Enhancing child safety and online technologies:

Final report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the multi-state working group on social networking of State Attorneys General of the United States on the role and the promise of technologies to reduce the risk to minors of harmful contact and content on the Internet.

December 31, 2008

"At the outset, the Task Force recognized that we could not determine how technologies can help promote online safety for minors without first establishing a clear understanding of the actual risks that minors face, based on an examination of the most rigorously conducted research.
The Task Force asked a Research Advisory Board comprising leading researchers in the field to conduct a comprehensive review of relevant work in the United States to date. The Literature Review shows that the risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline, and that as they get older, minors themselves contribute to some of the problems."

http://www.wiredsafety.org/resources/pdf/2009_isttf_final_report.pdf