'Social norming' for risk prevention

This story at NPR.org is not about technology (though very few risk-prevention and online-safety stories really are). It's about a successful program in changing social norms to lower student risk, and it might be a model for 1) lowering risk in young people's online experiences - including the reinforcement of self-destructive behavior such as cutting, eating disorders, and substance abuse - and 2) educating youth about digital citizenship and positive peer support. The program, at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, "relies on peer counseling, social events and solid information to challenge misperceptions students have about drinking" instead of the rules-and-enforcement programs at most colleges and universities. Proof of effectiveness: unlike at colleges across the US, where the number of alcohol-related deaths is on the rise, at UV Charlottesville, "no student has died from intoxication or an accident linked to drinking since 1998" and "the number of students who say they have driven while intoxicated has dropped by more than half since the prevention and education program started."

Don't just take away the Xbox: Psychiatrist's view

The details emerging from a tragic national story about a missing boy in Canada point to an important observation about videogaming: that taking away a videogame (or device it's played on) does not have the same effect as taking away a toy or conventional game. Fifteen-year-old Brandon Crisp of Barrie, Ontario, missing for more than two weeks, left the house angry after his father took away his Xbox console. His father told the Toronto Globe and Mail that "this has become his identity, and I didn't realize how in-depth this was until I took his Xbox away." His mother "would wake in the middle of the night to hear ... Brandon, speaking into his headset as he feverishly played [the Xbox game] 'Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'," the Globe and Mail reports in another article, adding that his parents are "sure Brandon had become addicted to the game and link its appeal" to his disappearance.

Portland, Ore.-based psychiatrist Jerald Block emailed me a heads-up about this story last weekend. So I took the opportunity to ask him, one of the US's leading experts on videogame addiction, how this kind of addiction can be treated - what I can tell parents about that. He started and ended with that question, but in the middle of his answer are some very helpful insights for anyone who cares about or works with an addicted gamer - parents, friends, educators, policymakers - into the impact that sudden removal from a videogame's world can have....

Why game addiction's hard to treat

How to treat this addiction is "a good question," Dr. Block wrote me, "and one that I hate because it has no easy answer. I have treated many cases and I am still trying to figure out what works best and for whom. But here's what I've learned about gaming in general and gamers of all ages: Gaming is particularly hard to treat as it is 1) enjoyable, 2) an outlet for despair/anger/sex, 3) readily available, 4) time-consuming and thus fills in otherwise unpleasant 'spaces' in one's life, 5) a social forum with Virtual or simulated people, 6) a source of power, and 7) a portrayal of a fair, equal world.

"When people elect to voluntarily give all that up, they generally struggle with their mood and anger. If they are *forced* to give it up, all those emotions become amplified; any fanciful notions of power or control are trampled when they're disconnected against their will.

"Also, unplugging the computer can vividly demonstrate how intangible and fragile the Virtual is and can lead to existential crisis. This is a complex concept, but I consider it crucial. People are spending 30, 40, 50, or more hours a week powering up and getting success on their computers. They work hard at mastering the games and technology. They make significant sacrifices in terms of time and effort. The mastery becomes representative, in a psychological sense, of one's self-worth.

What is reality?

"Now disconnect the computer or console. You have summarily dismissed those accomplishments - the fantasy, the power, and that alternate life, heavily invested in (and mind you sometimes that alternate life may seem a whole lot better than the Real one). Now take it a step further: If someone could so easily destroy such an important thing that, although Virtual, seemed quite Real, isn't it also possible that our flesh-and-blood reality is yet another deception or illusion? To gamers - given the story lines they 'live' in - this is not as far-fetched as it may sound. Philosophers and religious leaders have discussed this for hundreds of years. It does sound pretty disturbing (or disturbed) - the concept that we might not actually exist but are, instead, merely some other being's dream or, as Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom recently wondered, merely simulations running in a simulated society? Such concepts can sound bizarre, but when in history have people actually been able to live them in very real-seeming environments - on so massive a scale, and at such young ages? More than 10 million people worldwide regularly play World of Warcraft, and that's just one such environment/game. I doubt the concept that life might actually be yet another illusion is hardly foreign to WoW's players. It is actually commonplace enough, the subject of numerous films (e.g., The Matrix) and even parody (The Onion's 'World of World of Warcraft' video).

"What I am getting at, here, is that - whatever your philosophy happens to be about how we define 'reality' - I believe the more one starts to believe he or she exists only as a piece of code running in some meta-computer (as some of my patients have done), the less valuable life becomes - your own life, others' lives, and the ethics by which you live. If one's life isn't real and one is just a puppet in some meta-being's 'game,' then it can come to feel like what one does in Real Life doesn't matter much.

Understanding the gamer's needs

"These are some of the risks of abruptly stopping computer or videogame use. As for treatment, one option is to cut someone off in the context of an extended (2+ weeks) camp where he or she is left physically or mentally exhausted. In doing so, you are wisely substituting rewards in the Real for those being lost in the Virtual. For example, at a well-structured camp, there are not an extra 30 hours to fill each week after work or school, and people form relationships with others who are enduring the same hardships. If it sounds something like boot camp in the military ... well, depending on your age, that is a therapeutic option worth considering.

"The alternative to 'cutting the cord' is to talk with the person and try to understand his perspective. Maybe he thinks his gaming is more helpful than harmful, maybe not a problem at all. So, first come to understand what the patient feels. If you feel the computer use is counterproductive and she doesn't, discuss why the two of you seem unable to understand one another's perspectives. Nothing will happen until she becomes motivated to change herself. If, eventually, the patient comes to believe as you do - that the computer or game use is excessive and destructive - then you can try to agree on goals to cut back on it. Part of that discussion will entail trying to address what needs the computer was satisfying and what one can do instead.

"The process tends to be very gradual - progress is measured in weeks or months - and it is therapy-intensive. Obviously, it is not the 'quick fix' that we want and need. What do I suggest parents do? I don't honestly know. If it were my child, I would first start by setting limits. I would avoid cutting him off from his technology for more than a few consecutive days and would avoid using computer restrictions punitively. If limit-setting failed and the compulsive play got worse, I would punt and take him to see a therapist."

Related links

"Virtual games, real addiction" in the Toronto Globe and Mail

"$50,000 reward for helping to find missing Ontario teen" in the National Post

"Missing teen hooked on Xbox game" at CNET

"Missing Ontario teen may not be in Canada: Police" at CBC News

Dr. Block's site

"West slow to take on Net addiction"

"'SIGNS' of Net addiction"

45% of UK online youth want supervision?

I wonder if an 18-year-old reporter would've worded the lead this way: "Almost half of all children want adults to supervise them when they use the internet," the Times of London reports, citing a study of 686 "children" by UK education regulator Ofsted. It'd be interesting too to see if those who do want supervision represent the full age spread of the survey, some of whom are not minors: 4-20. The percentage of those who "think adults should sit next to or near young people when they are on the internet so they can monitor what is being viewed" was 45%. Ofsted's own lead focused on a narrower demographic: "Children living away from home, or using social care services, want to feel safer online, be protected from unsuitable sites and have adult supervision," the press release reads.

Internet = 'giant popularity contest'

The social Web is, in essence, a huge popularity context, Digital Natives blogger Sarah Zhang points out, with even Google search rankings based on how many people visit and link to the sites in your search results. We can't afford to assume "that what is popular is also most worthy" or we stand to miss a whole lot of quality material that hasn't yet hit the public radar. Sarah writes about how people and organizations try to game the system to appear to have widespread grassroots popularity ("astroturfing") - and also how Web users can often tell and be put off by said. But how can we and our children assess the quality of the information we're seeking? That's where media literacy comes in - why it's so important and why its top practitioners, librarians, are so important in the current and enduring information glut. But media literacy is not only about content we consume. It's also about intelligently handling communication and behavior via email, IM, phone texts, or one's profile) - what's going out as well as what's coming in. Constantly reworking the algorithms is great, but critical thinking is essential.

