BOSTON (January 14, 2009)—A new report suggests the Internet is safer for minors than previously thought but age verification technology was not adequate to identify minors.

The report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a Harvard-led panel of researchers, focused on some of the efforts made to keep kids from having unwanted contact on the Internet.

The report downplays parental fears that online predators might target kids.

Instead, in many cases, the study found that young people who met up and engaged in sexual encounters with online acquaintances were fully aware they were meeting an adult.

The task force identified "bullying and harassment” by peers as a more common threat to minors, both online and offline.

The study also found that technology safeguards to verify age aren't as effective as some think.

Age verification technology can only do so much when it comes to keeping kids safe on the Internet.

The automated systems use records such as credit reports to identify adults and therefore help prevent minors from engaging in adult-only activities like purchasing tobacco and alcohol or accessing adult content.

Those systems cannot however reliably identify or verify the age of minors because public records on minors range from quite limited to nonexistent, the report says.

The report concludes that parents, teachers and other adults play a key role in protecting kids from online dangers.