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Witness Testimony
Ms. Cynthia Johanson
The 'Dot Kids' Internet Domain: Protecting Children Online
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, on behalf of PBS and my colleagues from 349 local PBS stations around the country, I am grateful for the opportunity to come before you to discuss our shared goal - to offer a safe, quality, educational online haven to America's children. We commend Congress for recognizing the need to create what has been called the Internet equivalent of a wing of a library for kids to check out books. As this Committee seeks to evaluate the progress of the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002, we are glad to offer both our experience over the past 7 years providing our pbskids.org site, and our newer experience providing a special site under the dot-kids domain created by Congress. We hope to offer insights into lessons we have learned since launching our dot-kids site, and some suggestions on how together we can continue to make the new dot-kids domain a success. PBS and our member stations have at our core a mission to educate the public. In particular, we have become the standard bearer in educational children's television and off-air educational materials. PBS offers award-winning children's content that educates, enriches and entertains, employing the full spectrum of on- and off-air media to help build kids' knowledge and strengthen their critical thinking. In what looks like a race to the bottom by some, PBS remains a safe haven for children and adults from the explicit content and extreme commercialism that many observe are the hallmarks of today's media. We see our efforts as empowering children to become stronger members of their communities, nation and world, and we work closely with a growing number of parents, teachers and caregivers as our partners in this effort. Our History With the advent of the Internet, PBS recognized that there were exciting new opportunities to help educate and entertain children. We were at the forefront of bringing children safe and appropriate online content. The PBS KIDS Web site, pbskids.org, launched in 1997 as the online home of PBS KIDS TV favorites such as SESAME STREET, ARTHUR, MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, among many others. PBS KIDS programming meets high educational standards. PBS KIDS Web sites are developed by the same educational experts who produce PBS KIDS TV programming, and, therefore, we strive to ensure every activity on our Web sites meets the same educational goals of their companion PBS KIDS TV programs. From BETWEEN THE LIONS to CYBERCHASE to CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, we make sure that kids can learn and play with their favorite PBS KIDS content in a safe and inviting space. Parents and kids trust PBS KIDS. Since its debut, PBS KIDS online has grown to become one of the most visited and trusted spaces for children - and their parents -- on the Internet. pbskids.org currently averages more than 334 million pageviews and 16 million unique visits per month, and those numbers are growing at a remarkable pace. For many children, pbskids.org is their first experience on the Internet and we take that responsibility very seriously as we hope to instill a love of learning and understanding, at their fingertips through the personalized, on-demand experiences made possible by the Web. Teachers and librarians rely heavily on pbskids.org. pbskids.org is funded in part by the Department of Education through a Ready To Learn grant, and because we prominently feature comprehensive resources for parents and teachers on every PBS KIDS TV program Web site, it's no surprise that pbskids.org is a top destination for teachers and librarians across the country. And, we constantly assess what these audiences want and need by regularly reviewing site usage, meeting with focus groups and by gathering feedback through online surveys. pbskids.org has twice won the Wired Kids Safety "Best of the Web" award, was recently nominated for a Webby award as one of the best "youth" sites on the Web, and throughout the years our TV program-related Web sites have earned "Parents Choice" awards, Prix Jeunesse Awards, and the prestigious Japan Prize, which recognizes excellence in science and technology. What We've Learned Since our launch of pbskids.org in 1997, we've invested enormous resources in researching what works and what doesn't, who visits the site and why and what content is most useful and popular. We are pleased to be able to share the lessons we've learned with you today. First, we learned that kids use the Internet differently from adults. In short, they dive deeper and stay longer. On average, a Web user coming to pbskids.org views more than 80 pages of Web content in one visit. To provide some context, an average pbs.org Web site visit results in about 7 Web pages viewed. Similarly, a visitor to pbs.org spends about 4 minutes on the site, while those on pbskids.org average more than 36 minutes per sitting. We have learned that kids go very deep into our pbskids.org Web content in every sitting, that they like to share their ideas and stories through carefully screened submission "bulletin boards," and test their skills through multiple rounds of educational games. Both our statistics and our observations of kids on pbskids.org indicate that the most popular activities are educational games that allow "repeat play" and address multiple skill levels. We work hard to create activities that can engage kids of broad age and skill ranges and invite them to come back and play again. We recommend this technique with content on the dot-kids site as well. To keep kids interested, we regularly research and test our online content to make sure that our entire audience of kids between the ages of 2 and 12 can find content that is, at the same time, age-appropriate, educational and engaging. pbskids.org is built to be entirely kid-driven. I believe this is also your goal with the dot-kids domain. The second lesson we learned is that it is critical, and possible, to provide rich and safe content. Given that kids consume so much interactive media, so deeply, it's essential that we provide them with safe, rich, educational and fun content to explore -- and this is what pbskids.org is committed to offering. But, given the statistics about how much time kids are spending online in general and how much media they consume while online we, like you, are especially sensitive to the alarms this raises for parents, educators, content creators, and certainly many in this room. We, like you, often ask, how do we make sure that kids find content that is appropriate and safe for them? How do we protect them from violent, sexually explicit, dangerous or overly commercial online content? On pbskids.org, we think it's important to get kids started by teaching them essential Internet navigation skills and, most importantly, train them how to be critical media consumers. Activities on pbskids.org like "Get Your Web License" explain safe surfing skills -- like never giving out your full name on the Internet and what to do if you click on "scary" content. Once kids master the challenges presented in this online quiz, they can print out their own "Web License." The PBS KIDS site is also