New Facebook worm

Tell Facebook users at your house to be very alert when social-network friends seem to say they've just got to check out this or that video. That scenario happens all the time - which is why it's used by social-engineering hackers to infect social networkers' computers. Where the new worm comes in is an extra step for which users need to be on the alert. The way it works is, they get a link supposedly to a video, CNET reports. That takes them to a Google page where they read that, in order to view the video, they need to click to download some code or an app. Clicking on that link installs Trojan software. The link on that page, however, isn't really a Google link. CNET explains why and how Google pages are being used. Though the problem will probably be fixed by both Google and Facebook shortly, this is a good illustration of why social networkers should never blindly click around - especially when there's a cool video in the offing.

Early view of ed's future

Speaking as a parent and online-kids advocate, not an educator: Increasingly, education will have both online and offline components as it does now, only the online pieces will get more and more fluid, media-rich, and supportive of the P2P (person-to-person) offline part. In fact, online tools - such as Howard Rheingold's "collaboratory" - will make the classroom part more meaningful to teacher and students. School will actually become relevant to today's fluent young information "hunter-gatherers," as MIT professor Henry Jenkins describes them. Author and (Stanford and U. of Cal. Berkeley) professor Howard Rheingold has just launched his Social Media Classroom, a free, easy-to-use "browser-based environment" for digital and real-life collaboration that includes learning tools such as a wiki (for collective writing/editing), blog with commenting, forum (boards or many-to-many discussion), chat, microblog (like Twitter), RSS (newsfeed/online distribution), social bookmarks (collective bookmarking), photos, video, etc. All it needs is virtual-world avatars (like those in Lively or Second Life)! As the winner of a MacArthur Foundation HASTAC award, the Classroom's designed "to supplement, not replace, existing course and learning management systems" and - more importantly, I think, to help teachers go beyond teaching digital tools and skills to teaching history, literature, citizenship with the tools in a way that makes learning these subjects more immersive and compelling (because of the role-playing and collaboration the tools allow). Whew! That was a mouthful, but there is probably no more exciting prospect for education. Now we need to just move it all into a virtual world (or at least turn the chat feature into avatar chat in rooms as customizable as real-world classrooms). [Here is Rheingold's own video introduction of the Social Media Classroom, and here's info on the HASTAC competition (the acronym stands for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory).]

Webcams in teens' cars

One hundred families in southern Maryland are participating in a study with Webcams installed in the cars their teenagers drive. "Last year, crashes involving drivers ages 16 to 20 killed 112 people in the state," the Washington Post reports. "Such accidents, including one this week in Montgomery County, are often caused not by alcohol or overt recklessness but by simple driver inexperience." So the state's trying to figure out where inexperience takes its toll. The camera doesn't capture everything - only 20 seconds of footage after it "senses" unusual movements like sudden braking or swerving. "Saved footage is transmitted back to [the camera maker] DriveCam via a cellular network. DriveCam experts review the videos, add tips for the young drivers and post them to a Web site where parents can see them a day or so later. Parents receive an email alert when the videos are posted." Not all the teens involved hate it, apparently. "Many teens admit that as much as they might loathe the camera, it does force them to pay closer attention to their driving." The year-long study's only a few weeks old.

Video sites: Diminishing distinctions

YouTube.com's more about user-generated video and Hulu.com about TV-pro-generated video. That's the current characterization of the two, but it's clumsy and it's changing. As USATODAY points out about the fast-growing Hulu (from 107 million streams in August to 150 million in September, it cites Nielsen figures as showing) gets that it needs to be about pretty much whatever its users want it to be. So even though it doesn't have revenue-sharing deals with ABC and CBS, Hulu links to their shows anyway, gaining nothing in the process but the flexibility and multiple options users seek on the user-driven Web. It also has a channel on video-sharing giant YouTube (at 5.3 billion streams in September). Users can watch whole TV shows on Hulu. In fact YouTube "gets it" too, because it just scrapped its 10-min. cap on the length of videos people can upload to the site. "YouTube also has been making a push to premium content, with full shows from CBS and full-length independent movies," USATODAY adds.

Growing no. of teen hackers (or wannabes)

The number of teenagers dabbling in high-tech crime is on the rise. "Computer security professionals say many Net forums are populated by teenagers swapping credit card numbers, phishing kits and hacking tips," the BBC reports. Kids as young as 11 and 12 are being found in these forums using credit card numbers to pay for packaged exploits, computer security experts say, some of whom seem to view searching for videogame cheats as a kind of "gateway" activity (I'd say only for those who've never been told the difference between legal and illegal). In any case, these hacker wannabes' age and low skill level make them relatively easy to catch and arrest, the BBC sources' say, and they need to know that nobody wants to be in the position of trying to get into college with a criminal record! The BBC says some are going for thrills, some for a certain kind of fame or validation (even making videos of their exploits and posting them on YouTube), some for money, and others some combination of all the above.

EU to tackle cyberbullying, grooming

Interesting that they're being lumped together: The European Union is moving its Safer Internet program will be training the spotlight on "cyberbullying and cybergrooming," German tech-news site Heise reports, the former being about peer-to-peer behavior and the latter about adult-to-child aggression. So far only two EU countries have enacted legislation dealing with these forms of aggression. Maybe the program puts them together more as behavioral issues as distinguished from inappropriate content. Heise reports that 34% of the Safer Internet program's €55 million 2009-'13 budget (about $69 million US) will be allocated to "illegal and harmful content."

A (digital) return to village life?

Did you ever hear someone speak nostalgically about "the good ol' days" of small-town life, when neighbors and people you cared about kept tabs on you? It had its downsides, but there's no denying everyday life (at least in the developed world) has gotten so much less personal. It's almost dehumanizing in some ways. People sometimes argue that the Internet has contributed to that. It can also be argued - I believe more persuasively - that the Internet is reversing that and bringing back village life in a non-geographical sense.

Case in point: the Twittersphere (Twitter's the fastest-growing social-networking service, CNET cites the latest Nielsen figures as showing). People microblogging through their days while "following" their relatives, friends, colleagues, and other interesting people doing the same. A superficial glance by babyboomers yields predictable reactions like "narcissism on steroids." But there's more to this phenomenon. It de-isolates. It creates "ambient awareness," as Clive Thompson recently described it in the New York Times Magazine - a growing (sometimes sustained, sometimes intermittent) awareness of the thoughts and moods of people who interest you wherever they are, even on the other side of the world (you can unfollow anyone any time, and it's up to you how much you say what's on your mind). It gives fresh meaning to the term "global village" and challenges the old saw, "familiarity breeds contempt." For one thing, you're only hearing from people you care about and they're only hearing about you if you allow them to.

"Taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce," Thompson writes, "like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting" of the people you follow. He tells of a person who twittered about what sandwich she made each day. Another person he mentions thought it all sounded silly. Then he "discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner.... Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click [maybe slightly comforting] that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day" and would miss if it weren't there.

All this raises so many questions - you really have to read Thompson to see many of them thoughtfully considered.... Are all these weak ties superficializing friendship or affection, or adding to it - on personal and global levels? Does microblogging increase self-knowledge or the potential for narcissism? Does it help to objectivize personal troubles, get perspective, find solidarity, make us more vulnerable? Probably all the above - it depends on the individual. Experimenting with it myself, following fascinating thinkers in my general field of work (none of my relatives are on it!), I have found it to be a positive experience. There is this unprecedented sense of sort of intimacy being trustingly conveyed by people you only knew from a distance ("trust" is a key word in all this), as well as a sense of stimulation but also a bit of overload - people you respect posting so many links worth checking out.

