YNOT — As we head towards the end of another calendar year, it’s traditional to look ahead to the future with at least some measure of unapologetic optimism. The pending New Year celebration provides an opportunity to spend at least some time trying to visualize the next year, because visualization is the first step in not only artistic pursuits, but also in business. First we visualize, then we work to make that vision a reality.It’s not hard to imagine what most companies will be thinking about as 2009 draws to a close. After what was hands down the most difficult year for business in the history of online adult entertainment, many companies will be thinking about fiscal stability in 2010, having spent much of 2009 cutting costs and generally coming to grips with the new economic reality of business on the internet. It’s asking a lot of companies to expect them to look beyond mere survival when so much went so badly so quickly, but when we’re all planning out how to survive and even (hopefully) start to grow again in 2010, it’s my belief that we shouldn’t forget some of the phantoms of past years that still haunt adult entertainment today, recession or no.

Symantec, makers of the Norton family of computer security products, recently released a report that shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have some amount of common sense, but it shouldn’t be ignored either. According to Symantec, in 2009 the terms “YouTube,” “Google” and “Facebook” ranked one, two and three in online searches made by kids under eighteen years old. For boys, the forth and fifth place terms were “sex” and “porn.” For girls, “Taylor Swift” got fourth place, but “sex” was right behind in the fifth spot.

Not too many years ago, the topic of how to keep kids from age-inappropriate content on the internet was one of those hot-button topics that caught everyone’s attention. Now though it seems like all sides have all but given up on the discussion, given in to the reality that the internet is simply too large and too complex to censor for any one age group; short of cutting off adults’ access to materials, there’s just no technology that can solve this problem for lazy parents. So we face a dilemma; given that it’s impossible to keep determined kids away from adult entertainment online, assuming they have both full internet access and a pulse, is there any constructive role that our industry can play in 2010, something we should think about when we’re visualizing our plans for the coming year?

I think there is in fact something constructive that we can do, and it’s the same common sense solution that I’ve been advocating for almost a decade. Those of us who are comfortable with technology tend to forget that many parents are in fact clueless on that same topic. Our industry is in a unique position to help educate parents about the options that are available to them, options that only work if they’re willing to take an active role in managing or monitoring the online experience of their children.

To have this discussion in any way other than an examination of active parental involvement is a mistake. Going back a couple of years, Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska held a congressional committee hearing on the very topic of kids and their access to age-inappropriate materials online. Somehow adult industry attorney Paul Cambria managed to get himself invited to speak, and he joined a panel that included representatives from mainstream companies like America Online.

At the time, I was furious with Mr. Cambria’s performance; I still consider it a colossal blunder because he failed to drive home the point that parents are essential to this discussion and can’t be given a free pass. While the mainstream companies testified that parents had to take responsibility for their children’s online behavior, Mr. Cambria instead chose to make veiled references to some technological solution that was supposedly under development, something he hinted the biggest names in adult entertainment were willing to get behind. It had always been my position that solving this problem with technology alone was impossible, and I found it alarming that Mr. Cambria seemed to be promising things that I didn’t believe he could deliver.

Years later Ted Stevens was chased from the Senate after a scandal broke out and he found himself in court defending against criminal charges. It’s a safe bet that he probably doesn’t care about any promises that were made at that mostly forgotten hearing. I’m not sure whether there really was some technological solution under development, as Mr. Cambria hinted, but its years later now and we still haven’t seen any signs of automated technology solving the content issue for concerned parents.

In the last couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to test my philosophies about parenting in the digital age. My own son turns ten next year and as I feared he finally got around to discovering the internet. Cartoon channels regularly serve up ads for websites promising free online games, and console video games are constantly looking for ways to enhance the play experience with online features and cooperative play. He has asked for a Nintendo DSi for Christmas this year, another device that uses the internet to add functionality by letting kids interact through their digital devices. Technology doesn’t frighten me though, and I’m pretty comfortable in the knowledge that I know a lot more about the internet and technology than does my none year-old. In other words, I’m smarter than he is, at least at this point, and I tend to prove it to him.

