Social-media gender gap: Research

Females increasingly rule the social Web, research by the people behind reputation lookup site RapLeaf.com found. According to a blog post by its CEO, "young women are much more active on these sites then young men. And for people above 30, men - especially married men - aren’t even joining social networks. With the notable exception of LinkedIn.com usage and VCs in the Bay Area friending everyone on Facebook, married men are not hanging out on social networks. Married women, however, are joining social networks in droves. In fact, women between the ages 35-50 are the fastest growing segment on social networks, especially on MySpace." They're not just socializing, though, they're also producing media (text, graphics, photos, etc.) and decorating profiles and pages. It's not that young men don't spend every bit as much time in front of a computer - sometimes more - but young men, he says, spend those hours more in "videogames such as World of Warcraft, first-person action games," and offshore poker sites, where they can actually win and lose money. As for seeking out the opposite sex: "Now young men understand that they can’t spend ALL their time playing video games (though some do) as they still need to interact with the opposite sex. Sex is one of the strongest drivers of online usage and many men see social networks as a gateway to potentially filling that desire. Men, in general, tend to look at things more transactionally than women. Once men get married, they see increasingly less value in being on a social network." The Pew/Internet project released similar findings last December (see "Boys & girls on Web 2.0" and "Teens rule the Web").

Laptops in school ok?

You've probably heard of school laptop programs, and some schools now expect students at least to have access to computers at home. But do you ever wonder how useful (or not) it is for high school students to take their laptops to school?

Marian Merritt, Symantec's Internet Safety Advocate and mother of an 8th-grader, wondered just that and put some good thinking about it down in her blog the other day. Marian also asked some colleagues, including me, if we'd seen any research on it, so I turned to my friend and tech educator Anne Bubnic with the California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) for her experience with school laptop programs.

Anne pointed us to some meaty links (below) but, first, here's some of her personal experience with student laptops in school which I think you'll find as interesting as I did:

"I would have to say about laptops that bringing one to a school where the teachers are all on board with a structured method of incorporating them into studies is an entirely different beast than bringing one into a classroom just for note-taking, as Marian describes. A student doing so on her own would have to be a lot more self-disciplined.

"I filmed a group of math students. They talked about how the laptops have helped them become so much better organized. They never lose assignments or papers they are writing. They talked about being better organized again and again. It was amazing how confident that made them feel. They are learning real-world skills that will serve them well in the workplace!

"They record all of their notes on NoteTaker [software]. They record homework assignments and test dates on their electronic calendars. Even their books are electronic! The kids told us that their teachers post all of their homework assignments online and that they often do the homework before it is even due - can you imagine?

"They’ve learned how to juggle their busy sports schedules and social lives and homework in a way that works for them. But even more amazing, they are tackling math that may have not even been taught yet in the classroom! To watch these students using laptops is pure utopia. You wish you could wave a magic wand and every school district in the country would be there!"

Related links

Links from Anne Bubnic: "One of the leading experts is Saul Rockman, who also has served as CTAP's external evaluator for over 5 years," Anne wrote. "You can find some of the Rockman, et al, studies here. And here's more research from respected educator Gary Stager and the Ubiquitous Computing Evaluation Consortium. Apple Computers also has done a number of studies. Here's one on Del Mar Middle School" in Marin County, northern California. "You can also go to the Del Mar Middle School web site and find the latest student survey results," and Anne pointed to a laptop learning site at Ning.com.

Big-picture food for thought from PBS column "I, Cringely": "We've reached the point in our ... cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools. I came to this conclusion recently while attending Brainstorm 2008, a delightful conference for computer people in K-12 schools throughout Wisconsin. They didn't hold breakout sessions on technology battles or tactics, but the idea was in the air. These people were under siege.... Kids can't go to school today without working on computers. But having said that, in the last five years more and more technical resources have been turned to how to keep technology OUT of our schools." See also "Beyond System Reform" in Education Week.