One thing's certain: Twittering has a way of keeping us honest. You'd have to be an extremely gifted pathological liar (or actor always in character) to be someone other than yourself microblogging to a well-developed following even once a day (tell me if you disagree, anyone!). Thompson tells of a student of Zeynep Tufekci, a University of Maryland sociologist, who posted that the difference between Web 1.0 and being under the microscope of the social Web is that - as the old New Yorker cartoon showing two dogs conversing points out - on Web 1.0 no one could tell you were a dog. On Twitter, the social Web to the 10th power, everybody knows you're a dog!

[Tufekci's student might've read Michael Kinsley at Slate. See also: "Just because they crave attention?"]

Twitter in the classroom

Also see how Twitter is making classes - and thereby education - more village-like (see ArsTechnica). A communications professor approached Twitter the way many of us baby boomers do, thinking microblogging's all "solipsism and sound-bite communication," but after using it realized that it "brought him closer to his students, creating a personal connection that helped to increase their involvement in his classes." In this blog post is the experience of a Central Connecticut State U. professor who, after each class, twitters a reflection about how the class went. "Students who see the messages often give him a reality check." He said that if he twittered that he didn't think something got across, for example, sometimes students would twitter back that they "understood that fine" but were just distracted by ... [something outside of class] or they were tired.

Powerful things can happen when people can come to understand each other on even slightly deeper levels afforded by the kind of fairly frequent, candid, humanizing communication that happens in microblogging. Empathy emerges.

Think about what can happen when people feel empathy toward one another: compassion, civility, encouragement, empowerment, engagement, etc. Disinhibition - that condition of online experience that allows for cyberbullying, harassment, hate, etc. by dehumanizing people - becomes less of a factor. "Users" move through being mere participants to being citizens and community members.

Related links

But is Twitter a teen thing? Not really, Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse.com suggests. It seems to be more for young professionals, with Plurk of more interest to teens, a 20-something told Anastasia. However, when I went to Plurk: of the dozen "recently joined members" featured on the home page, one was under 30 (she's 20) and the one other didn't declare his age. The other 10 were all in their 30s or 40s - even further away from being teens. Anastasia's theory makes sense: "If you think about it, since teens' social networks are mostly comprised of friends they know in real life, and the majority are teens they go to school with, they sort of already know what their friends are up to at any given moment."

"Who am I on Twitter?" The Financial Times calls Twitter "social networking around mutual stalking." I think writer Peter Whitehead doesn't quite get it yet, but he asks good questions: "My biggest concern, however, is over who I am on Twitter. Am I just me or am I representing the FT? Can I say outrageous things?" On that last one, some Twitterers actually do, but remember: "Everybody knows you're a dog!" In some ways, online anonymity is going away.

"Twittering from the Cradle"?! The teeniest tykes are twittering with the help of their sleep-deprived parents, the New York Times reports. When they become old enough to send their own tweets, they probably won't have Whitehead's sort of Twitter-induced identity angst.

Twitter grew 343% from September '07 to September '08, according to Nielsen. Over the same period, nos. 2-10 in the Top 10 fastest-growing social-networking services were Tagged (330%), Ning (251%), LinkedIn (193%), Last.fm (121%), Facebook (116%), MyYearbook (115%), Bebo (86%), Multiply (59%), and Reunion (57%). CNET reports.

Readers, feel free to disagree - send your comments to anne[at]netfamilynews.org or post them in our forum at ConnectSafely.org!

1 in 5 employers screen profiles

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey of "more than 31,000 employers" and found that 22% of employers look at social-network profiles as they screen job candidates, ComputerWorld.com reports, and 9% said they plan to do so. That represents rapid growth in the practice, since only 11% of hiring managers said they screen with social sites in 2006. Of the 22% who said they do, one-third said they "found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job." Interestingly, that last percentage was exceed by that of hiring managers who found content in profiles that convinced them to hire the candidate (24%); these managers said what convinced them was "profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate's chances for a job." Please see the article for the eight "top areas of concern" employers look for in social-network profiles.

1 in 5 employers screen profiles

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey of "more than 31,000 employers" and found that 22% of employers look at social-network profiles as they screen job candidates, ComputerWorld.com reports, and 9% said they plan to do so. That represents rapid growth in the practice, since only 11% of hiring managers said they screen with social sites in 2006. Of the 22% who said they do, one-third said they "found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job." Interestingly, that last percentage was exceed by that of hiring managers who found content in profiles that convinced them to hire the candidate (24%); these managers said what convinced them was "profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate's chances for a job." Please see the article for the eight "top areas of concern" employers look for in social-network profiles.

European call for social-site privacy rules

The EU's Data Protection Authority has urged social-network sites to "warn users about the low level of protection given to their profiles," Agence France-Presse reports. At a two-day conference in Strasbourg, the regulatory body called for "a standard set of international rules" for privacy protection and user education. According to the AFP, it said that "users, especially minors, should be told about the risks they face by going online and given clear instructions on how to change their data protection settings." The AFP added that 70 countries stressed the need for a universal data-protection standard at the Strasbourg conference, which was organized by the Council of Europe.

Virtual presidential elections: Kid picks

This is a great way to do voter education. Kids' virtual world Dizzywood.com's "candidates" are Kat De Claw, promising to "rebuild the road from Wildwood Forest to Canal City," and Cecil Sideshuffle, promising to "put an end to the evil Emperor Withering's corruption.” Kidzui, the kids' version of the Web, presents cartoon-y versions of Barack Obama and John McCain and their running mates. Dizzywood's 8-to-12-year-old users register, campaign for their candidates, poll and vote in a special election in-world. They learn critical thinking and "the importance of participating in real-world civic activities," Dizzywood says (they can also find virtual posters and t-shirts at the De Claw and Sideshuffle campaign headquarters). At Kidzui, virtual voting results, interestingly, are matching a recent Gallup poll for the "real world" election: Kidzui members favor Obama by a 10% margin, with Obama at 52% and McCain at 42%. "In addition to befriending their favorite presidential candidates, KidZui lets kids view each candidate’s profile page, which includes [candidates'] sites, videos and pictures," Kidzui reports. Older youth show very different preferences: In Facebook, 78% favor Obama and 22% McCain; in MySpace, Obama's at 81% and McCain 19%, Kidzui says.

MyYearbook helps teens give to 'Causes'

The US's No. 3 social-network site, MyYearbook.com (see this), just launched a new feature called "Causes," YPulse.com reports. "MyYearbook users can choose from a number of causes like ending world hunger, fighting climate change, saving the rainforests or curing cancer. They donate with virtual money, i.e. $40 buys one grain of rice (expensive grain!), and then get a badge on their profile (status)." They also get to choose what advertiser gets to display its ad on their profile, YPulse adds. A percentage of the ad money goes to the cause to which the advertiser's linked. This is kind of interesting - the teen profile owner ups his/her coolness factor through both the causes and the products advertised. As in many sites for young people, virtual money (called "Lunch Money" in myYearbook), is earned by playing games in the site. ClubPenguin, too, has causes to which member penguins can give (but no advertising). MyYearbook is apparently close to reaching $20,000 a month in donations to organizations such as the World Food Programme, CarbonFund.org, Conservation International, Save Darfur, and Child Help.

