A working-class black woman lingered after I spoke about youth and digital media last year at Detroit's Wayne State University. She pushed her way through the crowd to ask a simple question: "Will my boy be all right?"

Her adolescent son spent a great deal of time online, talking with friends, building his home page, playing computer games, doing his homework. She had heard conflicting reports-teachers claiming Net access fostered educational growth, and media reformers warning about teens "running amok" on the Net. After the Columbine shootings, the moral panic about "growing up online" and the shooters' hate-spewing Web sites dominated media coverage. And now, like so many other American parents, she was worried that she was wrong to let her son explore cyberspace when she knew so little about computers herself.