"Starting School Laptop Programs: Lessons Learned" by Andrew Zucker, Ed.D., Senior Research Scientist, The Concord Consortium - a few years old but substantive and on the opposite end of the US from Anne

"Study: Middle school laptop program leads to writing improvements" from the Associated Press, 10/07

"School drop laptop programs, but are they dropping the ball as well?" in Andy Carvin's education blog at PBS.org, looking at a New York Times report last May

"School laptop debate heats up" in eSchool News, 9/06

Staging fights for Web video-sharing

It has become "an Internet rage for teens and young adults," the Chicago Tribune reports (story picked up by RedOrbit.com). And - judging by the popularity of other negative adolescent uses of cellphones (see last week's feature on naked photo-sharing) - it could be true. The Trib leads with the account of five 8th-graders huddled around a camera phone watching "video of a fake fight they staged in a bathroom at Benjamin Middle School. They had filmed multiple rounds of a shoving match ... and planned to post it on YouTube." Some of the fights kids post aren't staged. The New York Times this week ran a tragic story about a long-term bullying victim. The online part of the bullying is on p. 2: "A couple of the same boys started a Facebook page called 'Every One That Hates Billy Wolfe.' It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

'Sex offender label problematic'

That's the view of former FBI agent Ken Lanning, WAAY TV in Huntsville, Ala., reports. "Lanning spent 35 years as a special agent for the FBI. He now trains law enforcement officials across the United States on how to investigate allegations of sexual abuse. But even though he's seen and investigated some of the worst cases in the country, he doesn't like the title of sexual predator." Lanning "said the public shouldn't try to fit all [sex offenders] into the same category. Also, he said that not all people convicted of sex crimes should be required to wear electronic monitoring bracelets, and move 2,000 feet from schools or day cares, under laws like Jessica or Megan's Law." And the story doesn't even mention teen-aged convicted sex offenders, young people convicted for acts that may have been crimes, yes, but also possibly may have been huge mistakes made by adolescents who, by definition, don't yet have the impulse control of fully developed adult brains (see "Teenage Brain: A Work in Progress" at the National Institute of Mental Health ). [See also "Juvenile sex offenders & Net registries," "18-year-old registered sex offender," and "Teens to be sex offenders for life?"

Common social-networking hack

We get a lot of questions in the ConnectSafely forum about people finding their profiles compromised in various ways. One way this can be done concerns social networkers' passwords - if they've either given their passwords to friends or their passwords have been stolen. A researcher colleague of mine in Portugal, Daniel Cardoso, sent me a heads-up about the latter. Here, a post in EthicalHacker.com explains that there is free downloadable software on the Net that allows malicious hackers to steal users' passwords. Cain & Abel is "a password recovery tool for Microsoft Operating Systems. It allows easy recovery of various kind of passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords using Dictionary, Brute-Force and Cryptanalysis attacks, recording VoIP conversations, decoding scrambled passwords, recovering wireless network keys, revealing password boxes, uncovering cached passwords and analyzing routing protocols." In Slashdot, which Daniel linked me to, a young security expert posted: "If I were to run this attack on the computers at my high school, I could cripple a lot of kids' social lives (and get expelled when the admins see :) I see SO many of my classmates using proxies to get on MySpace at school (even though it's against school rules, which I don't blame after seeing some of my classmates' MySpace pages). They just don't understand how easily I could get their password (or whoever's, running the proxy, or even the admins). And it's worse when you wonder how many kids use the same user name and password for everything. Kids these days [note that he's talking about his peers] are just not educated enough on good security practices, or show a lack of common sense with this stuff." Parents, make sure your kids practice good computer security - choose hard-to-guess passwords, don't share them with friends, change them fairly often, and choose different ones for different sites and services. IT News in Australia reports that "criminal hackers now view social networking sites as their best target for attacks." It goes on to describe another vulnerability besides passwords, and IT Pro in the UK reports on a Facebook vulnerability involving users' private photos.

Social Web for good, bad

There are so many good things about social-networking, from the social activism it supports to the lives saved to the way far-flung friends can stay in touch. But there's a definite darkside, and JuicyCampus is a good example of a corner of it, reports my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid in the San Jose Mercury News. "The site, which was reportedly founded by a 1995 Duke graduate, encourages students at selected colleges ranging from the Air Force Academy to Yale to anonymously post 'juicy' comments about other students. And some of these comments can be downright vicious. All of this is under the veil of anonymity." He added that a bit surfing of the site turned up cruel posts about people's sexual preferences, true or not.... One posting implied a certain named female student was available for sex with strangers and included her cell phone number and dorm information." What's sad is that the law protects the site better than it does the victims of defamation and cyberbullying in it. He quotes the CEO of ReputationDefender.com as saying that, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, "a record company has a better chance of getting a judgment against a college student sharing music than a college student has against someone jeopardizing his or her reputation, privacy or even safety." [See also "Is Social Networking Good for Society?" at the New York Times.]

