FCC chairman outlines broadband plan for kids

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out the "broadband plan for children and families" Friday at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

FCC chairman gets help from Elmo in promoting broadband plan for kids.

(Credit: FCC video of speech via YouTube)

Referring to children as "our most precious national resource," Genachowski said "we must do everything we can to educate and prepare them to thrive in the 21st century and keep them safe." New technologies, he said, "can expose our children to new dangers, and can potentially outpace the ability of parents to guide their children."

Genachowski had a mostly positive view of technology for kids, especially as it applies to learning. "The benefits of digital learning aren't just theoretical. They're real. One study found that low-income children who use the Internet more at home had higher GPAs and standardized test scores than children who use it less," he said. He added that we need to set a "clear and non-negotiable goal: every child should be connected to broadband."

Outline of tech dangers
He also talked about some of the dangers, but he didn't harp on the more typical fears of predators and porn that have so often been repeated by government officials for years.

Instead, he raised concerns about the more common risk of online harassment; pointing out that "43 percent of kids have been cyberbullied, but only 10 percent tell someone about it."

He also talked about harmful Web sites, referencing those that encourage self-destructive behavior, pointing out that "35 percent of eating disorder patients visit pro-anorexia Web sites."

He talked about the issue of distracted driving : "A quarter of U.S. teens with cell phones say they have texted while driving. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Board, 80 percent of fatal teen accidents are caused by distracted driving." Finally, he cautioned about inappropriate advertising such as children's exposure to Viagra ads and scary movie trailers and the relative lack of advertising for "a healthy food product during children's programming."

He reminded the audience about the "recent Kaiser study that found that children consume recreational media 7 1/2 hours a day, and are consuming nearly 11 hours' worth of content."

Digital literacy and digital citizenship
In addition to focusing on access and safety, Genachowski also talked about digital literacy and digital citizenship which, increasingly, are being seen as critical components to keeping kids safe and productive online.

Digital literacy, he said, isn't just about learning to use technology but "teaching kids to think analytically, critically and creatively, so that they can find relevant information, assess the accuracy and reliability of that information, distinguish fact from opinion, and create and share new content." He also said we "have to teach our children to become media literate so that they can evaluate media content and recognize advertising for what it is."

Finally, he stressed digital citizenship, which he described as "the values, ethics, and social norms that allow virtual communities, including social networks, to function smoothly. It means having norms of behavior that facilitate constructive interaction and promote trust." He pointed out the "unique challenges" of digital communities: "People can remain anonymous or change identities, allowing them to act without regard to consequences." But he questioned "how do we create a framework of online norms and values" and "who determines what these values and norms should be?"

Elements of broadband plan
Key elements of the proposed broadband plan include "modernizing the Universal Service Fund" to include broadband "instead of plain old telephone service." He also called for the establishment of a National Digital Literacy Program that would encompass:

•An online digital literacy portal to allow any child, parent, or teacher with a broadband connection to take courses on digital literacy.

•A digital literacy corps to mobilize thousands of technically-trained youths and adults to train non-adopters, including families that are hard to reach because of cultural and language barriers.

•Better broadband capacity for libraries and community centers so that they can continue to help families become digitally literate.

The FCC chairman called upon parents to take responsibility for their kids' use of digital media. This includes communicating positive messages about technology to their children, setting digital media rules, engaging with kids and using technology together, "teaching personal responsibility and reinforcing basic social norms to encourage responsible online behavior."

More resources
For more on this issues, see my nonprofit, ConnectSafely.org, and its Online Safety 3.0 initiative.

You can also read "FCC's positive new plan for digital literacy & Net safety" from my ConnectSafely co-director, Anne Collier.

Click here for a PDF of Genachowski's speech or else watch it on YouTube as follows:

[KarlQuick]

Related article in NYT talks about new FCC chairman interested in 10 year plan to replace broadcast and cable networks with universal broadband Internet. The article says that Obama's FCC clearly is placing expansion of Broadband over policing porn.

Is this "Kids Net" just a propaganda push to ease the sale of expanded broadband or a serious attempt to protect our kids. I worry that "public broadband" will become as safe for our kids as "public schools" ...i.e. little guidance, little parental oversight/control, and little or no options for those who would want better.

I have doubts about the ability of Washington to manage all that they lust to control.