Tech & the ties that bind: Study

American families are into their digital communications, and this is "enabling new forms of family connectedness," a new nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found. The study found that "89% of married-with-children households own multiple cellphones" (47% three or more), and 57% of the 7-to-17-year-olds in those households have their own cellphones; 58% of those households have two-or more computers (63% of them connected via home network); and in 76% of those households, both spouses use the Net, in 84% of them youth 7-17 use the Net, and in 65% of those households just about everybody's online. Two-thirds of the US's 2-parent households with children have broadband Internet access. It's interesting to see what the respondents themselves say about the impact this has on family ties. When the parents were asked if this use of cellphones and the Net has brought their family closer than when they were growing up, 60% there wasn't much difference (maybe the increase in digital communications compensates for a proportionate increase in everybody's busyness?), 25% said closer, 11% not as close, and 4% didn't know or didn't want to answer. In its coverage, the Washington Post cites researchers as saying "the heaviest technology users are also people with the heaviest work schedules." USATODAY tells of a family in New York that uses Twitter to keep in high-frequency touch. Here too are Information Week and about 5 dozen other reports on the study.

Online harassment: From one who's been there

Lisa's experience of "cyberbullying" is probably the most common - some anonymous person(s) who made up "random screennames" and sent her IMs saying "stupid things" like "you're stupid" or "you're fat," she told a reporter from the Digital Natives project at Harvard University's Berkman Center. Though it probably wasn't cyberbullying as defined by researchers (see this), it certainly made her wonder: "Are my friends really my friends?" It was "kind of an uncomfortable ordeal because I never knew who it was in the end, but it wasn't as bad as being made fun of in real life could've been," Lisa, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, student from New Jersey, said in an audio interview.

That last point gets at the distinction between online harassment and cyberbullying, which has a more hurtful connection to school life. In real life, Lisa says, "it's hurtful because it's direct and it's personal and you’re standing there and it hurts. If it's on the Internet, you can easily disregard it because it's not personal, they don't know who your are, and they can't offend you because they're not talking about you - they're just trying to give a comeback. So if it's on the Internet, it's kind of like you have more power, you're in much more control, it's kind of like a big shield."

There you have possible talking (or coaching) points for parents whose kids are being harassed online. As Lisa points out, these experiences are indeed a big deal when you're in the middle of them, and they do raise all kinds of unsettling questions about who your friends are, but if they're anonymous meanness, a parent might say: You can choose to make that same anonymity that they're hiding behind your "shield," as Lisa put it. They have no idea how their words affected you, so you're in control - you can choose to let the words roll off and not react. Because reaction is very likely exactly what the harasser wants, and you can decide whether s/he gets it." The uncertainty that goes with incidents like this is rarely unique to the incident; it's more like a constant of pre-adolescent life that spikes each time such an incident happens. As tweens learn social norms, figure out and create their school's social scene, and explore identity, they're also learning how to cope with the uncertainty and other challenges associated with the wider circle of relationships in adult life.

I hope parents will actually get the chance to have this conversation with their children, since kids so rarely report online harassment - only 10% of 12-to-17-year-olds tell parents or other adults, according to research from UCLA (see this post), which also found that the harassment Lisa described was the most frequently occurring kind among the young people in its survey. Harsher cyberbullying may call for outside professional help.

A much tougher story that does fit the emerging definition of cyberbullying was told in the Long Beach (Calif.) Herald this week. For details on the slightly one-sided telling of the story (because the alleged bully's family declined to comment), please read the article. But the outcomes so far indicate a lot of maturity on the part of the girl, "Mary" (15), who experienced the online abuse. After having to leave her school (she is still being home-schooled a year later), "Mary said the experience made her stronger, but only after a period of depression." She told the Herald that, even though people tell her bullying is "part of life," she feels that it is not and should not be. She also told the paper that she could handle having her experience told publicly if it could help somebody else.

Solution creation

One of the conditions of cyberspace that enables harassment and bullying is disinhibition, a word psychologists use to describe what happens when we lose the face-to-face part of communication. It's like suddenly, in this environment, we're more robots than humans. So it seems to me we'll be able to mitigate cyberbullying when we begin to reduce the disinhibition effect and increase the empathy factor - when it begins to sink in with children (everybody, really) that behind those text messages, avatars, profile comments, and IMs are real people with real feelings.

Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 6-12 takes disinhibition head on - with collaborative learning that teaches empathy. The curriculum (book plus printable materials on a CD) - by educators Susan Limber, PhD, Robin Kowalski, PhD, and Patricia W. Agatston, PhD - is designed for schools, but parents and community-service programs will find it helpful too. At the core of the curriculum are true bullying stories like some that have appeared in NetFamilyNews in the past few years. The titles are pretty self-explanatory: "Boy Found in Locker after Three Hours"; "Being Excluded Online" (peers defriend a girls and stop IM-ing and texting); "Hip Hop Dancing Girl" (who unthinkingly videotaped herself and later found a peer posted the video online for all to see); "Tired of Being Bullied at School, Teen Strikes Back Online" (with a defaming Web site about the bully and faces charges); "Teens Facing Felony Charges for Cyberbullying Revenge" (posting a video of their retaliation beating of the peer on a video-sharing site).

With the curriculum, students lead discussions, role-play, write journal entries about the incidents, design anti-bullying Web sites, etc. There's a complete training module for teachers. For school administrators and resource officers, the curriculum goes beyond education to resources for dealing with this on-campus, off-campus challenge. Supporting materials include boilerplate letters to parents, incident reports, acceptable-use policies; guidelines for choosing students leaders; and legal information, including forms for evidence-gathering.

The curriculum is based on the holistic ("whole school") Olweus Bullying Prevention Program that seeks to involve all stakeholders (at school, home, and in the community) not only in reducing and preventing bullying but also improving eliminating in preventing and reducing bullying problem but also improving "peer relations at school."

Related links

So international. If anyone had any doubts that bullying is a universal problem, here's news from Bangalore, India: The Daily News & Analysis reports that a three-year study involving 1,200 students and 600 teachers, 59% of boys and 65% of girls (ages 14-18) said bullying was occurring at their school.

Toward "social intelligence": earlier NetFamilyNews coverage here and in an item on "stalking" as a form of social intelligence-gathering.

"'Cyberbullying' better defined": Researchers cite three factors that escalate it beyond the online harassment Lisa experienced (above): repeated aggression; power imbalance; ties to "real life" (school life, for the most part).

New study on earbud hearing-loss risk

Further evidence this week that earbud users who like the volume turned up high are seriously at risk of hurting their ears. Parents, get your kids to listen to this as well as music! A European study found that people who listened to music on MP3 players "for five hours a week at high-volume settings exposed themselves to more noise than permitted in the noisiest factory or work place," the New York Times reports. The study - by a team of nine specialists on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks - "threatens permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans." The Times adds that in the EU's 27 countries "an estimated 50 million to 100 million people out of about 500 million may be listening to portable music players daily." I'm sure the percentage isn't much higher than that in the United States. The study "also warns that young people do not realize the damage until years later." The maximum safe decibel level is 89, which - on iPods - is about the 60% volume level (see "iPods & ears" and "New earbud risk study"). The iPod manual includes a warning about hearing-loss risk.

Think b4 u click to YouTube videos!

If your kids watch a lot of YouTube videos, suggest they make sure the URL in their browser window actually says "YouTube.com" before they click to that page. Another tip-off to the latest malicious hack against YouTube users is that the fake YouTube page will show "an error message that claims the video they want won't play without installing new software first," according to coverage in the San Jose Mercury News. Almost any kid who's ever watched a YouTube video will know a player's not needed, but it's still good to be put on alert. "That error message includes a link the hacker has provided to a malicious program, which delivers a virus." When I asked YouTube about this, they wrote back saying, "We are aware that there is a malware threat from fake Websites posing as YouTube and inviting users to download a plug-in to watch a YouTube Video." Because the sites are on other servers, of course, YouTube has no control over them.

