Public humiliation on the social Web

Judging from emails to and posts in the ConnectSafely.org forum, not to mention news about social networking, online public humiliation - harassment, cyberbullying, imposter profiles, etc. is a growing problem for adults as well as tweens and teens (see this week's "Window on cyberbullying").

Social stigma has its place in society, but for its role to remain appropriate and useful, we - society wherever people use the social Web - need to keep the Web version from getting completely out of control. Newsweek gives some examples of these online forms of harassment. What can be done? Well, first, it's not useful to place all the blame on social sites. Newsweek illustrates right at the top how public humiliation of the "starwars kid" long predated social networking. Even the Internet can't be blamed - most Americans have heard of NBC's "To Catch a Predator" on the old medium of TV. Certainly, social-networking sites need to be responsible and responsive to abuse reports, but a pile-on of public blame (mostly in the news media) in a single place only delays problem-solving.

Public shaming is an element of human nature, not technology, and it's going to take a conscious effort on everybody's part - youth, parents, educators, counselors and responsible Internet companies - to help keep this darkside of human nature under control on the Net as well as in the rest of human life.

You may've noticed lawmakers weren't on that list in the last paragraph. Certainly as a part of society they can help too, but laws aren't very effective regulators of noncriminal human behavior, and - as Newsweek reports - "laws on free speech and defamation vary widely between countries [social sites in many cases cover multiple countries]. In the United States, proving libel requires the victim to show that his or her persecutor intended malice, while the British system puts the burden on the defense to show that a statement is not libelous (making it much easier to prosecute)." As well, in US courts so far, the 1996 Communications Decency Act has protected social sites and other Internet services from liability for the speech and behavior of their users.

Just for starters, we all need to be thinking about and discussing - in homes, classrooms, the media - the impact of exploiting the non-face-to-face disinhibition of Internet communication with cruel or destructive communication - how it affects the perpetrator as well as the victim and society, and how good citizenship is just as important online as off. Recent milestone research at the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that aggressive behavior can put the aggressor himself at greater risk (see this commentary at ConnectSafely.org). There never was an easy way to stop this base human tendency to seek empowerment through the humiliation of others, and online it's even harder to take harmful behavior back. Let's help our children think about how harmful it is to one's own integrity, as well as to others', to cause and perpetuate their humiliation online.

Avatar chat's downside

For some teens it's harmless fun, for others IMVU.com's chat-by-avatar (an animated character that represents you online) can be pretty explicit. How good or bad the experience is depends on the user, and there are some sexually exploratory teens in the site mixing it up with adult users (there has been a lot of discussion about this in our ConnectSafely.org forum). Here's the first news story I've seen about its darkside for teens, a pretty grainy, local story at TheDay.com in Connecticut in which a police investigator logged into a teen user's account and found links to avatars engaged simulating sex. Here's a review of IMVU at the IMSafer blog, which also mentions the risqué clothing on many female avatars, most of which seem to have body shapes that even Barbie would fantasize about. [IMVU is the second site reviewed in the IMSafer post; the first is another site with a definite downside for teens: Webcam site Stickam.com.]

National filtering for Oz may happen

It may still happen after all, I mean. After declaring the Howard government's effort to have the Internet filtered for households nationwide a failure, Australia's new Rudd government will persevere with the program. It's now in a test phase, Australian IT reports. "ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households. To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs." The filtering was the centerpiece of the Howard government's $189 million NetAlert program launched last August," the Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier.

Child ID theft

If your kids start getting credit card offers in the mail, it's no joke. It's quite possible their identities have been stolen. A way to find out is to check with the Social Security Administration, to see if they have earnings reports, SCnow.com in South Carolina reports. Just how can this happen? It's actually not usually an online problem. "Identity thieves can steal a child’s information in a number of ways," according to SCnow.com. "Many times a parent will use his or her child’s identity because of their own bad credit. But strangers can also get the information fairly easily by sifting through trash, stealing mail, or taking it from a form that’s not properly protected." A whole group of kids became victims after their pediatrician's office left a patient check-in book with names and social security numbers out on the medical office counter. Check out the SCnow article to see what the Federal Trade Commission says to do if a toddler you know has an earnings report - or go to OnGuardOnline.com's page on ID theft or the FTC's index to all its resources on the subject.

