Storynory.com

The internet is filling up with interesting sites for children – but the dangers of the web still lurk. Perhaps not too terrible – but still undesirable- the Family Section of Apple’s iTunes store contains some podcasts tagged “explicit.” It would be nice if Apple patrolled one part of iTunes and kept it safe for children. This is partly why Recap’s Podcasts for educators directory was set up – to provide a safe haven for those looking for podcasts.

More worryingly, community sites can be exploited by those who prey on children, as described in this article about MySpace. In this particular case, the child had to fib about her age to get onto MySpace. But I suspect that even adults dont’ think that fibbing about your age is much of a sin, so you can hardly expect kids not to do it.

Sites aimed at children are governed by very strict laws in the US covering privacy. They make life hard for those who run legitimate websites, by insisting that they must have verifiable consent from a parent or guardian before collecting any personal information about a child under 13. “Verifiable” is a big hurdle to jump. Perhaps this law is mainly aimed at protecting children from receiving marketing for toys or “spam” in their email boxes. Still, it creates problems for those with the best of intentions.

Storynory is owned by a British company and run from the UK, but we try to stick to the highest international standards and to do that, we avoid collecting information all together. This is why we don’t ask for an email addresses or second names on our comment forms, whoever is posting the comment. Of course, a lot of our feedback comes from adults, but it’s just too difficult for us to filter out who is who. Even when we are selling personalised stories (which are a great gift by the way) we stick with first names and ask the buyer not to disclose their relationship with the child to whom the story is being given. It could be a parent or an uncle or a family friend – we avoid knowing this information, so that the child is completely protected.

We would really love to be in closer contact with our audience and to build a community – perhaps a Storynory club – but the privacy issue makes that impossible for a small company to do that. It’s a huge advantage for the big players like Disney who can afford to run checks and verify parent’s consent. I’m afraid that regulation tends to work against the new-comer.