Digital Media

Kids search for the darndest things online.

In recent months, they've been looking for everything from Facebook and YouTube to Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, and someone named Fred. Oh, yes, they're also looking for pictures their parents probably don't want them to see.

That's the upshot of a new report from Symantec, based on use of its OnlineFamily.Norton service, which lets parents monitor and manage their kids' online activities, including Web searches. The service can track and report on a child's Internet whereabouts in real time, allowing parents to quickly learn of any content they feel their kids should not be accessing.

Here are the top 10 search terms among kids for the period from February through July:

1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. MySpace
6. Porn
7. Yahoo
8. Michael Jackson
9. Fred
10. eBay

Other terms that made the top 100 included Eminem (49), the Jonas Brothers (47), iTunes (89), Playboy (also at 89), boobs (28), Wikipedia (14), Webkinz (16), games (17), and swine flu (93). Fred? He's a fictional character whose YouTube channel has become a hit among kids, Symantec says.

In an interview with CNET News, Symantec Internet safety advocate Marian Merritt discussed OnlineFamily.Norton, the latest search results, and how parents can help their kids surf more safely.

In her role, Merritt spends a lot of time talking to kids and parents. She said she was less surprised by the results than some of her co-workers.

"I think seeing how dominant the terms 'sex' and 'porn' are, that they come up well within the top 10, doesn't surprise us," said Merritt. "You go down farther in the list, you see words of anatomy like 'boobs,' it almost makes you laugh because we remember what it was like to be a preteen or teen. Parents don't often have context around this sort of thing."

In search of YouTube
By speaking with children as part of her job, Merritt says she understands why kids are searching for the terms found in the list.

"Whenever I talk to children, all the way down to the kindergarten level, YouTube is one of the top three or four sites they go to," she explained. "And children even report they use YouTube as a research starting point. There's a topic they're interested in. They go to YouTube because they want to visually learn about something. The reason that's important for parents to understand is that there are challenges around making YouTube a safe environment for your children. It's not really designed for that."

Merritt feels this type of study can help parents to better grasp their own kids' Internet activity, "to understand what's normal, what's not normal, what's typical."

"If your children were searching for something like this Fred character (from YouTube), and you didn't know what it was, it might confuse you," she said. "But I think the study sets some expectations from parents that 'my child is looking to be entertained.' On the other hand, if you saw that your child is looking up porn, and you became very upset, this might show you that actually it's a very common thing for kids to be doing. And you should be reassured that there's nothing really wrong with your child. Rather, this should be an opportunity for a teachable moment."

OnlineFamily.Norton lets parents see what pages their kids are viewing and what links they're clicking after entering search terms, like the ones on the top 100 list. So parents can see what their children intended do to as well as where they ended up.

The service is geared toward kids from ages 8 to 13, which Merritt believes is a critical age range for children on the Internet. "A lot of parents think the most dangerous things their kids are going to encounter are when they're in high school, which is dead wrong," she noted. "If you can get your kids on a path of good Internet behavior when they're in elementary school before the critical middle school time, you'll have much greater success with your children and their expectations around their Internet lives."

A partnership
Merritt also sees the service as triggering more of a partnership between kids and parents. She says that parents can establish house rules over what sites their kids can or cannot access. "It's very open. Kids always know that the product is monitoring them. A little icon will pop up that says this breaks the house rules, identifies which rule, and it allows the child to send a message to the parent to explain, or the kid can back out of it, not realizing that this was a bad Web site."

The OnlineFamily.Norton Web site offers further tips for parents on how to use the service with their children.

To compile the list, Symantec tracked 3.5 million searches run by registered users of OnlineFamily.Norton from February 2009 (when the service was first released as a beta) through July 2009. Each term had to be submitted at least 50 times to make the list.

Why would anyone with eyes, fingers and a pulse bother with Lolcats when they can go to AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com?

Yes, cats do the cutest, silliest things. But nothing compared to some of the examples of extended human exceptionalism on this extraordinary site.

The creation of two Los Angeles writers, Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, AwkwardFamilyPhotos celebrates the sheer nonsense that is the family.

It also may provide new sources of business for those photographers who set up studios in malls and hang pictures in the window that look like the subjects were drugged for the sake of art.

At least it should, given that it only launched in April and is apparently getting 2 million hits a day.