Boys & girls on Web 2.0

A thoughtful New York Times piece looks at the social Web's young innovators and reports that "the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls," referring to the Pew/Internet findings that they're the biggest creators of Web graphics, blogs, photos, profile pages, and sites (35% of girls 12-17 have blogs vs. 20% of boys; 32% of girls have Web pages vs. 22% of boys; and 70% of girls 15-17 have social-site profiles vs. 57% of boys 15-17). It's funny that the Times and (everybody else, seemingly) goes on to cite with surprise statistics about the *dearth* of girls in computer science programs - as if all this creativity on their part is somehow about computers and technology! "It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion." Well, of course. Harvard Law School's Berkman Center seems to understand that creativity on the Net is no more about technology than it is offline: "The result of [its] focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality." As for boys, here's an interesting observation: "THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said." Remember, that's a quote.

Habbo Hotel invader

This alert for Habbo Hotel's young users is actually a heads-up for everyone on the social Web. Users need to be alert about the "tools" they download to enhance their pages. Bloggernews.net mentions an alert from WebSense computer security firm specifically about "Trojan" keylogger software buried in one of those tools for Habbo users and links to a screenshot of the message. The keylogger software gathers Habbo account users' log-in info in order break in and steal the "Coins" stored in those accounts. Habbo Coins are worth real money (see this page at Habbo.com).

Online ed for little tykes

PBSKids.com has always meant ad-free entertainment for the littlest surfers. Now the US's Public Broadcasting Service has a new educational service for children 3-6: PBS Kids Play "is a subscription-based service that lets children play animated games with characters like Curious George and learn basic skills in reading, listening comprehension, and problem solving," CNET reports. CNET adds that parents have their own area of the service where they can see how their kids are progressing in terms of national educational standards. See also USATODAY's coverage.

Cellphone planet

*Literally* cellphone planet: "The human race is crossing a line. There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth. From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years," the Washington Post reports. "This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history," and the projection is 4 billion cellphones by 2010, moving on to 5 billion afte just a few years beyond that. Why? It's portable sociability - even more portable than IM-ing and social networking, and look how they've taken off! The Post cites the view of Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, that sociability is "the essence of the human species."

Cellphone planet!

Literally cellphone planet: "The human race is crossing a line. There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth. From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years," the Washington Post reports. "This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history," and the projection is 4 billion cellphones by 2010, moving on to 5 billion afte just a few years beyond that. Why? It's very flexible portable sociability (texting, talking, social networking) - even more portable than IM-ing and Web-based social networking, and look how those two technologies have taken off! The Post cites the view of Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, that sociability is "the essence of the human species."

Window on cyberbullying

For some valuable high school students' views on cyberbullying, see the Paly Voice, the students online newspaper of Palo Alto High School. For example, it tells of how "many students who use Facebook to bully each other do not leave negative comments directly on each other's profiles because their identities would be made public." Instead they leave them in a widget-enabled spot called "Honesty Box," where "students are not afraid to go all out, holding nothing back." Facebook reportedly maintains a neutral position on these little applications that third parties offer to its users, and some are pure entertainment, but others seem to lend themselves more to negative behavior than positive. "In addition to the Honesty Box, other applications such as 'Compare People' allow them to bully their peers." And they do, the Paly Voice says: "In Compare People, photos of two random students are presented with a question and a third peer votes on which friend fits the question more. Anyone who has the application can vote their peers superlatives like 'Most popular' and 'Hottest'."

Twist: Porn provider calls for child protection

The "world's biggest adult film studio" is calling on some of the Web's biggest sites to do more to protect children from adult content. Vivid Entertainment co-founder Steven Hirsch said he was planning to "make his case publicly" at Yale's School of Management during the university's "Sex Week," Agence France Presse reports. He told AFP he planned to make his case publicly during a lecture at Yale's School of Management on February 16, during the Ivy League university's "Sex Week."

There's no way of telling how much of Mr. Hirsch's announcement is marketing (many adult content companies want to send the message that they're protecting kids and so legitimate because not involved in the distribution of illegal child pornography). With his announcement, he is joining a high-profile call by US state attorneys general for online age verification, the technology for which certainly exists but not answers to substantive questions about how to protect children's privacy if it were to be put in place in US-based Web sites (see "Social networking age verification revisited" and "UK data security breach & kids"). Of course, any US requirement for age verification would not affect sites based in other countries, raising concerns that such a requirement would establish a false sense of security among parents and send workaround-seeking youth to offshore sites.

Hirsch directed his pre-announcement announcement at Google and Yahoo, both of which detailed for AFP the protections they do have in place: filtered search, a response system for user complaints about adult content, support for online-safety education, and participation in an Age Authentication Task Force being formed by MySpace and 49 state attorneys general (see this about MySpace's agreement with the attorneys general last month).