On monitoring online kids

Some parents continue to wonder how privacy they should allow their children, where online activity is concerned. Of course, there is no simple answer even in a single household. Even in a family we may have rules and values that apply to all, but in so many cases different ages require different rules, and each child is individual where rule compliance, maturity, and trust levels are concerned. Having said all that, though, I will add that no parent should hesitate to use monitoring software if s/he's concerned about a child's safety. If you feel your child's communicating a little obsessively online with someone you don't know and the child's otherwise acting a little strange (for example, spending too much time online or being secretive about his or her online "friends"), her privacy is simply not an issue; you're keeping her safe. But a commentator in the New York Times suggests there are other reasons to use monitoring software that make it perfectly justifiable, and he makes a compelling argument, but - again - I think it depends on the child. "Will your teenagers find other ways of communicating to their friends when they realize you may be watching? Yes. But text messages and cellphones don’t offer the anonymity and danger of the Internet. They are usually one-on-one with someone you know. It is far easier for a predator to troll chat rooms and MySpace and Facebook." I agree about the trolling that happens on the Web, but he's missing the fact that 1) young people can share phone numbers via chat, IM, and social-networking sites which can be used later to call them on their cellphones (see "Grooming by phone too"), and 2) 90% of child sexual-exploitation victims know the offender (see "Sex offenders on MySpace: Some context"). But, speaking of MySpace and Facebook, this other perspective on teen social networking might be helpful too: "Dispelling 2 social Web myths."

Naked photo-sharing trend: Police perspective

This is a trend deserving parents' and, for that matter, everyone else's attention - especially teens'. The Associated Press report of Utah middle-schoolers taking and sending nude photos on their cellphones joins similar reports from Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Georgia in the past few months. And in 2007 the child-porn-distribution convictions of two Florida teens were upheld in a state appeals court (they'd taken sexually explicit photos of themselves and sent them to the boy's personal email account).

In the Utah case, the prosecutor told the AP that police expect to see more cases like this - they were in fact dealing with "several other similar unrelated cases" - and he is not alone in his struggle to figure out how to handle cases involving teens distributing photos that in effect constitute child pornography depicting themselves and their peers. They cover a full range of behavior, from impulsive to developmentally fairly normal adolescent risk assessment to outright harassment and bullying. For example, here's what investigators discovered in the Georgia case, as reported by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children:

"Some girls were peer-pressured into taking inappropriate images of themselves and sending them to the boys. Others complied with the boys’ requests for pictures because they had crushes on the boys. Many of the girls suffered from low self-esteem or did not understand the seriousness of the situation because 'everybody is doing it.' Few realized their images were being circulated throughout the school and, in one case, traded with a suspect in the United Kingdom. In another case, one of the boys was charging students at the school $25 to view graphic images of one of the female victims. As of this writing, investigators have tracked down hundreds of images, and at least one video, involving these victims." [A partial report is under the second heading on this page at NCMEC.org.]

It's important for teens and parents to know that these cases, which could technically be treated as federal felonies (child-porn distribution), are posing a real challenge to prosecutors. Det. Frank Dannahey, a youth officer in Connecticut for 17 years, agrees that this is a growing problem. A member of our Advisory Board, he emailed me last week in reference to my item on the Alabama case (and kindly gave me permission to publish his email, which describes a local case that struck him and offers teens some things to consider if they're ever tempted to share intimate photos online or on phones):

"I have to agree that it would not be in the best interest of the kids to have them charged with a federal crime," Detective Dannahey wrote. "I really don’t believe they understand the implications of what they are doing. You and I have been talking about this topic for a long time [see his description of a 13-year-old Connecticut girl's ordeal in "Teen photos and a police officer's story," January 2006].

"I can’t tell you how many of these cases I have had to deal with or assist other agencies with," he continued. "The long-term implications for these kids can be serious - not to mention the initial humiliation and embarrassment. I see these photos becoming an instrument in online bullying/harassment.