This shot is not from the site. But I would dearly like this family to invite me to tea.

(Credit: CC Vagawi/Flickr)

My personal favorites include the Bon Family Blowout, a sweet-looking threesome whose hair was teased by some appalling bullies.

My feelings are also radically altered when I look at a photo called Sweater Weather. This features a family of 11, all wearing matching sweaters.

Why would anyone think of doing this? And, having thought of doing this, why would anyone actually go through with something that makes a large family look like Moldovan masons?

But the most bafflingly joyous of all the shots on the site is taken, it seems, by a professional photographer whose camera should be taken away. For some astounding reason, the four family members in the Group Hug shot are posing with their arms along each other, creating an effect not entirely dissimilar to that of a cult with seriously eccentric proclivities.

It would be lovely if Technically Incorrect readers might make their own contributions to AwkwardFamilyPhotos and mark themselves as being visitors here. That way, I might more readily appreciate some of the formative moments that made you committed absurdists.

There are literally dozens of categories in the annual Webby Awards--too many, if you ask some--covering pretty much every niche of digital media. This year's winners, announced Tuesday, are quite a lot to scroll through.

The list of top honors, however, is short.

This year, the Webby Awards' Person of the Year is former "Saturday Night Life" cast member Jimmy Fallon, whose new "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" has brought Twittering and gadget fandom to the network-TV crowd.

The film-specific Person of the Year award goes to "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who has partnered with Google on an animated Web series and whose creations consistently rank at the top of Hulu's most-watched clips.

The Artist of the Year accolade is for Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. A vocal critic of the mainstream music industry, Reznor has been skeptical of "innovative" digital distribution efforts and most recently lashed out at Apple on his blog for turning down a Nine Inch Nails iPhone app.

A new category, Breakout of the Year, joins the Webbys this year. It's been awarded to--surprise, surprise--Twitter.

The fact that the Webbys' top awards go to known entities isn't new. Its highest honors tend to go to mainstream celebrities who have built their fame offline and have then turned to the Web as a sort of experimental platform. Last year's Person of the Year awards, for example, went to comedian Stephen Colbert, director Michel Gondry, and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for his YouTube sensation "Yes We Can" in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

The Webbys ceremony is set for June 8 as part of Internet Week New York.

Remember when you were young and your family used to gather 'round the television eating dinner on TV trays, fixated by programs like M*A*S*H and All in the Family? Chit chat about what happened at school and work was relegated to commercial breaks. And then it was bedtime.

Well, it turns out the Internet isn't exactly following the model of the boob tube in co-opting family discourse, according to a new national survey of 2,252 adults from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"We were surprised to see that lots of families treat the Internet as a place for shared experiences," Tracy Kennedy, author of a new report about the survey called "Networked Families," said in a statement. "They don't just withdraw from the family to their own computer for private screen time. They pretty regularly say, 'Hey--look at this!' to others in the household."

More than 50 percent of Internet users who live with a spouse and at least one child go online with another person at least a few times a week, the survey found. Asked about the impact of new technologies, 47 percent said they have increased the quality of communication between family members, and the same percentage said there had been no difference.

One quarter said their family is closer today than when they were growing up; 11 percent said their family is not as close they were in the past; and 60 percent said new technologies have not made any difference in the closeness of their family members. Much of this has to do with the fact that cell phones have become vital communication tools for families.

And the notion of the anti-social computer geek doesn't necessarily apply to Internet users, who socialize as frequently as non-users, the survey found.

Meanwhile, the Internet continues to steal viewership from the TV. One quarter of adults say they now watch less TV as a result of the Internet. Roughly 9 in 10 Internet users say the time they spend online has no impact on the amount of time they spend with friends and family.

Families' "heavy home Internet use suggests that many households are hubs of personal communication networks, as people log on individually to e-mail, IM, post on social networking sites, and chat," the study concludes.

"They are both together with their families and connecting outward to friends and relatives elsewhere. They are neither isolated individuals nor Dick and Jane's traditional family. Rather, their households are active sites of the interplay of individual activity and family togetherness."

HH = household. Most adults consider their family today to be as close, or closer, than the family they grew up in as children thanks to the internet and cell phones.

(Credit: Pew Internet & American Life Project Networked Family Survey)