Ireland's social-Web guide for parents

Ireland's Ministry of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has just published a parents' guide to social networking, technology news site ENN reports. "The guide explains what social networking Web sites are and how they operate, all in a user-friendly format." The beauty of this is how available the booklet will be and that it's free. The government will distribute it through libraries, community information centres, credit unions, and Web sites, and mobile-phone companies will do so through their retail outlets. Please see the article for links. And - forgive the shameless self-promotion - my co-author and I published such a Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking in the US and UK a couple of years ago (see MySpaceUnraveled.com) with Peachpit Press and Pearson Education.

Social networking ever more international

Its appeal is both local and international. USATODAY offers a snapshot of how social networking is doing around the world, and even though US-based services have been expanding internationally for some time, most are doing so in a "local" (or national and regional way) with a lot of local competition (such as Mixi.jp in Japan, Naseeb in Pakistan, StudiVZ in Germany, and SkyRock.com in France). "This year, MySpace is opening operations in Russia, Turkey, Poland and Portugal, among others" and is in 9 of the "top 10 Internet markets," USATODAY reports. Though Facebook says it's the exception in not launching separate sites for individual countries, look at its growth outside the US: "In September 2006, 7% of Facebook's 10 million active users were outside the USA; today, 60% of its 63 million active users are." There are good business reasons for this growth: "About 80% of the world's estimated 1.2 billion Internet users are outside the USA," USATODAY adds, and " half the $40 billion online advertising market is." The numbers are pretty amazing. According to comScore MediaMetrix figures USATODAY cites, this past November, there were 173.5 million social networkers in the Asia-Pacific region, the No. 1 in this category of Web use; that's a 50% increase over the figure for November 2006. But look at the increase for the Middle East/Africa, the 5th-biggest social-networking region in the article's chart: 23.8 social-networking users and a 69% increase over a year ago.

Bulgaria discusses youth online safety

Bulgaria's public discussion about children's online safety just got a boost from a national roundtable on the subject, SofiaEcho.com reports. The roundtable was held by Microsoft Bulgaria, Bulgarian child portal Az-deteto.com and the Blagodeyatel Foundation. Presented at it was a survey of Sofia children 6-14, which found that all of them use the Net. Most of their parents "say they control their children" online, half say they have concerns about their child using the Internet, and more than 90% say they don't have any parental-control software installed on the computers in their homes. "According to parents, the biggest threats to children online [are] malevolent strangers, Web sites with inappropriate content, games featuring violence, among others." The survey also found that 9-to-15-year-old Bulgarian children are the most active online. Eighty-one percent of Bulgarian kids use the Net from their homes and 38% use the Net every day.

'Predator' myths exposed: Study

Despite all that parents hear, "sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase [children's] risk of being victimized by online predators," according to a new analysis by the Crimes Against Children Research Center. US society has been overreacting, the CACRC's article in American Psychologist, "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims," indicates. Another myth, the Seattle Times reports, is that "Internet predators are driving up child sex crime rates," when in fact sexual assaults against teens "fell 52% from 1993 to 2005" (US Justice Dept. figures). A third myth is that online predators "represent a new dimension of child sexual abuse," when in fact most Net-related crimes against minors "are essentially statutory rape: nonforcible sex crimes against minors too young to consent to sexual relationships with adults." Another finding by the Center at the University of New Hampshire was that "most [teen] victims meet online offenders face to face and go to those meetings expecting to engage in sex" - they were generally not deceived by the offenders about the offenders' age or intentions (only 5% of offenders posed as other teens). One more myth: that online predators "go after any child." In fact the young people at greatest risk are "adolescent girls or adolescent boys of uncertain sexual orientation.... Youths with histories of sexual abuse, sexual-orientation concerns and patterns of off- and online risk-taking are especially at risk." See also "Profile of a teen online victim," "Online victimization: Facts emerging," and Reuters's coverage of this study. Here's the article in the February-March 2008 issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

Participatory justice

NPR aired a story about a shop owner whose security cam recorded a thief scooping up and making off with a couple of watches. "After filing a police report, [the retailer] handed out fliers with the suspects' pictures and posted the surveillance tape on YouTube." Whether the motive is public humiliation or catching the thief, the Internet is increasingly being used to "right" wrongs. To law enforcement, it's a little scary because when people or organizations like Perverted Justice (the group used by NBC Dateline for its "To Catch a Predator" series) take matters into their own hands online or offline, they can make it even harder to bring the perpetrator to justice. People not trained in gathering the kind of evidence that holds up in court can botch the legal process and make things much easier for the people breaking the law. Fortunately, the retailer NPR led its story with filed a police report and offered a reward with the YouTube video only for tips that he could hand over to the police. "Police caught the thief late last month after the watches were spotted in a pawn shop down the street," NPR reports.