Come on people! Can we have any imagination or organization that does not start with a politician in Washington in control? What ever happened to the IEEE proposing and managing industry standards with the cooperation and support of industry leaders?

When government regulators are providing the dynamic leadership, I wonder what happened to our famous world-wide leadership in the technology industry!!!

[jaguar717]

It seems only appropriate that the ones responsible for an "education" system in the gutter, and who want to extend their taxes, fees, and controls over the internet, now want to combine the two into one super power grab.

Half the Chicago thugs are in DC, and want to push the same failures nationwide that ran Crook County into the ground.

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, has on his resume the Chicago school system, which has some of the highest spending in the country, yet FIFTY PERCENT graduation rates. They're also famous for breeding the thugs that help Chicago break 500 murders a year. Look up Derrion Albert, the kid beaten to death with chunks of railroad ties after school, while his fellow students used their phones to record it rather than call for help.

These are the guys telling us children are such a great "resource" that they can only be entrusted to the thing that destroys everything it gets involved in. "Education funding" becomes a job-mill for teachers' unions with endless level of administration overhead and exorbitant pensions, while removing any possibility of punishment for continual failure.

Expect the same for "broadband funding" (part handouts-for-votes program, part grab-control-of-something-else).

[monkeyfun14]

@jaguar

Every major city has huge crime rates.

Indianapolis
Philadelphia
Detroit
Los Angeles
etc etc

Lets not sit here and call out Chicago.

Conservatives are ones to talk you guys can't go a day without spreading propaganda bs and slander to try and make people try and follow the cult.

[jaguar717]

I don't remember calling myself a conservative--if anything I lean Libertarian, but really I just back anything that returns decisions to the individual and halts the power grabs of politicians. Yes any city has crime, but there's a night and day difference between your run of the mill city and the urban slums of Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, DC, Newark, New Orleans, etc.

In the places that have been dominated by One Party Rule by control freak urban "planners" for decades, it's remarkable how similar the story is: everything is illegal, regulated to death, or taxed to oblivion, government unions and their pensions bankrupt everyone, the middle class is destroyed, the schools have higher per-student budgets than anywhere else yet 50% graduation rates (25% in Detroit), murder/rape/robbery rates are sky-high (and that's among the students!), the criminals are empowered, vote-buying handouts are endless, and the attitudes of dependency and Entitlement are firmly entrenched.

Girls get knocked up by criminals at age 14, and raise their kids to be criminals. They're hardened thugs by age 15, but the bad apples can't be removed from the schools they ruin. Instead, the same enlightened planners implement "social promotion" whereby Fs are changed to Cs, and kids who can't read are given diplomas. The head of the Detroit school system is borderline illiterate--he "graduated" high school with a 0.98, then spent 15 years at city college without graduating, suing repeatedly over a requirement to pass a basic English proficiency test. He's pushing to reinstate "social promotion" because not giving a kid a diploma serves to "call attention to" his illiteracy (!)

We've seen these places run into the ground over the past 40 years, and I don't see how insisting on spreading more of the same to the rest of the country is going to yield anything but more destruction. It is guaranteed to get a larger segment of the population feeding at the public trough, which is the only reason the Anointed Ones push it so hard.

[marvin25]

We must remember that the fact of the matter that broadband is going in very fast in rural America and these things are taking place without the Government help which will surprise you. This is being done thru one ISP thru the electric coops right now. You may be surprised how much broadband is going into rural America and therefore the build that is taking place right now. This is a slow process as there are so many to be connected and we don't have the data centers to handle the load. This is why their is massive build up data centers because of all the hook ups. They are basically giving a better Internet then the cities and suburbs have right now. The bottom line is they are worried about area that are in the wrong direction. They should look at the cities and suburbs as the rural America is getting a first rate system period. Furthermore they are not doing with Government help period. Second the area that get don't have to beg for service and if they need additional service they will get it. This is why they will back this ISP as what it said it would do it does with no problem. They thought it was the right thing to wire rural America for broadband and communication. They didn't ask for Government help and did it on their own. They didn't get a cast off type of system but a first rate one. Rural America was use to people saying they do something and stop. In this case they didn't stop and are still wiring rural America as fast as possible. The bottom line is that they kept their word and they got what they want since the 30's a first rate communication system at a reasonable cost which they now have. This is fixed wireless Internet. Second the system is up most of the time except for maintenance every once in a while.