"I just recently closed a case in which a middle school girl shared nude photos of herself to males she met through IM sessions. In a different twist, the girl told me that she gave them (sent) the photos after being 'intimidated' online by the boys," he wrote. "This is a very shy girl one would not expect to do this sort of thing. The girl told me that the boys she communicated with had a sort of 'power' over her in manipulating her to do something that she never thought she could do [which sounds to me like the Georgia case]. She was highly embarrassed by it. This was something that I had not heard before. When kids do this sort of thing it is usually meant to be a private thing between boyfriends/girlfriends. Of course we all know that teen love doesn’t last forever and, when the breakup happens, these types of photos get 'out there.' This is certainly an issue that I address in programs with parents and teens.

"In cases where a teen sends a 'private' photo to someone and it ends up being leaked to other people, the teen’s question to me is always the same - will anyone else see the image? Unfortunately, my answer to that question is always the same: 'I don’t know'," Dannahey continued. "Years ago, if a paper photo was taken from someone, they could possibly get it back, rip it up, and destroy the negative. Today in the digital age, getting a photo back that has been sent electronically is difficult at best and more likely improbable.

"I will usually tell teens the following when considering the sending of 'private' digital photos/videos to people online: Because digital media is so easily shared and reproduced, you need to consider several things before hitting the Send button:

"Are you willing to take the chance that someone other than your intended recipient will see your images?

"Will those images be a source of embarrassment or humiliation to you?

"Are you willing to take the chance that the images may be a 'career killer' or prevent you from some future opportunity?

"Will the images/videos that you send violate the law?"

Readers, if anything like this has come up at your house or school, please share your experiences - or post them in our forum at ConnectSafely.org. Thank you! Fellow parents or educators can benefit from your experience.

Online-safety myths & tips

Of course, I'm biased in liking the message in my ConnectSafely co-director's column at CBSNEWS.com. But Larry Magid debunks the prevailing myths about teen safety on the social Web and offers what we feel is the best way to approach sticky situations that come up. For example: "For adults - whether parents, teachers, administrators or authorities - it’s important to listen and provide support to a child or teen who is scared, worried or bothered by such contact but not to over-react or 'punish the victim' by taking away Internet privileges or forcing them to avoid using social networking sites or other services. The fear of an adult overreacting is one of the reasons many teens give for not coming forward if they have a problem. And parents need to know that taking away a teen’s online privileges could backfire by prompting him or her to go into stealth mode by finding hidden ways to get online."

Net-safety training for UK 5-year-olds?

Britain's Conservatives say children as young as five will be taught about online safety and privacy and computer security, The Times of London reports. They're criticizing the government for "not doing enough to raise awareness among children of the dangers posed by cyber-crime," The Times adds. The Conservatives are also proposing the reestablishment of "a national police unit given over to cyber-crime."

China: World's biggest Net population

The US, which since the beginning of the Web, has had the biggest online population, has been passed by China this year, The Register reports. "Data released earlier this year by the government-run China Internet Network Information Center said that China's internet users totaled 210 million at the end of 2007. US web analyst Nielsen/NetRatings put the American total at 216 million for the same period." And while we're on statistics, here are the "Top 10 most popular Web sites" in the world, blogged about in InformativePost.com, citing Alexa rankings. Looking at social sites, YouTube is second, MySpace and Facebook are 5th and 6th, respectively, and Hi5.com is No. 8. Orkut, a Google property along with YouTube, comes in at 10th.

AOL to buy Bebo

Though Bebo users probably won't notice much of a difference at first, AOL recently announced it would acquire the social-networking site very popular among teens, particularly British ones. The $850 million acquisition "reflects the high hopes that big media companies like Time Warner [AOL's parent] have for social networking, which they see as a potentially lucrative way to bring together online consumers, media owners and advertisers," the International Herald Tribune reports. This may be a sign of coming consolidation in the part of the social Web dominated by companies (there's plenty of grassroots Web too - see my item this week about mini-MySpaces and all that individuals can do on their own on the participatory Web). Speaking of which, here's Le Monde's social-networking world map, putting Bebo in the No. 1 spot in the UK and Europe, but with some qualification from Jupiter Research.