Facebook & user privacy

Ya gotta hand it to Facebook for responsiveness to public concerns (and news media reports on said). No way to be sure we have a perfect cause-and-effect situation here, but one week in January we hear from CNET that it's really hard to delete a profile from Facebook and the UK government is concerned, sharing that concern with the BBC and The Telegraph. Then the New York Times chimes in on the subject a couple of weeks later, following that report two days later with "Quitting Facebook Gets Easier." "The updated Facebook help page now includes the question “How do I delete my account?” With this last piece, the Times has made a man named Nipon Das - who tried to delete his Facebook account for two months and likened the experience to "Hotel California," our of where, the Eagles song goes, you can check out any time but can never leave - "a mascot for disgruntled Facebook users," the Times says.

Stealing personality?!

First there were identity theft and cut 'n' plagiarism. Now there's cut 'n' paste personality theft, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's more sad than threatening. "These identity thieves don't want your money. They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music." The Journal says people are not just stealing others' jokes, but their favorites films, books, "life philosophies, even signature poems." It brings new meaning to the phrase, "Get a life." In a way, it's also a sign that social networking is demanding something pretty cool; to have an interesting profiled, it helps to be well-read, have some musical interests of a certain depth, have something to put out there for friends to see. But back to the downside: Stealing these things from others it's similar to the laziness of plagiarism and it's yet another indicator of the crying need for teaching ethics - not just cyberethics, certainly, because, at least to young people, this is about identity exploration, socializing, basically just life.

Right age for cellphones?

The age group more and more parents are asking about is 8-to-12-year-olds, "the fastest-growing segment of the US cellphone market," the Houston Chronicle reports (already, 72% of 13-to-17-year-olds have mobile phones). The Chronicle cites experts as saying that, generally children around 10 or 11 can handle responsible use of a cellphone. But it really does depend on the child. Some of the signs of responsibility the Chronicle suggests are whether a child can remember to: charge the phone, turn it on before going out without prompting, and follow both family and school rules associated with cellphone use. Downsides to consider are: the bills kids can "rack up ... through texting and downloading songs" (remember to either to use your cellphone company's flat-rate, unlimited texting add-on or have it turn off texting altogether); unwanted calls and messages from peers or adults you don't know ("but kids shouldn't automatically ignore calls from numbers they don't know because it could be a parent themselves that's stuck and calling from another phone"); and "phones may give children privacy that parents don't necessarily want them to have." Very helpful things to consider. [NetImperative.com recently published a survey on how mobile social networking works, but the site has been having some server issues, apparently, so this link may not work.]

Phone-based 'icebreaker'

A new "real-space social networking" product for iPhones, iPod Touch devices, and laptops called iFob is a sign of the way social networking is going. It's marketed as being "simple, fun, and gamelike," and it probably is in the right hands. "Instead of logging onto a social networking site and searching through lists of far away strangers who may be living in virtual fantasy lands, iFob finds other people who are in the exact same location, at the exact same time, as each other," WirelessDesignAsia.com reports. Users can chat with each other in that location or just send one-liners like "here to meet someone." "Unlike social networking sites such as Facebook or My Space, iFob only displays lists of iFob users who are actually in the same hotspots at the same time, meaning that iFob users who seem interesting will be close enough to look up and exchange smiles." iFob is designed to become an icebreaker to real conversations. There are some similarities between this and California-based loopt's mobile social networking, but this report didn't go into whether iFob has a similar level of safety measures to loopt's.

'Mom-tested' sites for tweens

It's hard to find out much about MomLogic on the Web (couldn't easily find an About Us page), but the site put its stamp of approval on five sites for preteens: Stardoll (digital paper dolls + social networking), the Whyville virtual world, Imbee blogging, Allykatzz social networking for girls 10-15, and Yamod (a kind of YouTube for kids 14 and under). BTW, Imbee is fixing a problem the Federal Trade Commission had with the site. It has settled with the FTC, which had sued Imbee for children's privacy violations. Wired reports that Imbee asked kids to "register up front with their full name, date of birth and email address. Only after the child provided the information did Imbee send an activation email to the parents. And if the parents didn't activate, Imbee held on to the tot's data anyway."