What are online video viewers like?

They're pretty young, for one thing. Though 13-to-24-year-olds represent only 15% of Internet users, they make up 35% of "active online video viewers," according to a new Forrester Research report cited by eMarketer.com. These active viewers "are highly engaged with online video, paying attention to longer programming and the ads that run with it," Forrester says. I'm sure they're among the Web's most active video producers too. For more on this, check out the charts on eMarketer's summary page.

Site for anonymous bullying reporting

Given the recent UCLA report on young people's reticence in reporting cyberbullying (see this), this is an interesting concept: a Web site that allows students to report said anonymously. So far the Utah-Based site, SchoolTipline.com, is being used by "six Utah schools and 48 schools in other states," the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The only concern is that the site could also be abused. Given also what we know of how kids have been known to abuse abuse-reporting in kid virtual worlds (see "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users"). An apparent protection against this possibility is that the tips go right to administrators of the schools that have signed on. One administrator told the Tribune she's received 20 reports so far this year, one of which was false. "Often [the administrators] respond to the anonymous student online and ask for more details. Sometimes they can persuade the student to come forward and work with them. At the very least, if the student doesn't want to be identified, school officials can question the alleged bully or keep an eye on the situation." Hmm, the thought occurs: what impact would age verification of minors have on this process?

Mobile Web's rapid rise in developing world: Symbolic

All by itself China illustrates the potential of the mobile Web, The Economist points out. Seventy-three million people, or 29% of all Internet users in the country (the total number, which recently surpassed that of the US, is 250 million), use mobile phones to get online, and that number grew by 45% the first half of this year. Some 600 million people in China (about twice the US's total population) are mobile phone subscribers. But that's just China ("just"!). "Opera Software, a firm that makes Web-browser software for mobile phones, reports rapid growth in mobile-web browsing in developing countries," The Economist reports. "The number of web pages viewed in June by the 14m users of its software was over 3 billion, a 300% increase on a year earlier." Russia, Indonesia, India, and South Africa led that growth. The articles gives some examples of how very useful mobile-based transactions are in third-world countries.

Defending remixers, future artists

In light of the new intellectual property law President Bush just signed (see this yesterday), it's interesting to read the story about how 13-month-old Holden Lenz's 29-second dance video on YouTube became a case of "willful copyright infringement under the laws of the United States" whereby Holden's mother "is liable to a fine of up to $150,000," Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig writes in the Wall Street Journal. "We are in the middle of something of a war here - what some call 'the copyright wars'; what the late Jack Valenti called his own 'terrorist war,' where the 'terrorists' are apparently our kids." He goes on to suggest that we "decriminalize Gen X [and Y and the Millennials!]" and "deregulate amateur remix," which "could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced." See also "Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," the last of "5 dangerous things you should let your kids do," a video of a talk by Gever Tully, founder of the Tinkering School, in which kids learn to build things.

US's 2 new anti-predator laws

President Bush just signed two bills into law. The first one is useful for tracking sex offenders already convicted and registered, the second seems to be more about finding predators to be arrested and prosecuted. The "Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008" ("KIDS Act" for short) requires registered sex offenders to register online identifiers - email addresses, screennames, etc. - as well as address and phone numbers. "The US attorney general will make that information available on a database where approved Web sites can cross-check their users' information and weed out any potential predators," Newsday cites Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who introduced the original legislation, as saying. Offenders who don't provide all Internet identifiers "face the same penalty as those who fail to register their home address - up to 10 years in prison." The second law Bush signed, the "PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008," "requires the Department of Justice to create and implement a national strategy, as well as a new task force, for tracking down predators on the Web and prosecuting them," a PC World blog reports.

All Oz to have filtering

Soon all Australians' Internet access will be filtered, "under the government's $125.8 [about $85 million US] million Plan for Cyber-Safety," TechWorld Australia reports. The Australian government is requiring all Internet service providers to provide "a clean feed" to households, schools and public places with Internet access available to children. By this report, it appears some Australians thought they'd be able to "opt out" of the filtering, but reportedly not. There will be two levels filtering that blocks content inappropriate for children (not clear how that's defined) and filtering that only blocks illegal content, which presumably means child abuse images. ISPs told TechWorld that the blanket filtering "will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch." The government's about to run a field trial to iron out any kinks, according to TechWorld.

All Oz to have filtering

Soon all Australians' Internet access will be filtered, "under the government's $125.8 [about $85 million US] million Plan for Cyber-Safety," TechWorld Australia reports. The Australian government is requiring all Internet service providers to provide "a clean feed" to households, schools and public places with Internet access available to children. By this report, it appears some Australians thought they'd be able to "opt out" of the filtering, but reportedly not. There will be two levels filtering that blocks content inappropriate for children (not clear how that's defined) and filtering that only blocks illegal content, which presumably means child abuse images. ISPs told TechWorld that the blanket filtering "will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch." The government's about to run a field trial to iron out any kinks, according to TechWorld.

Watch out for 'clickjacking'!

The problem is, it's hard to detect, and - according to Trend Micro - virtually all Internet users can be victimized by clickjacking. What is it? A computer-security attack that tricks people into clicking on a link that appears only briefly on their screens, such as in a little game (see this illustration on YouTube). Clicking on it could cause your browser to download malicious software or allow malicious hackers "to open the microphone or Webcam on your PC to eavesdrop," CNET reports. TrendMicro says the only good news is that one protective measure is available, but it's kind of a geeky one: install the Firefox browser's NoScript plug-in and enable "Always Forbid iFrames" in its options ("use the latest version of NoScript v1.8.2.1 with the ClearClick technology"). In any case, tell your kids to be really suspicious of offers to play or download little Web games, especially ones they've never heard of before. Here's more from computer-security experts' blog and coverage from NewsFactor.

US's new IP law

What surprised me about this new law, just signed by President Bush, is that it creates a Cabinet-level position for intellectual property enforcement coordination, CNET reports. The "Pro-IP Act" also "steepens penalties for intellectual-property infringement [though the penalties against families of P2P file-sharers, who probably will also be affected, seem to have been stiff enough], and increases resources for the Department of Justice to coordinate for federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy." The US Chamber of Commerce told CNET that American intellectual property is worth more than $5 trillion and "accounts for more than half of all US exports." The law was backed by the US Chamber, the Recording Industry Association of America, large media companies, and the AFL-CIO. Opposition came from, among others, the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge.

New sites & services for kids, tweens, teens

I haven't done this in a while - written about products and services - so here's the caveat up front: These are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for parents to consider and trends in youth tech.

1. Safe playgrounds for kids

It's like there's a "walled garden" trend afoot! Four of these services - three new ones and one tried and true - immediately come to mind. The one caveat about typical kids' safe playgrounds is that they're a lot more about consuming than producing media - in other words, pretty Web 1.0. Kidzui and Glubble are exceptions, you'll see. Though we want children to learn safe, constructive surfing and searching, kids' browsers are only one tool in the online-safety toolkit. Kids also need training wheels for constructive media-producing and -sharing in the very user-driven online environment they're growing up in. It's really a blend of 1) safe browsing, 2) civil and mindful play (virtual worlds, multiplayer gaming, etc.) and communications (phone texting, IMing, etc.), and 3) engaged parenting that foster kid-parent communication and therefore safe use of technology. So here are some creatively created walled gardens:

Kidzui - walled garden plus new social-networking features to be unveiled next week! Designed for kids 3-12 (with a 6-10 "sweet spot"), this browser+ now contains 1.5 million pre-approved Web sites, images, and videos. Kidzui has also gotten the most media attention of late. Both free and paid versions ($4.95/month or $49.95/year) are available, the latter with Homework Help for pre-K-8 and extra parental tools. Kidzui employs 50 "editors," who preview all content (a lot of it YouTube videos, I'm sure) and who are parents and teachers all over the US (kids tag and vote on content). "Social-networking" features include a Facebook-like newsfeed.