Many mini-MySpace options now

This blog post could be eye-opening for parents or anyone who might think putting any single social site's feet to the fire would take care of teen social-Web safety problems: TechCrunch looks at "Nine Ways to Build Your Own Social Network". In other words, if MySpace or Facebook somehow went away - besides the option of simply moving to another social site based in the US or not - teens of course have the option to create their own personal social-networking site (this is really no different from the days when it seemed novel to be able to create your own blog, and services like Blogger made it supremely easy with templates and color schemes, etc.). I've written about Ning in the past (see "Do-it-yourself social sites" and "Mini-MySpaces"). Now Ning is just one of nine such sites in a single category of the possibilities available for personal social sites (not pages or profiles or blogs but entire mini-Facebooks, -Bebos, or -MySpaces). The services in this first category are hosted by the service (for free, and anyone can create his/her site in 10 minutes or less). The other two categories get higher-end; the first type you put on your own server, which is no big deal for many teens; the third is more a business solution, where a company custom-builds a social site for its client. I'm sure the state attorneys general have been focusing on MySpace for so long are aware of this, right?

No teacher rating in France

Not online, anyway. A French court cracked down on a teacher-rating site based in that country: Note2be.com. Like US-based sites RateMyTeachers.com and RateMyProfessors.com, Note2be encouraged students to grade and discuss their teachers' capabilities. The judges said the site "could no longer identify any teachers by name and told the site's owners they faced a $1,517 (1,000 euro) fine for every infraction," Reuters reports. Note2be encouraged rating in six categories: "how interesting, clear, fair, available, respectful and motivated" teachers were, and - like its US and UK counterparts, "it also set up a rankings system to promote France's top 10 teachers." As with most participatory sites, it was a two-edged sword, the downside being plenty of opportunity for libel and defamation and an upside that possibly gave public exposure to both bad and good teaching.

Imposter profiles: No easy solution

Imposter profiles are one form of cyberbullying or online harassment certainly not restricted to youth. Tweens, teens, and adults create profiles that impersonate the people they want to harass, putting them in an embarrassing or defaming light. There are also simply fake profiles of imaginary people aimed at tricking the real people who "befriend" the imaginary people in the fake profiles, which is what happened in the Megan Meier case (see "Extreme cyberbullying: US case comes to light." In a well-reported article, ConsumerAffairs.com describes a few actual imposter-profile cases and how hard it is to make them go away. Part of the problem is that, online, it's much easier to set up a profile than it is to prove its harmful intent or impact. Some people who click the "Report Abuse" buttons in sites are actually being abusive - of the site as well as their peers. "MySpace includes a link at the bottom of every profile to report abuse, but many people misuse this to harass someone who has posted a legitimate profile," ConsumerAffairs reports. The article includes no solutions to this growing problem because there simply are no known ones besides better, more civil behavior on everybody's part and education aimed at that and at the fact that we're not as anonymous online as we all think we are. ConsumerAffairs also goes into the law and how little it can do in these cases.

Teens info-swamped too

A head school librarian suggests that our digitally literate teens are no different from any of us as we slog through our collective information overload. "These kids manage to survive by bushwhacking through the muddle – while seamlessly dealing with an email, a Word document, or a 50-page PDF from the scholarly database JSTOR," writes Thomas Washington of the Potomac School in McLean, Va., in the Christian Science Monitor. "It's taken them just a few years to arrive at the same conclusion that I've reached after a lifetime of sustained reading: The pursuit of knowledge in the age of information overload is less about a process of acquisition than about proficiency in tossing stuff out." In other words, we're *all* reading less in-depth and filtering more. This is good in some ways - because, if Mr. Washington's right, teens are quite naturally, or by necessity, developing the critical thinking that will not only help them cope with the info flood, but also to maintain a safe skepticism not only about what's communicated to them online, but what they choose to communicate and upload themselves. Let's help them consciously cultivate that filtering capability!

Teens to be sex offenders for life?

LACityBeat.com tells the story of Ricky, who, when he was 16, "went to a teen club and met a girl named Amanda, who said she was the same age. They hit it off and were eventually having sex. At the time Ricky thought it was a pretty normal high school romance. Two years later, Ricky is a registered sex offender and his life is destroyed." It turned out Amanda was 13, below the age of consent, and Ricky was tried as an adult. LACityBeat not only looks at how new laws will affect juvenile offenders but also how they affect the victims, as well as the families of both offender and victim. Very difficult issues, here, that deserve thought and care.