Ukrainian parental controls got top spot

To mark the fifth-annual Safer Internet Day today, the European Union unveiled a three-year study it sponsored of parental controls software and services. In the study, the big-name brands in the US "were all beaten to the top spot by a small partnership that employs no more than 50 people, mostly designers and developers in Ukraine," the BBC reports. The partners who created Magic Desktop, a "walled garden" approach to online child protection, are a couple of fathers who developed it for their own kids. It's basically useful for children 10 and under because it's based on a "white list" of approved children's sites. The rest of the top 10 products are listed in a sidebar to the BBC piece. Here's the official Safer Internet Day site and more from the BBC on Safer Internet Day, in which 50 countries were expected participate this year. For its part, Ireland launched a national online-safety-education program for teachers, parents, and children, the Irish Times reports.

Self-produced child porn: Good discussion

It's good to get the thinking of three legal scholars on this growing problem (I first picked up on it way back in 2004). They spoke at a University of Virginia Law School event entitled “Self-Produced Child Pornography: The Appropriate Societal Response to Juvenile Self-Sexual Exploitation,” Virginia Law Weekly reports. The professors talked about this phenomenon of teens voluntarily distributing pornographic pictures they have produced themselves. Prof. Mary Leary of Catholic University asked if this is a social or legal problem, or both. She reportedly said "it is the duty and responsibility of the government to intervene in the continued sexual objectification and eroticization of children, even if self-produced, in the rehabilitative settings of the juvenile justice system." Prof. Stephen Smith of UVA, said the ultimate goal is protecting children. "The role for criminal law should not include arresting and prosecuting these minors, but should be limited to rehabilitation.... A larger question posed by Smith was why kids would behave in this manner. He pointed to the simple fact that we live in a sexualized society where teenagers have sex. The median age of the first sexual experience is 16 for boys, 17 for girls." And "before we decide to criminalize, [the third panelist, UVA Prof. Anne] Coughlin argued, we must identify the additional harms created by the image. It is not enough to point to the harms created by other forms of child porn. Rather, we must specify what the harm is and who the victims are when consenting minors make images of and for themselves." I'm going to go long, here, because I feel her view is important: "She reminded the audience that American culture objectifies everybody, including children, who often receive mixed signals about the acceptability of their sexuality. Acknowledging that this is a serious social problem, Coughlin concluded that the criminal justice system was not an appropriate fix."

Library bans social sites for PC security

The Lexington County Public Library is banning social-networking sites, but not for the reasons most people would probably come up with. "The primary reason for the decision was research that shows social-networking sites can make computer systems vulnerable to viruses," reports The State in Columbia, S.C. "The sites are becoming prime targets for malicious hackers," it cites network security experts as saying. "The library hasn’t encountered such problems, but library officials said they want to be proactive." This is another reminder of how important it is for home-based social networkers to be careful about what links they click on in comments, bulletins, etc., and about logging in more than once (some malicious hackers create fake log-in screens that grab user names and passwords).

New game ratings for UK

Britain is working on a new game-ratings system to replace its old, unworkable one, The Guardian reports. "A legally enforceable cinema-style classification system is to be introduced for videogames in an effort to keep children from playing damaging games unsuitable for their age." The system will make it illegal to sell a game to a child below that game's recommended age (maybe not to a parent unaware of the game's rating?). Under the current system, videogames aren't affected by the UK's Video Recordings Act unless they depict "'gross' violence to humans or animals" or sex. Those require age limits, leaving "up to 90% of games on the market" rating-free. Some games are also classified voluntarily by a European system. "Policing such regimes is difficult as it is possible to buy games over the net and simply tick the box stating the purchaser is over 18."

Social networking in the classroom?!

There was a debate going on recently over at The Economist, and the pro-social-networking side won. For parents or anyone interested in social networking's benefits and not just its risks, let me zoom you in on a very meaty discussion, starting with points from the Economist debate's opening arguments, both pro and con (not answers, not just good food for thought): From Prof. Michael Bugeja at Iowa State University: "Facebook or MySpace are programmed for revenue generation, especially the vending of marketing data and the advertising base that can be established because of that data. To do so, those networks rely on technology developed by military (to surveil) and industry (to sell). The fact that both happen simultaneously is no fluke because the programming is designed to amass psychographics on users too busy depicting each other like products to notice the surveillance.... Social networks advertise access to this diverse world while simultaneously confining users to affinity groups so as to sell, sell, sell."

