important part of children’s daily lives. Whether mobile or at home, children use search interfaces to explore personal interests, complete academic assignments, and have social interaction. However, engaging with search also means engaging with an ever-changing and evolving search landscape. There are continual software updates, multiple devices used to search (e.g., phones, tablets), an increasing use of social media, and constantly updated Internet content. For young searchers, this can require infinite adaptability or mean being hopelessly confused. This book offers a perspective centered on children’s search experiences as a whole instead of thinking of search as a process with separate and potentially problematic steps. Reading the prior literature with a child-centered view of search reveals that children have been remarkably consistent over time as searchers, displaying the same search strategies regardless of the landscape of search. However, no research has synthesized these consistent patterns in children’s search across the literature, and only recently have these patterns been uncovered as distinct search roles, or searcher types. Based on a four-year longitudinal study on children’s search experiences, this book weaves together the disparate evidence in the literature through the use of 9 search roles for children ages 7-15. The search role framework has a distinct advantage because it encourages adult stakeholders to design children’s search tools to support and educate children at their existing levels of search strength and deficit, rather than expecting children to adapt to a transient search landscape.

To manage the problems related to the availability of Internet pornography in public libraries, Congress enacted the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). It made the use of filtering software by public libraries a condition of the permit of federal funding. It was done to prevent minors from accessing content that is harmful to them. However, the District Court held these requirements invalid because they induce public libraries to violate consumers' First Amendment rights.

"At its heart, .kids is like the children's section of the library, a place where parents can send their kids and know that they will be protected from the inappropriate material which is otherwise abundant through the entire World Wide Web. .kids is also a place where kids can play and learn online without having to worry about online predators who lurk in the dark shadows of chat rooms"--Page 1

Is the internet really transforming children and young people’s lives? Is the so-called ‘digital generation’ genuinely benefiting from exciting new opportunities? And, worryingly, facing new risks? This major new book by a leading researcher addresses these pressing questions. It deliberately avoids a techno-celebratory approach and, instead, interprets children’s everyday practices of internet use in relation to the complex and changing historical and cultural conditions of childhood in late modernity. Uniquely, Children and the Internet reveals the complex dynamic between online opportunities and online risks, exploring this in relation to much debated issues such as: Digital in/exclusion Learning and literacy Peer networking and privacy Civic participation Risk and harm Drawing on current theories of identity, development, education and participation, this book includes a refreshingly critical account of the challenging realities undermining the great expectations held out for the internet - from governments, teachers, parents and children themselves. It concludes with a forward-looking framework for policy and regulation designed to advance children’s rights to expression, connection and play online as well as offline.