So how am I handling my own responsibility as a parent in a wired world? My unique vantage point as industry insider has given me a number of clues as to how I can manage my son’s online experience. I’ll share a few of my approaches here to managing his online experience, and then explain where I plan to go as he gets older and needs more online freedom for school, and for maintaining his social circles.

First, I’m proud to say, I never rushed him online. I never even introduced him to online technologies like email or the World Wide Web. I knew it was only a matter of time before word on the “playground” at school got to his ears about the possibilities available only on the internet. If his friends failed him, Cartoon Network sure wants him online so they can try to sell him things. His school too seems determined to turn every kid from second grade up into seasoned internet researchers. I knew that when he was ready to go online, he’d start to press me for exactly that privilege at home. This last year, I wasn’t disappointed.

This first stage of my son’s internet development will be heavily managed access. My concern isn’t just for adults only content, although right now I’d obviously rather he spend his thoughts on things like the latest card game fads, whether Mario is cooler than Sonic, or whether a ninja could beat up batman. I’m also concerned about him growing up with manners, and would rather he not spend all day online talking to other kids who are determined to show how cool they are by cranking the crass meter up to 10. Even more important than restricting adult content or access to punk culture is keeping my son away from online predators, and my son really is a very trusting and social kid. That means I need to manage what he does online, and to do that I take advantage of the tools that are provided to parents by companies like Apple and Microsoft.

We use iMacs here, and the parental controls built-in to Apple’s OSX are really quite excellent. If my son wants to visit a website like Club Penguin, he needs to tell me about the site; I have the opportunity to give it a look and, if I approve, add it to the green list. I can take the same approach with email; if he wants to communicate with someone online, like his grandmother, I can add that address to the list of authorized senders. It’s not 100% perfect – if someone knew to send him something spoofed as if it came from an approved email address, it would get through – but it’s extremely unlikely that anything sinister like that would happen with so many restrictions in place.

Key to making the “managed access” approach work though is learning to say no to some requests. My son’s school wanted to give kids access to unmonitored internet time, and sent home a form requesting parental consent; in other words, they didn’t plan to monitor him and anything that happened online was now my fault. I passed on signing that form. At least for now. He hasn’t asked for access to any troublesome websites yet, but if that day comes I’m prepared to say “not yet” as needed.

Sooner or later I’ll have to loosen the restrictions up somewhat. That will probably come around the time my son reaches high school, or just before, and then it will probably be appropriate to switch from a “managed” approach to a “monitored” approach… at least, for a few years. There are a number of great tools that let parents monitor where their children are visiting online, where they’re spending their time. That lets parents ease up on the hard restrictions, but still expect their kids to behave themselves when they’re on the internet. It gives kids the opportunity to show they’re trustworthy and can make good decisions, and it provides parents with a means to engage in dialogue or other actions if inappropriate websites are visited.

What we as an industry have that many parents do not is access to information about online technologies and its limitations. What we can do that would be constructive is share that knowledge with parents, help them learn how they can manage or monitor their children’s online experience. Some parents simply aren’t willing to do any work themselves, and prefer to point fingers when their children get into trouble – those parents we can’t help and never could. But we shouldn’t let the presence of the irresponsible stop us from providing some assistance for those parents who are trying to do the right thing. And shouldn’t parents hear from more than just the extreme religious fringes of America when it comes to restricting kids online?

In many ways, we’ve already won the blame battle that marked the first half of the decade; the devoutly religious seem to be the only group that’s still yelling at online adult companies for the content that they publish. We can take that victory and let parents worry about their own children, or we can spend at least a small amount of our energies engaging in constructive steps that make us more responsible citizens of cyberspace. With a horrible recession hammering our industry, we will be somewhat restrained in terms of the time and resources that are available to us, but surely we can manage some effort for 2010 that moves us in the right direction?

Keep this in mind when you’re thinking about how the next year will look for your company. Will you have any time you can donate? Can you help fund an organization that’s engaged in good work? Can you build parental information centers into your websites, and maybe offer those pages to other webmasters who haven’t had time to build something similar? It’s important that the industry resists the temptation to use the global recession as a convenient excuse to focus exclusively on the bottom line to the detriment of everything else that matters. We can’t substitute for parents, but we can make a positive difference for those willing to listen.