From Ewan McIntosh, Scotland national education technology adviser: "In Scotland, I've been fortunate to work with thousands of school children and hundreds of teachers, creating mini social networks based around a rather traditional 'social object': the classroom. Students have been empowered to publish not just their best work, but the many drafts it takes to get there. They've received feedback from 'real' people outside school and, surprisingly often, the occasional expert has paid a visit.... Importantly, they've received more communication, feedback and interest from the one group they value most: their parents."

US social media researcher danah boyd wrote a blog post about the debate, saying she's frustrated with both the debaters' opening arguments, giving her reasons and making this central point: "In their current incarnation, social network sites ... should not be integrated directly into the classroom. That said, they provide youth with a valuable networked public space to gather with their peers."

I don't think these three experts disagree, actually. My takeaway is that MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc. themselves - with their user-psychographic aggregation and commercial goals and with their users' purely social goals - don't belong in the classroom, but none of the arguments seem to rule out the educational "social networking" US teacher Vicki Davis has adapted for her Flat Classroom Project, which turns classrooms in multiple countries - 3 across the US and 4 classrooms in China, Austria, Australia, and Qatar - into their own learning social network. Don't miss Vicki's detailed description in her comment at the bottom of danah's blog page. Parents and educators alike would find the Flat Classroom Project (the name a take-off from author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat) an inspiration - see this blog post from Vicki's co-founder Julie Lindsay in Qatar, which includes an email exchange with Tom Friedman. For the perspective of young social networkers themselves, see this interesting blog post from UK tech educator Terry Freedman.

Related link

Here's teacher Sue Waters on why educators need to understand social networking and what about it should be taught in schools: "We need to teach people about SNet-iquette (Social Network ettiquette), and the positive and negative effects of their online 'behaviour' and how they are creating an online 'digital footprint.' I believe educational institutions should be 'leading the way' in educating people about these things. Therefore, by encouraging staff and students to use these sites as educational tools, we are encouraging the conversations necessary for people to work out what is, and what is not, appropriate in an online environment."

Teens posting personal info: Study

For their safety online, kids have been cautioned for years not to give out personal information online. Well, we now know from researchers at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center that giving out such info isn't in itself a safety risk (see "New approach to online-safety education suggested"). We now have further insights into teens' info-sharing practices in the Journal of Adolescence. Here's what Profs. Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja found: "Many youth have recently embraced online social networking sites such as MySpace to meet their social and relational needs. While manifold benefits stem from participating in such web-based environments, the popular media has been quick to demonize MySpace even though an exponentially small proportion of its users have been victimized due to irresponsible or naïve usage of the technology it affords. Major concerns revolve around the possibility of sexual predators and pedophiles finding and then assaulting adolescents who carelessly or unwittingly reveal identifiable information on their personal profile pages. The current study sought to empirically ascertain the type of information youth are publicly posting through an extensive content analysis of randomly sampled MySpace profile pages." Among other things, Patchin and Hinduja found that...

8.8% revealed their full name.

57% included a picture.

27.8% listed their school.

0.3% provided their telephone number.

They concluded that "the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the web site." Here's the very long link to their article.

MySpace opens to widgetmakers

Like Facebook, MySpace has opened its doors to people who create parasitical little software applications for profiles on its site. It's offering developers tools to create these little apps riding on its "platform," the New York Times reports. Called "widgets," they can add a lot of fun and functionality to users' experience on MySpace and could make the site that much more "sticky" for its users. Adds the Times, "MySpace has always allowed users to embed external programs, sometimes called widgets, in their pages; companies like YouTube and Photobucket got their start on MySpace’s back, in fact. But MySpace will now overtly endorse and attempt to nurture that widget ecosystem" and allow widgetmakers to make money from the applications they build.

Social sites safer than chat, IM: Study

Parents, don't just talk with your kids about social networking - chat sites and instant messaging really need to be in the conversation too. Despite the news media's focus on social-networking sites as the locus of online child exploitation, it turns out chat sites and instant-messaging are where most sexual solicitation and cyberbullying is happening. But even in those "places" online, "only 15% of children [aged 10-15] experience unwanted sexual solicitation and only a third report being harassed online," reports HealthDay News, citing a new study in Pediatrics. Here's the difference found between social sites and IM or chat: 4% of the nearly 1,600 children surveyed "reported experiencing an unwanted sexual solicitation and 9% reported being harassed while on a social networking site. Solicitations were reported 59% more often in instant messaging and 19% more often in chat rooms than social networking sites. More surprising, harassments were reported 96% more often in instant messaging than in social networking sites," say the study's authors - Michele Ybarra of Internet Solutions for Kids and Kimberly Mitchell of the University of New Hampshire - in the study's press release. Their advice for parents: "Internet safety is not just about whether your child is on MySpace or not. You should know what your children are doing on MySpace and Facebook. But you also need to know what your children are doing in school, after school, at parties, at the mall, online - basically all environments in which they engage."