'SIGNS' of Net addiction: Interview

Last year a person who works for a psychiatric hospital and specializes in adolescent care posted in our forum at ConnectSafely.org asking if anyone had developed screening for "Internet addiction." No one in the forum had, and I suspected this person was pioneering something, pointing to a challenge for social services and the health care profession for which there is little research. It has since occurred to me to put this question to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist in Portland, Ore., who has worked with patients on game addiction.

Here's our email conversation, illustrating the challenges this question poses to the medical profession (but stick with him, parents, because below the challenges is some helpful thinking for you):

NetFamilyNews: "Have you ever put together a screening list for 'Internet addiction' and 'online porn addiction' - what a parent or caregiver might look for to decide if a child needs help toward a better balance of activities? I'm sure there's the usual sleeplessness, suffering grades, etc., but I'd appreciate a comprehensive list if you have one. 'Game addiction' too - all three would be great, but especially this blanket term we're hearing, 'Internet addiction'."

Dr. Block: "I've given this a lot of thought and it is more difficult than I'd like to admit. I have made my own 'testing instrument' to detect 'Pathological Computer Use,' but it has not been 'standardized.' That is, essentially, the issue.

"Lacking clear diagnostic criteria, we also lack a scientific test. Also, even using proposed criteria, we still need to compare the test to the gold standard - a clinical interview. You have to do this with a great many people, and that many interviews cost money. It also takes effort to find the representative patients.

"The only people that have done this that I trust are the South Koreans, who have spent bundles on the issue, and some psychiatrists in Taiwan. Their clinical test has been standardized against and compared to the clinical interview. And, they have a variant that is meant to be used by the parent. However, the test is culture-specific and would not translate well to computer use in the US. [For a solid look at cultural differences in social Web use between the US and Korea, see this article about Korean social networking in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.]

"That being said, I use a mnemonic to identify 'SIGNS' in at-risk people (kids or adults):

S = Sleep cycle is consistently advanced. Goes to sleep later and wakes later or is tired in the morning.
I = Irritable when not on the computer. Preoccupied thinking about the computer and their activities there (sex, gaming, browsing, tuning the system up, etc.). Can become enraged if told to stop using.
G = Guilty about his/her computer use so tries to hide evidence of 1) game/porn purchases, 2) online activities (deletes cache, uses encryption/passwords, etc.), and 3) logs on secretly, etc.; 4) defensive when confronted.
N = Nightmares. Dreams about his or her gaming/computer use.
S = Social dropouts - people who become more isolated by their computer use. This is seen when there is a consistent pattern of sacrificing real-life relationships to preserve virtual ones. Alternatively, seems to prefer living in virtual worlds more than their real one. These people become NEETs: 'Not in Employment, Education, or Training.'

"If one or more of these questions are answered 'yes' AND the person is having interpersonal problems, he/she is at risk."

NetFamilyNews: Following up, I asked Dr. Block, "Would you say the SIGNS mnemonic is for both 'computer addiction' and 'Internet addiction'?"

Dr. Block: "Yes. I consider Internet addiction a subset of PCU (pathological computer use), and the mnemonic screens for PCU."

NetFamilyNews: "Would it cover videogames and social-networking sites as well?"

Dr. Block: "Yes, I believe so."

NetFamilyNews: "If kids are at risk for one of these types of addiction, what do you recommend a parent do? Consider taking the child to a clinical psychologist or family therapist?"

Dr. Block: "I really don't know. I don't think anybody does. I would suggest that parents try to handle the situation themselves, initially. If that fails, I would consult a professional. The problem is that most professionals do not know what to do and are unacquainted and unequipped to manage the issue. In my experience, PCU is underdiagnosed, hard to treat, comorbid with other disorders, and often subject to relapse. Treatments tend to be long-term and, frankly, expensive. And clinical results are less than stellar. That is the international experience, not just the US's. It is a serious clinical problem, from many perspectives.

"An easier question is what NOT to do. DO NOT "cut the cord" unless in the context of an extended rehab-like setting. Cutting the child/adult off [from the computer, game, social-networking activity] can produce far worse outcomes (drug use, violence, depression, etc.). I differ in this from some practitioners who advocate for setting such firm limits. [See his commentary on this in the Rocky Mountain News or full-length analysis in "Related links" below.]