If not already, Kidzui social-networking features will be available starting this Monday, 10/13. They include the Zui avatar kid members create and customize to represent them in the service; profile pages that members can customize; member-created "channels" for the photos, videos, and sites they pick (KidZui lets kids see what members' collective top picks are); and a mini newsfeed like its big brother on Facebook (allows member to keep up on each other's moods, opinions, and personal news).

Parents can receive emails showing where their kids are spending time on this walled-off part of the Web. They can also choose to have kids locked into Kidzui (in "full-screen mode" that requires a password to use other software on the computer) or to have is as an option kids go into on a computer the whole family uses. Kidzui says "all friend requests are subject to mutual parent approval."

Glubble - walled garden plus family-only "social networking." Speaking with one of its founders in Amsterdam, it occurred to me that the word "glubble" could be a cute, kid-like way of saying "global." Certainly, Glubble's the most global of these children's offerings, with offices in the Netherlands, the UK, Costa Rica, and the US (Palo Alto) and partnerships on both sides of the Atlantic. Free for the downloading, Glubble has two parts: the walled garden for children ideally around ages 6-10 (2,500 pre-approved sites in 100 collections or "glubbles," such as the Nickelodeon one - parents can also add their own picks) and the family-interaction part (calendar, photo album, chat, and - soon - a family blog).

The idea behind the kids' section is that they learn how to surf, search, and chat only in this closed environment, unable to stumble upon any inappropriate content or contacts out on the Internet, and only with family members (they're locked into Glubble by default, behind a password the parent has as account admin). There's a monitoring tool for parents - not for spying but for the purpose of learning about their kids' interests and browsing patterns. Aimed at an online/offline balance in children's lives, Glubble also has non-Web content for kitchen-table activities such as printable pictures and cut-outs called "gotchas" for coloring and kid origami.

KidThing - like a children's book that has been moved online. It even looks like a storybook (quite beautiful). In KidThing, kids (ages 3-8) are on their computers, not the Web, and they're interacting with content (which you buy and access with KidThing's free downloadable media player), not with other kids or anyone else. Certainly this is fine for little kids (and peace of mind for parents!). Content for purchase (the price range is $.99 to $7.99) includes books, games, coloring, and videos from the publishers of many much-loved titles and brands: e.g., The Little Engine that Could, Corduroy, The Icky Bug Alphabet Book, Dr. Seuss, The Berenstain Bears, and Wee Sing. Most books are narrated for pre- and early readers.

Kidsnet - designed for kids to about age 12, it's the granddaddy of safe Web playgrounds. I first wrote about it back in 2004 , but it reached the ripe age of 10 last month, and the company is still reviewing and adding to its database of safe Web pages. The collection has reached 800 million pages (Kidsnet is quite probably the largest collection of human-reviewed Web sites in the world). The Kidsnet filter is usually $49.95, but CEO Bob Dahstrom tells me NetFamilyNews readers can download it for free till the end of the year here . You can install with one click if onto a PC. Mac and Linux computer owners will have to install the software manually. You can also have your kids use the Hazoo.com search engine, which turns up results that are only in the Kidsnet safe database (if you want them only to use that search engine, you'll probably have to establish a family rule, because they wouldn't otherwise be restricted to Hazoo searches).

2. New social sites and virtual worlds

This is certainly not a comprehensive list (something more like that can be found at Virtual Worlds Management). You might call them a representative sample of new kids on the social-Web block:

Yoursphere.com - billed as safe, teen-only social networking, Yoursphere is subscription-based and offers users rewards for participating in content creation, contests, etc. (see this at the Sacramento Business Journal). The message to users is "we keep adults out of your business" - parents by easing their fears for your online safety and adult "creepers" by requiring verifiable parental consent and checking all who register against a database of convicted sex offenders, then blocking said.

NewMoonGirls.com - ad-free media-sharing and social site (chat's moderated) for girls 8-12, based on the magazine of that name

Hangout.net (presenting itself here ) - private virtual-world spaces, or "3D rooms" for voice chat, media-sharing, and product-placement-based e-commerce that target 16-to-24-year-olds

BlahGirls.com (presenting itself here ) - "celebrity pop culture environment, a celebrity blog, a blah, blah, blog for teen girls," according to founder and actor Ashton Kutcher

Shryk.com (presenting itself here ) - online banking and financial-literacy ed for three age groups, 5-to-11-year-olds, 12-to-17-year-olds, and 18-to-24-year-olds

Tweejee.com (self- and user-presented here ) - a moderated social site for tweens to play games, host their pages, send email, and share their creations

UBFunkeys.com - Mattel's virtual game world Terrapinia for tweens (more likely boys) that picks up on the urban vinyl trend, selling cute little vinyl figures (Funkeys) that go with the world (the Webkinz model). The vinyl toys become their owners' in-world avatars.

Pixie Hollow - Disney's virtual world for primarily elementary-school-age girls, who create their Fairy avatars to interact and play games in the Pixie Hollow world. "Clickables," or real-world products that "connect real-world friends and unlock special treasures" in the game (e.g., "Friendship Bracelets" and charms) can be purchased separately.

AnnesDiary.com and AnnesWorld.com - named in honor of Anne of Green Gables, these are safe chat and blogging sites for girls 6-12 and 13-15, respectively. The company uses ID verification of parent or guardian and fingerprinting to secure a child's experience.

Meanwhile, more and more teens are creating their *own* social-networking sites, their own mini MySpaces and Facebooks, at Ning.com, and new youth virtual worlds have mini apps that connect worlds to existing friends lists in MySpace and Facebook. As for some things to watch out for in virtual worlds, see also "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users."

Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome (via anne[at]netfamilynews.org or the ConnectSafely forum - and, with your permission, we publish them.

How kids become bully victims: Very early signs

A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry offers clues to how children become targets of bullying, Newsweek reports. The first key finding was that bully victims in grade school are more likely to have been aggressive (e.g., "smashing a toy when someone takes their ball away") very early in life, as young as 17 months, in fact. "That may sound counterintuitive, but it's not surprising to experts in the field, who have known for some time that there's a link between being aggressive and being tormented." When an angry child acts out his or her frustrations, peers know there are buttons to push. Another predictor: when these very small children take their anger out on other children. Two other risk factors Newsweek mentions are "harsh or reactive parenting" and "lower income families." Here's the study.

Online ID verification in South Korea

The world's most connected country - South Korea, where 97% of the population has broadband Internet access - is conducting an experiment in Internet control that the world (especially the US) might do well to watch. I say "especially the US" because we're having a discussion here (at the Internet Safety & Technology Task Force) about online verification of minors' ages (see this about that). The Guardian reports that Seoul is trying to "curb online anonymity and debate." New legislation, some of which is "due to pass" next month would require all forum and chatroom users to make verifiable real-name registrations (South Koreans have national ID cards). The legislation would also make all news sites subject to the same restrictions as newspapers and broadcast media, answerable to the Korean Communications Standards Commission regulatory body, and give the Commission "powers to suspend the publication of articles accused of being fraudulent or slanderous, for a minimum of 30 days. During this period the commission will then decide if an article that has been temporarily deleted or flagged should be removed permanently." The Guardian suggests that includes blog posts, which is a problem: "Seoul's previous experience with such censorship suggest that unless the government hires thousands more people to staff the commission, which is already behind in processing some 2,000 internet-related objections, just addressing the initial complaints will be unworkable, untenable and unenforceable." The other problem is, the Korean government would also have to block all sites based overseas because it couldn't make them card Koreans at their virtual doors. Here's more from the Korea Times.