PC Magazine on parental controls

Parents might be interested in the latest reviews of filtering and monitoring software here at PC Magazine. The top-rated products are Net Nanny 5.6, Bsafe Online, Safe Eyes, and Webroot Child Safe. Note that these are "client" software products you install on the family computer. If you have the latest operating systems on Mac and Windows PCs, you can simply configure and use OS-level parental controls that are pretty feature-rich. But all these - OS or client - work only on the computers they run on. Kids' access on any other Net-connected computer or device (including those at friends' houses and, increasingly, cellphones) can be unfiltered, which means it's also good for kids and parents to work together on testing and using the filters between kids' ears: critical thinking and media literacy! Here, too, PC Magazine's parental-controls buyers' guide - a little old, but still offering good advice.

PC Magazine on parental controls

Parents might be interested in the latest reviews of filtering and monitoring software here at PC Magazine. The top-rated products are Net Nanny 5.6, Bsafe Online, Safe Eyes, and Webroot Child Safe. Note that these are "client" software products you install on the family computer. If you have the latest operating systems on Mac and Windows PCs, you can simply configure and use OS-level parental controls that are pretty feature-rich. But all these - OS or client - work only on the computers they run on. Kids' access on any other Net-connected computer or device (including those at friends' houses and, increasingly, cellphones) can be unfiltered, which means it's also good for kids and parents to work together on testing and using the filters between kids' ears: critical thinking and media literacy! Here, too, PC Magazine's parental-controls buyers' guide - a little old, but still offering good advice.

18-year-old registered sex offender

He was 17 when he downloaded child-abuse images. From the news reports, we don't really know why he did so. We do know that when he was interviewed by prosecutors, he "made full admissions," saying "he had no idea why he had done it," and "had no previous convictions, cautions, warnings or reprimands," the Hemel Gazette reports. We also know that "he had been spending a lot of time isolated and alone on his computer" because, his attorney said, "he had been bullied at school. At the beginning of 2006, when he was 16, he was beaten unconscious in the street by a gang, including bullies from the school." His sentence is a fine and two years of community service, and he will be on his local sex-offender registry for five years.

Videochat at home

This could be unnerving for parents of teens - finding their kids' friends "hanging out" in the house virtually, via Webcam - but it looks as if ColumbiaJournalist.org found some parents who are handling it well. "Once dismissed as a potentially lewd distraction for the tech-savvy, video chatting has increasingly insinuated itself into American homes. While no firm numbers are available to document its rise, interviews with parents, children and college students suggest that as technological barriers have all but disappeared, the practice has become as easy as making a phone call and, for some, just as common." The article leads with a mom who heard a tiny voice coming from the breakfast table ask, "Is that your mom?" and finding out her daughter who was eating breakfast in front of her laptop was actually having breakfast with her friend on screen - they were using their Webcams. You do know that many new computers come with built-in Webcams, right? Parents need to know that because there are also very negative, uses of Webcams by youth (see "Kids & Webcams: Disturbing story" and this about live Webcam chat site Stickam). But there are just as many great uses for Webcams. One college student told the reporter, for example, that all her friends videochat with their parents back home - who wouldn't want to see their distant children when they're talking with them?!

Cyberbullying and free speech

Legislation proposed around the US after the tragic case of a Missouri teen's suicide following cyberbullying is fuel for an important discussion about whether such laws are needed. "Officials from Megan [Meier]’s town of Dardenne Prairie wasted no time unanimously passing a statute that makes Internet harassment a local misdemeanor," writes ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid in a commentary at CBSNEWS.com. "Others have called for state and federal legislation to make it a crime to post comments anonymously or under an assumed identity." Larry points to the unintended consequences of overreaching laws drafted in reaction to an extremely rare occurrence. What is not rare - and in fact affects millions of young people - is online bullying by peers. Dealing with age-old social problem that is now common online and - overseas and increasingly in the US on mobile phones - is going to take a great deal of education and rational, not reactive, discussion in schools, homes, legislatures, and the media. Previous NetFamilyNews coverage of the Meier case can be found here and here.