carefully constructed so that kids know where they are at all times. We keep the Web links traveling outside the PBS KIDS domain to a minimum and insulate each one with a "bridge page" alerting kids that they are leaving the PBS KIDS world, explaining where the link will go, and providing a simple "What to know before you go" Web literacy tip. We know from focus group testing that kids quickly learn how to navigate within pbskids.org and take these site boundaries very seriously. When kids encounter "bridge pages," they most often follow clearly marked links back into pbskids.org. In the kids.us domain you have addressed this issue by taking the linking possibility out of the equation, but we think that Web literacy among children continues to be an important educational tool and we would encourage you to consider a similar concept for the dot-kids domain. Finally, we have developed over the years a number of methods to attract parents, kids, teachers and others to our site. I know you are interested in letting kids and parents know about the safe haven you have created, so we'd like to share some insight into what has brought so many kids, parents and educators to pbskids.org. PBS and our local PBS stations believe it's important to not only make great content available, but also ensure that it actually reaches as many American children as possible. Universal coverage has always been at the heart of our TV mission. We employ a variety of outreach techniques on behalf of pbskids.org " We include numerous broadcast mentions of the Web site address at the end of our children's programs " We feature the address on outreach materials and print ads appearing in national publications read by parents, kids and educators. " We reach out to both school- and home-based educators to help bring them the message that pbskids.org offers broad educational Web content that can help their kids. " We work with the major search engines - especially those aimed at children, like Yahooligans -- to ensure that they are pointing to our content. " The impact and reach of our Web content is further extended through local PBS stations' outreach activities, many carried out in partnerships with other community institutions including, for instance, local Head Start programs, neighborhood libraries, and a variety of childcare institutions. We would be happy to work with you to help you develop techniques for reaching your audiences. Parents and educators are a huge resource for driving kids to your new domain. Promoting the site with search engines and with other sites and mediums that are reaching children is also important. We have learned, and we've described for you today, how much depth kids require when they go on line. They visit frequently and stay a long time. If we can be helpful to you in providing guidance for how to develop the dot-kids domain into a place that kids visit often and has the kind of content to engage them for the length of time they want to stay, we'd be happy to share additional information about what we've learned over the years. Our Presence on the Dot-Kids Domain Given our mission and experience in this area, we certainly applaud you, Mr. Chairman, and this Committee, for your continued strong interest in kids online safety. We feel it is important for PBS KIDS to participate in kids.us as an early content contributor, and we are proud to have launched pbskids.kids.us on this service. In preparation for launching our area of the dot-kids site, we worked in collaboration with every major PBS KIDS content producer -- including Sesame Workshop, Scholastic and WGBH -- to post 28 interactive games related to 15 different PBS KIDS series. We are featuring activities from these PBS KIDS programs on the dot-kids site: ARTHUR, BARNEY, BERENSTAIN BEARS, BETWEEN THE LIONS, CAILLOU, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, CYBERCHASE, DRAGON TALES, GEORGE SHRINKS, MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, READING RAINBOW, SAGWA THE CHINESE SIAMESE CAT, SESAME STREET, TELETUBBIES and ZOOM . These PBS activities on the dot-kids site span our wide audience range for kids between the ages of 2 and 12, and focus on skills and themes such as language acquisition, math, early literacy, problem solving and early science. We feel that this is a robust and representative range of PBS KIDS content, and now that the content is live, we will continue to monitor the traffic and usage of the kids.us domain space to determine how and when new content should be added. Our Suggestions for the Future PBS shares your goal of developing safe spaces on the Internet for children. To that end, we would like to respectfully offer some comments based on our experience as you move forward on implementation of the dot-kids site. First, keep in mind that for many of us who currently have deep, interactive sites, the dot-kids domain presented a unique challenge. With limited resources of our own, we needed to come up with a way to construct an entirely new site, maintain it, and keep it fresh and interesting. The reluctance of some to participate may be due in large part to this resourcing issue. I know we struggled with it at PBS. I thought you should be aware of this as a significant hurdle. Second, we at PBS, as you know, as part of our overall Public Broadcasting mandate, are non-commercial. You, Mr. Chairman, are very well aware of the opportunities and challenges this provides us as a broadcasting entity. But it is something in the kids area that we are very proud and protective of. Second only to educational content, it is the one thing that parents constantly tell us they most value about PBS. As a parent, you know how important it is to be able to sit down with your child and view television that is not only truly educational, but that won't bombard you with advertising for the most popular toy of the holiday season. Children are especially vulnerable to commercial messages - any parent certainly knows the power advertising has on kids! We at PBS would simply urge you to examine the potential for commercialism within the dot-kids domain. We understand that we are used to a different standard, but our standard is one that we believe strongly is good for kids - and it was also mandated by Congress. As stated in The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002, the goal of .kids.us was to create a "green-light area of the Internet, that will contain only content that is appropriate for children under the age of 13 and is analogous to the creation of a children's section within a library." We agree wholeheartedly with that description. The children's section of the library is a safe, welcoming place with content on a wide range of age-appropriate issues by a diverse set of authors. We would simply urge you to keep an eye on the commercial potential of the new domain and monitor it regularly to ensure that kids are not explicitly being sold to while they are in that space. Again, Mr. Chairman, we want to reiterate PBS' strong support for your and your colleagues' ongoing efforts to promote a safe online space for children. We look forward to working together on this effort with you in the future. If there is any specific way we can be helpful in the near future, I hope you will let us know. Thank you.
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