13-year-old detained on child-porn charges

The Texas boy was one of an unspecified number of kids at his middle school who received a nude picture of another student on his cellphone, Dallas-area station WFAA reports. The 8th-grade girl in the photo had taken the picture of herself and sent it to "multiple guys," another female student told WFAA. So far, the boy is the only recipient who has been charged. "Police and the school district are not discussing actions against any of the other students," according to WFAA. The boy was "arrested Monday and suspended from school," then "spent the night in a juvenile detention center." The report does not say why the boy was singled or who informed the police. I'll let you know if any more info on this disturbing story emerges.

Xbox Live as virtual world?

Seems everybody can get an avatar now - Zuis, penguins, fairies, and urban vinyl for kids and human-like ones in Second Life (teen and adult), Google's Lively, Sony Home, and now the Xbox gaming community. Microsoft is giving demos but says it won't be releasing the new "Xbox Live Experience" till "before Christmas," CNET game blogger Daniel Terdiman reports. But hardcore gamers for whom "Xbox Live is nearly as much a home as where they actually live" needn't worry, he says. The service is not becoming "a place for purely casual players" as they feared. He says casual gamers will like the "deeply customizable avatars," but there's also "all kinds of new functionality that will actually reward the dedication of the hard-core Xbox player." See the review for examples.

Anti-social networking

If for some strange reason your kids want to lose friends in Facebook, now there's help. They can download a little "Anti-Social Networking" application with features like "Insult-a-friend" or "Doodle-on-a-friend" (allowing them to "deface a friend's profile picture and send it back to them"), The Telegraph reports. They can also thoughtfully send a warning that they're considering unfriending someone using "People You May Know (But Don't Really Like)." This, of course, is marketing 2.0. The mini app was "developed on behalf of Paramount Pictures International to accompany their new film, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People." By the end of last month, some 3,000 anti-social Facebook users had downloaded the application, The Telegraph adds, but - who knows? - this could also just be a post-modern way of making or keeping friends. [I wonder if it'll soon be possible to create a non-group?]

Felony charges for teen nude-photo sharer

A 15-year-old girl in Ohio has been arrested and charged for "taking nude cell phone photos of herself and sending them to high school classmates," Foxnews.com reports. "On Monday, she entered denials to juvenile charges of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material and possession of criminal tools. A spokeswoman for the Ohio attorney general's office says an adult convicted of the child pornography charge would have to register as a sexual offender, but a judge would have flexibility on the matter with a convicted juvenile." A prosecutor told Fox News that authorities are also considering charging students who received the photos. The girl spent the weekend in jail, the Arizona Republic reports. [Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing out this story.]

Teachers in SNS: 'Creepy treehouse' or ok?

My headline's referring to "slang for how students feel creeped out by school teachers and college professors who are using Facebook and MySpace to interact with their students online," the Dallas Morning News reports, adding that "the term derives from urban legends about sexual predators luring children into treehouses." Of course that's not fair to a lot of teachers who are in social-network sites to understand their students' real, outside-of-school lives. In any case, there are now student Facebook groups on both sides of the question: "Teachers ... please stop going on Facebook," "Students should get over Teachers being on Facebook," and "No ... it's not awkward being friends with my teachers on Facebook." Check out the article to see what some principals says, as well as some examples of "Creepy Treehouse." See also "Online student-teacher friendships can be tricky" at CNN.

Where do these parents come from?!

This mom seems to have gone to the Lori Drew school of parenting. "Police are investigating whether an Elgin [Ill.] woman used nude photos of her daughter's 13-year-old ex-boyfriend as blackmail to get the two back together," the Chicago area's Daily Herald reports. As of yesterday (10/6), charges hadn't been filed, but the police say they're "actively pursuing counts of intimidation, harassment and child pornography possession." The investigation began when the boy's parents complained about receiving "hundreds of threatening emails and text messages" after the breakup. "The parents told police their son admitted he and the girl had taken naked photos of themselves while dating, sharing them with each other with their cell phones," according to the Daily Herald. "The parents said that after the breakup the girl's mother told the boy she'd tell his parents about the images of him and post them online unless the youngsters started seeing each other again." She also allegedly created an email account the kids could use unbeknownst to the boy's parents. A small but growing category of online-safety risk: parents. [Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this story out.]

Homeschooling with World of Warcraft

Actually, it's called "unschooling," but not many people know what the term means: basically, homeschooling "without the trappings of formal education," LiveScience.com reports, such as textbooks or even traditional subjects covered separately. Subjects that are covered unconventionally, e.g., in World of Warcraft, are "math, reading, sociology, economics, creative writing and communications." Unschoolers such as a mom mentioned in the LiveScience article, Jill Parmer, teach by learning about and fostering the interests of their children. One of Jill's kids' interests is World of Warcraft, so she plays the 10 million+-member game with them and "helps lead a group of homeschool kids and parents in a WoW guild called 'Horde of Unschoolers'." She has watched her 10-year-old "make his own learning connections between WoW and other areas in life," according to LiveScience. "One day he became interested in the mathematical concept of exponential increases after his WoW character encountered a disease cloud." University of Wisconsin researcher Constance Steinkuehler told LiveScience she has seen 8th- and 9th-graders playing WoW go from "barely stringing together two sentences to writing lengthy posts in their group's Web site forum, where they discuss detailed strategies for gearing up their virtual characters and figuring out tough quests." She gets a lot of surprised looks, even from players, when she tells them that "85% of the conversations [in the official WoW forum] showed that players had decent levels of scientific literacy. Players used reasoned arguments, backed up hypotheses and even brought statistics to bear on issues that they faced near the higher levels of the game."

Online harassment: Not telling parents

Wow, I've never seen a number this high in relation to online harassment. Psychologists at UCLA report that 72% of 12-to-17-year-olds they surveyed were "bullied online at least once during a recent 12-month period," "only one in 10 reported such cyber-bullying to parents or other adults," and 85% "also experienced bullying in school." The harassment most frequently took the forms of "name-calling or insults" and "most typically took place through instant messaging." A bit more on frequency of incidents: The study found that 41% of teens surveyed reported 1-3 "bullying incidents" during those 12 months, 13% 4-6 incidents, and 19% seven or more. About two-thirds of the harassment victims knew their harassers and half knew them from school. The authors reinforced this finding with the point that "the Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school."

Let's look at the part about not telling parents: The most common reason cited by the teens surveyed was interesting: They said they "believe they 'need to learn to deal with it.'" Next (31%) was the one I would've expected to top the list: parents might restrict their Net access. "This concern was especially common among girls between the ages of 12 and 14, with 46% fearing restrictions, compared with 27% of boys in the same age group," the authors said. No. 3 among younger teens was the fear of "getting in trouble." Here's a good heads-up from lead researcher Jaana Juvonen: "Many parents do not understand how vital the Internet is to their social lives. Parents can take detrimental action with good intentions, such as trying to protect their children by not letting them use the Internet at all. That is not likely to help parent-teen relationships or the social lives of their children."

In its coverage, CNET asks the intelligent question: "It's important to teach children the importance of not becoming bullies themselves, is it not?" The answer, from an analysis by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, is yes: "Youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization," CACRC researchers wrote in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The UCLA study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of School Health. [See also "'Cyberbullying' better defined."]

