YouTube tells parents that its site is not appropriate for children under 13, but few videos are age-restricted. Some objectionable videos are flagged by users as adults-only. But all that's required is to register and state that you're over 18. That's not encouraging when nearly half of boys and a third of girls ages 13-17 name YouTube as one of their top three favorite websites, and they can watch it anywhere on laptop computers and cellular phones with Web browsers. Computers are commonplace in public schools and libraries that may not have much adult supervision.

Besides, is YouTube seriously suggesting that porn is inappropriate for 13-year-old children but it's okey-dokey for them at age 14?

After the Parents Television Council complained last December, YouTube implemented some reforms. Take profanity. Without parental supervision, every imaginable obscenity, including graphic sexual language, is rampant on the site. The F-word alone appeared in the titles of some 169,000 individual videos. YouTube recently offered parents a tool for filtering out dirty words (and even hiding all comments on video clips), but that protection only comes when vigilant parents look for it.

Last year, the search an innocent child would make for Disney Channel pop stars like Hannah Montana drew not only profane comments but inappropriate advertisements for horror movies. A search for Hannah Montana today finds only advertisements for J.C. Penney and other Disney child stars, so that's an improvement.

But as the CMI study insists, YouTube must construct "a far more formidable barrier" than its easily entered 18-plus category to protect children from graphic sexual content that parents wouldn't want their children to view. Just as a parent wouldn't let their child wander through a seedy neighborhood of sex shops, it's now impossible for parents to avoid watching their children carefully negotiate the Internet. Isn't there anyone in the corporate power structure at YouTube who worries about what their own children can find on their creation?