By Steve Marinucci
Published Dec. 5, 1995, San Jose (CA) Mercury News
FAMILY MATTERS.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME PAGE FOR DIVORCED DAD AND HIS CHILDREN
SCATTERED KIDS HAVE A PLACE ON INTERNET
TO SAY Larry Buchanan loves his kids is putting it mildly.
Buchanan, 35, a divorced father of five, has focused much of his devotion toward his children by designing a home page on the World Wide Web for them - and any other kids their age.
The Buchanan Family Web (http://www.buchanan.com), which is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a Web browser, is more than an on-line family photo album. There are photos and biographies of his five children, but young Web surfers are also treated to movie and music reviews written by children, and a page chock-full of links to other Web sites of particular interest to kids.
Buchanan, a product manager for the games and entertainment division of the Internet Shopping Network, has his Foster City apartment bedroom completely decorated in contemporary Simba - that's Disney's Lion King for the uninitiated - just to make his kids more comfortable when they visit. Unfortunately, says Buchanan, distance makes their visits rarer than he would like. Dennea, 10, and James, 8, live in Woodland (near Sacramento); Ashley, 9, and twins Bridget and Larry III, 4 1/2, live in Arizona.
When they do get together, the family spends much of its time fine-tuning and updating the Buchanan Family Web. Buchanan calls the site ''kids safe,'' which means Web surfers are very unlikely to stumble into the adults-only areas many parents fear.
Buchanan says that all the activities on the site and all the primary links on the site itself are suitable for children. Buchanan says he checks the links once a week to ensure that none contain something unsuitable.
''There are no links on my site that will take kids to a place they shouldn't be,'' Buchanan says. This policy recently forced him to mention but not link his pages to Riot in Your Mind, which in late November named his site a Hot Spot, because of that site's adult language. ''I would love to add a link to them, but that would break the rules of this page and provide a link to subject matter that may not be suitable for small children,'' he wrote on the Internet.
Monitoring the clicks
Unfortunately, the World Wide Web is in large part an uncontrollable environment. And not even Buchanan can ensure that a few clicks of a mouse won't lead to foul language or sexual images. In fact, just two clicks away from the Buchanan Family Web, a user can land on a search page that anyone with a fair knowledge of the Internet can use to locate just about anything on the Web, including adult-only material. (When informed of this, Buchanan immediately removed a link to the Internet Shopping Network from his Web page.)
Buchanan concedes that because of the ever-changing state of the Web, parents should always accompany their children as they travel through cyberspace. ''Don't let your kids surf alone,'' Buchanan says. ''You wouldn't let them out on a regular highway alone. The same goes for the information superhighway.''
Safety on the net
Buchanan was researching a book on child safety and the Internet when he realized that there were few ''safe places for my kids'' on the net. When the book project fell through, he went to work immediately on the Buchanan Family Web, which has been on-line since early September. The site has been featured in Newsweek as well as Japan's Internet Surfer magazine.
As Buchanan notes on the home page: ''This site was created so my kids could get involved with the Internet in a protected environment.'' These include biographical pages for each of the children, the Kids Kool Konnections Page, with links to pages of interest to kids and parents, and the Kids Review Page, with opinions on movies and music, mostly by the Buchanan children.
Clicking on oldest daughter Dennea's name on the home page brings you to her personal page. ''Hi, I'm Dennea, (pronounced 'Renee,' but with a 'D'), welcome to my WWW page! I am 10 years old, I enjoy swimming, and calligraphy. I started 5th grade this year and really like it. I am studying the clarinet in my music class, it's lots of fun!''
Farther down the screen are links to more family pictures and a place to send Dennea e-mail. (Buchanan screens all the children's e-mail before passing it on to them.) The other children's pages have similar links.
Dennea, who has been around computers since second grade, likes having her own Web page. Like the rest of the kids, she helps her father design it by picking out pictures and graphics to include on it.
Through her page, Dennea came in contact with her pen pal, 11-year-old Rachel, who lives near Chicago and has her own home page (http://www.mcs.net/kathyw/rachel.html). Dennea says she and Rachel both like the TV shows ''Full House'' and ''Clarissa Explains It All'' and singer Mariah Carey.
On his page, Dennea's brother, James, writes, ''I am 8 years old and I love the Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers.'' James says having his own Web page is ''very nice.'' He says he has received e-mail from another James Buchanan in Missouri. Larry Buchanan says the children have received e-mail from correspondents from all over the world.
The Kids Review Page includes comments on movies from, naturally, ''The Lion King'' (''Rating: 5 Toes Up. There hasn't been a movie like 'The Lion King' in a long time. We ALL love Simba and the rest of the gang and have lots of Lion King stuff around the house.'') to ''The Goofy Movie'' (''1 smelly little toe and we're not too sure where to point it. Halfway through the movie, with a fist full of popcorn in her mouth, I got this request from 4 1/2-year-old Bridget, 'Daddy can we go home now?' 'Nuff said.'').
The Review Page also features comments on music for kids, including this on ''Return to Pooh Corner'' by Kenny Loggins (''5 Toes Up. Daddy bought this one for us and we didn't know if we'd like it or not. It turned out to be an awesome collection of lullabies and kid songs that we really like.'')
Buchanan's own personal touch to the Web site is a tribute to the late Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. ''While I was never a 'Dead Head,' '' he writes, ''I do agree that the man was an icon to many.'' A page of pictures of the guitarist can be found at http://www.buchanan.com/jerry.htm.
Though he carefully monitors his children's activities on the Internet, he is convinced that on-line dangers have been overstated. ''The media has blown the hell out of it,'' Buchanan says.
''There are over 15,000 different newsgroups, 3 percent of which are sexually explicit. That's a very small number in comparison to what's really good out there. I think a lot of people are overly cautious because of things that they've heard. People need to relax a little bit and Internet surf with their children. From what I've seen, 97 percent of the Web is fun, safe surfing. There is only a small percentage of things to be cautious about.''