"Incidentally, probably the most effective treatment would be a 'retreat' or rehab-like setting for a minimum of 2 weeks. I think a full month is better [see this New York Times piece about a South Korean Internet addiction rehab camp]. But that is expensive and many would see it as overkill."

NetFamilyNews: "What do you think of applying the word 'addiction' to these non-chemical activities, or can they have a chemical impact on the brain?"

Dr. Block: "There is the concept of 'positive addictions' - people like 'workaholics,' avid readers, or model railroaders. At times, PCU might be more productive and be considered in that way (like for people employed in the industry, i.e., video game programmers).

"More generally, I think there is a common pathway with substance abuse. The issues around craving and the later phases of withdrawal appear to be very similar.

"That said, I avoid the use of the word 'addiction.' It is just too explosive, political, and packed with other meanings. I prefer to think of this as a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder, much like compulsive eating, gambling, pyromania, and trichotillomania."

Related links

Dr. Block's Web site

His editorial "Internet Addiction" in the latest issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry

"Net addiction rehab in Korea"

"Lessons from Columbine: Virtual and Real Rage," the last bullet under Computer Related - Research on Dr. Block's home page, makes reference to the teen shooters' home and school environments, and other detailed analysis

"Notable fresh videogame findings" (under this headline, the items "Columbine revisited" and "Pathological videogame use" link to findings on these subjects by Dr. Block).

Thai monks warned not to use social site

Buddhist monks in Thailand "have been warned not to use social networking sites to flirt with girls," InformationWeek reports, citing coverage in the Bangkok Post. The warning was associated with reports that Thai police were "investigating a rape claim against a monk" in which he was accused of using the Internet to lure and abuse a teenage girl. The prime minister reportedly asked Thailand's Information, Communications and Technology Ministry to monitor Hi5.com for Thai monks' use and "kick them off the site." [For disclosure, Hi5.com is a supporter of ConnectSafely.org, a sister project of NetFamilyNews.org.] Hi5 claims to be the world's third-largest social-networking site with 70 million members in 250 countries and several languages, including Russian and Chinese, and it claims 800,000 active members in Thailand. InformationWeek adds that Hi5's online-safety pages "reminds users not to meet with strangers and, if they must meet an online contact in the real world, to do so in a public place and bring a parent. It urges people to think before posting and imagine that their posts could be read by parents and potential employers."

Middle-schoolers arrested for nude photos

Four sixth- and seventh-graders in Alabama were arrested for taking and sending nude photos of themselves with their cellphones. The two boys and two girls "were charged with possession of material harmful to minors, a misdemeanor," the Birmingham (Ala.) Press-Register reports, adding that "the law was intended to prevent copies of hardcore pornography from sitting on the same shelves as Sports Illustrated and Newsweek magazine." A police officer told the Press-Register that adults convicted of "similar crimes" face sentences of up to a year in a jail and a fine of up to $10,000, but these students "will likely face punishment ranging 'from probation to a correctional program like a boot camp'." As much of a nightmare as this case is for the students and their families, at least the students weren't charged with the federal felony of distribution of child pornography, a terrible possibility of which parents and teens really need to be aware (see "Teen-distributed child porn" and a similar case in Pennsylvania). [Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this story out.]

Gangs on the social Web

Teen gang members use social-networking sites as much as other teenagers. What social networkers and their parents might want to be aware of is how gangs recruit new members online and off. Johnny Vance, a probation officer in Ohio, told the Dayton Daily News the "5 Hs" that tend to make kids most vulnerable to gang overtures: when they're "helpless," "hopeless," "hungry," "homeless," and "hugless." Just like youth who are at high risk for sexual exploitation, "it's a breakdown in communication within the family that leads to youngsters getting into the gang life," according to the Daily News (see also "Profile of a teen online victim"). Check out the article for what's being done to protect vulnerable youth in the Dayton area. [Thanks to Nancy Willard at the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use for pointing this piece out.]

UK: Less homework & TV

Homework and TV-watching are both losing out to social networking among British 15-to-19-year-old media consumers, a new survey found. Citing the 2008 "Digital Entertainment Survey," The Guardian reports that "21% of teenage girls and 10% of teenage boys watch less TV than more because they are using social-networking sites," and "nearly a third of 15-to-19-year-olds are doing less homework.

