Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet

Google sponsored a University of Maryland/Joan Ganz Cooney Center study on children and keyword searching. The research was aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information. When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools. Search engines are typically developed to be easy for everyone to use. Google, for example, uses the Arial typeface because it considers it more legible than other typefaces. But advocates for children and researchers say that more can be done technologically to make it easier for young people to retrieve information. What is at stake, they say, are the means to succeed in a new digital age.

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