Key researcher's view on MySpace/AGs accord

The day after the agreement between MySpace and the state attorneys general was announced, a University of New Hampshire publicist sent me comments from David Finkelhor, director of UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center. The Center's work has been key to shaping our society's understanding of online child exploitation since any of us first became aware of the problem (for example, see "Profile of a teen online victim" and "New approach to online-safety education suggested ). So it's good to get Dr. Finkelhor's thinking on this latest development....

He writes that it's an important agreement for a number of reasons:

“A majority of online teens use social-networking sites, and the overwhelming number use MySpace, partly because of its openness. Unlike many other current child safety initiatives, such as sex offender residency restrictions, this one is nuanced and complex in its approach - for example, thinking about the different needs and risks for different aged youth.

“However, some very important caveats exist. The parties have not solved some of the most important problems, such as how to verify the ages of participants. The technology and social networking environment are changing so fast, much of this initiative could be obsolete in a year or two.

“The attorneys general should be congratulated for showing what can be done. But ultimately, this is not the best arrangement for ‘watchdogging’ the safety of kids online. We need more agencies with a national scope, both in the federal government, equivalent to the Federal Trade Commission, and in the private sector, equivalent to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, with the resources and leverage to be doing this study and negotiation on an ongoing basis.”

Here is my item on the MySpace/AGs announcement , and here are some recent findings from the Center for Crimes Against Children Research Center:

* "One in 25 Online Youth Asked to Send Sexual Pictures of Themselves" (note that, "according to the study, very few of those surveyed actually complied with the requests, but given the millions of youth online, thousands of children may potentially be sending such pictures" - see also "Teen-distributed child porn" in NetFamilyNews )

* "Survey Identifies Teen Online Behaviors Associated with Online Interpersonal Victimization"
(note this landmark finding: "Most Internet safety advocates suggest discouraging youth from sharing personal information and talking with unknown people online,” according to the UNH researchers. However, the study found that talking with people only known online under certain conditions is associated with online interpersonal victimization, but sharing information is not." Here's what leads to victimization: “Aggressive behavior in the form of making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others, meeting people in multiple ways and talking about sex online with unknown people were significantly related to online interpersonal victimization."

Key researcher's view on MySpace/AGs accord

The day after the agreement between MySpace and the state attorneys general was announced, a University of New Hampshire publicist sent me comments from David Finkelhor, director of UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center. The Center's work has been key to shaping our society's understanding of online child exploitation since any of us first became aware of the problem (for example, see "Profile of a teen online victim" and "New approach to online-safety education suggested"). So it's good to get Dr. Finkelhor's thinking on this latest development....

He writes that it's an important agreement for a number of reasons:

“A majority of online teens use social-networking sites, and the overwhelming number use MySpace, partly because of its openness. Unlike many other current child safety initiatives, such as sex offender residency restrictions, this one is nuanced and complex in its approach - for example, thinking about the different needs and risks for different aged youth.

“However, some very important caveats exist. The parties have not solved some of the most important problems, such as how to verify the ages of participants. The technology and social networking environment are changing so fast, much of this initiative could be obsolete in a year or two.

“The attorneys general should be congratulated for showing what can be done. But ultimately, this is not the best arrangement for ‘watchdogging’ the safety of kids online. We need more agencies with a national scope, both in the federal government, equivalent to the Federal Trade Commission, and in the private sector, equivalent to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, with the resources and leverage to be doing this study and negotiation on an ongoing basis.”

Here is my item on the MySpace/AGs announcement, and here are some recent findings from the Center for Crimes Against Children Research Center:

"One in 25 Online Youth Asked to Send Sexual Pictures of Themselves" (note that, "according to the study, very few of those surveyed actually complied with the requests, but given the millions of youth online, thousands of children may potentially be sending such pictures" - see also "Teen-distributed child porn" in NetFamilyNews)

"Survey Identifies Teen Online Behaviors Associated with Online Interpersonal Victimization" (note this landmark finding: "Most Internet safety advocates suggest discouraging youth from sharing personal information and talking with unknown people online,” according to the UNH researchers. However, the study found that talking with people only known online under certain conditions is associated with online interpersonal victimization, but sharing information is not." Here's what leads to victimization: “Aggressive behavior in the form of making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others, meeting people in multiple ways and talking about sex online with unknown people were significantly related to online interpersonal victimization."