India: Support, advice from social sites

In India, a "small but growing number" of the millions of users of Orkut and Facebook are using the social sites for advice and support, Sify.com reports. "Social-networking sites are increasingly taking the shape of the new age online 'agony aunt'," kind of the British term for a "Dear Abby." Sify sites the experience of Sarath, who is looking out for a kidney donor for himself and turned to a social site for advice about the process. "The popularity of such networking sites turning out to be the agony aunt can be gauged from the hundreds of help communities that have been set up, be it from complex issues like kidney transplants, blood cancer to much smaller issues like teenage heart breaks," Sify adds. What I hope Indian and all other young people do is think critically about the responses they get and seek out second and third opinions online as much as they would offline (see, too, and interesting blog post, "How will rural India deal with social networking?" - especially the bold comments at the bottom about the place of mobility and diversity of personal relationships in social networking). The negative side of seeking advice online, of course, is when at-risk youth get reinforcement for destructive behaviors such as cutting, eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts. One credible, immediate source of help might be the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which coordinates the work of hotlines nationwide for people with questions about depression, relationships, loneliness, substance abuse, and how to help friends and loved ones, as well as suicide (see also "The social Web's 'Lifeline'").

JuicyCampus: Is there an upside?

Is it that the online gossipmongers think it's just a joke? JuicyCampus.com, where students can "slime" each other, may have one upside: The site could be a good talking point for parents and teens to discuss what is and isn't ethical treatment of peers online. "The content on JuicyCampus is identical to the banter heard in dorm rooms for centuries. But now the whole planet can listen in, including those being maligned, even as the speakers' identities are better protected than ever," the Washington Post reports. The site does not take responsibility for its content and is probably protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which courts to date have found to shield Internet service providers from liability for the content that users post. "If the offending post is about you, too bad," the Post adds, quoting site info as saying, "JuicyCampus does not remove content. We encourage you to shift your point of view...." It mentions one University of Virginia student who'd been "named on the site as sexually promiscuous" and who didn't really want to know who named her as such but does worry "that having her name on the site could jeopardize the job she just landed with a government agency. She wishes the site didn't exist but says nothing can be done...." [See also "Window on cyberbullying" and "Public humiliation on the social Web."]

Just how risky is the Net for kids?

That's the question dad and tech writer David Pogue looks at in a recent column of his at the New York Times. He writes about a past writing assignment on the subject, but now he looks at the kid-danger question in a new light: "As my own children approach middle school, my own fears align with the [PBS "Growing Up Online"] documentary’s findings in another way: that cyberbullying is a far more realistic threat. Kids online experiment with different personas, and can be a lot nastier in the anonymous atmosphere of the Internet than they would ever be in person (just like grown-ups). And their mockery can be far more painful when it’s public, permanent and written than if they were just muttered in passing in the hallway." Hear, hear! More helpful perspective can be found at the blog of author Nancy Willard here. [See also "Growing Up Online: Discussion Needed," linking to the PBS show, which can be viewed in full online.]

Trend afoot: Cloud socializing

We all know that kids socialize and share media on computers, phones, Xbox Live, etc. They don't think much about the delivery device. Pretty soon neither will we. The New York Times reports on "pocketable" and "cloud" computing, pointing among other things to Adobe's new AIR software that will help "merge the Internet and the PC, as well as blur the distinctions between PCs and new computing devices like smartphones.... But," it adds, "most people may never know AIR is there. Applications [sub in "socializing"] will look and run the same whether the user is at his desk or his portable computer, and soon when using a mobile device or at an Internet kiosk." I'm subbing in "socializing" because that's how mobile everything teens do online will be. They already make nearly no distinction between devices or online and offline. We're all just going the way of the online teen. The mobile Internet has only begun. Now think about filtering or monitoring software in this context. It can be useful, but how much control does it reliably give parents when online socializing is wherever the Internet is, wherever kids are? I'm not trying to discourage, just offer a reality check. Increasingly, the only safeguard as mobile as online teens, is the software between their ears. But loving, engaged parenting can be very flexible and spontaneous too and (most important for teens - though they'd be reluctant to admit it), parenting is there running in the background when it's most needed.