40,000+ students polled on their Net use

The Rochester Institute of Technology refers to "a startling new reality of cybercrime," but it's much more about child and adolescent behavior than crime and it's not a new reality. What's unprecedented about this study is the size of its sample, 40,000+ children and teens, the way it breaks bullying and other online behaviors down by grade level, and the detail and number of its questions. Though it's a local and not a nationwide sample (14 school districts in the Rochester area), it's one that can be tracked from year to year - what researchers call a longitudinal study, which has obvious value. The RIT study also offers insights into parents' and educators' understanding of the situation.

Even the study's lead author, RIT Graduate Program Coordinator Sam McQuade, acknowledges this is not new behavior: "What has traditionally happened on the playground has now moved into cyberspace," he says in the study's press release. "The major difference is that children have a sense that they’re anonymous and invincible online. Therefore, they seem to lash out in ways that they may not in person."

Last week I heard Dr. McQuade present his research to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force at Harvard (see my post), unfortunately referring to children more in the language of law enforcement than of child development. But the study does, importantly, help advance society's thinking about children's online safety, which to date has focused almost entirely on youth victimization. With both positive and negative outcomes, young people are participants, if not shapers, of the social Web and therefore key stakeholders in their own well-being and in keeping the use of social media safe and civil.

Here's a sampler of some key findings....

Grades K-1: "48% of K-1 students interact with people on Web sites" as opposed to various other devices and "48% reported viewing online content that made them feel uncomfortable," with 72% reporting that to a grownup.

Grades 2-3: "Cyberbullying and victimization begins as early as the 2nd grade for some children" (McQuade told the Task Force that, at this grade level, "cyberbullying" means "someone was mean to me or I was mean to someone"). [See my post "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users."].

Grades 4-6: 27% are "completely unsupervised when they go online," and 7% reported being the victim of cyberbullying/threats," most of those "by one of their peers."

Grades 7-9: "59% of cyberbullying victims said their perpetrators were a friend they know in person.... The four types of middle-school online offenders are generalists, pirates, academic cheaters, and deceiving bullies."

Grades 10-12: These students spend 15+ hours a week online; "16% have experienced cyberbullying, 17% have been embarrassed online, and 15% have been harassed or stalked online." The "types of offenders in this age group," McQuade told us, are "hackers, fraudsters, pornographers, deceiving bullies, data snoops, pirates, academic cheaters - the majority of kids are engaged in one of these forms of offending."

"I don't know how you can get out in front of this thing," Dr. McQuade told the Task Force, referring to the behaviors the study exposed (and "you" presumably being parents and educators). But I believe parents and educators have the knowledge and tools to help mitigate online peer harassment. How can I say that? Because this is about behavior, not technology. Together and separately at home and school, parents and educators have been dealing with behavior as long as there have been children! We have also known enough to bring in additional expertise when it's needed - that of counselors, social workers, lawyers, and sometimes law enforcement. These days we sometimes need the help of school IT people, tech coordinators, computer forensics specialists, and social-networking customer service people too. But the expertise of caring, engaged parents and educators cannot be discounted, remains at the heart of the solution, and - as we think all this through together with our children and apply what we already know - can go a long way toward getting "getting out in front" of unruly online behavior as much as the offline kind.

"Today’s children are most frequently preying on each other online - and their parents rarely have any idea it's happening," McQuade said. "Preying" is a strong word, but the study's findings could be broken down this way: 1) that online bullying and harassment is the risk that affects a great many more youth than online predation does (it's a little dated, but see "Predators vs. cyberbullies"), 2) that the young people it affects are mainstream youth - anybody's kid - not the more marginalized youth who, research shows, are victimized by "predators" (see "Profile of a teen online victim"), and 3) that the line between the roles of bully and victim is very fine and crossed all the time (see the FL case in which the victim, who was unarguably bullied, had been harassing the kids who bullied her in IM). Sometimes bullying does turn into a crime, but the harassment often starts well before it has escalated into one; an incident is very rarely as clear-cut as the headlines make it out to be.

Related links

Toward defining "cyberbullying" - followed by a response to and from author and researcher, Prof. Justin Patchin

The RIT study's executive summary and the press release with a link to the full report in pdf format (alternate URL and pdf doc)

Earlier in NetFamilyNews: "Why schools, parents need to fight cyberbullying together" and many other NetFamilyNews posts on cyberbullying among these search results.

Texting in traffic - careful, people!

A California lawmaker is proposing legislation that bans text messaging while driving, and "federal investigators are looking at the role that a train engineer’s text-messaging might have played [in California last month] in the country’s most deadly commuter rail accident in four decades," the New York Times reports. Texting is getting increasing scrutiny as a dangerous activity for multitasking. "Though there are no official casualty statistics, there is much anecdotal evidence that the number of fatal accidents stemming from texting while driving, crossing the street or engaging in other activities is on the rise."

Teen uber-texters

You do know that American cellphone users send more text messages than they make calls on those phones, right? That was the case almost a year ago. "Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64%, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly," the New York Times reports, citing Nielsen Mobile data. But forget about all that. It's the teen-texting data that really makes heads spin: 13-to-17-year-olds send or receive 1,742 messages a month. (It's downhill from there - 18-to-24-year-olds average a mere 790 a month.) The Times adds that "a separate study of teenagers with cellphones by Harris Interactive found that 42% of them claim that they can write text messages while blindfolded."

Jury duty & social-network profiles

Trial consultants are getting a lot of help from social-networking profiles when they're picking jury members these days, the Los Angeles Times reports. They learn how prospective jurors vote, spend money, "if they've spoken out on controversial issues," and what skeletons might be in their closets, er, profiles. "Consultant Anne W. Reed of the Reinhart law firm in Milwaukee finds the Internet most helpful when vetting younger jurors," the Times adds. She "thinks online research can spare shy jurors the discomfort of answering probing questions in open court, but she said it had to be done discreetly to avoid any sense of invaded privacy." Hmm - what's asked in an open courtroom is more of a perceived invasion than what's dug for in blogs and social sites.

Good online-safety law passed

Actually, online-safety education is only one part of the just-passed "Broadband Data Improvement Act" designed to improve our understanding of how much of the US has high-speed Internet access so the government can "ensure the continued rollout of broadband access, as well as the successful deployment of the next generation of broadband technology," as one of the bill's sponsors, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), put it, ConsumerAffairs.com reports. The bill charges the Federal Trade Commission with establishing (within 90 days of enactment) an Internet safety and tech working group of experts in public and private sectors, creating a nationwide Net-safety public-awareness program, and promoting best practices within the Internet industry. The news media may not have noticed this part of the bill, but the Family Online Safety Institute, the Consortium for School Networking and the International Society for Technology in Education, and the National PTA certainly took note. Search for the bill's full text here (I'd give you a direct link, but all links are temporary in the Library of Congress search engine).

UK's new national online-safety council

The UK has unleashed a new Net-safety watchdog, the BBC reports. Called the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, it's the panel called for in British psychologist Tanya Byron's Action Plan, which resulted from the year-long study she conducted at Prime Minister Brown's request. Announced by British Children’s Secretary Ed Balls and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, the council has representatives from more than 100 organizations in both public and private sectors, including social-network companies and children's advocates, according to the Children's Office press release. The council's charged with educating the public about safety on the social Web and, among other things, establish what we call "best practices" - as the BBC puts it, "voluntary codes of practice, with an examination of how websites handle videos or messages posted by users." View video of Byron's own look back at her report's development here. Here's my original post on the Byron review last April.

Euro social networking: Full speed ahead

The social Web has solid support from the European Commission. In fact, the EC's now looking ahead to Web 3.0, which means "seamless, anytime, anywhere business, entertainment and social networking over fast reliable and secure networks" and "the end of the divide between mobile and fixed [phone] lines," said Viviane Reding, EC Commissioner for Information Society & Media, in a September 26 speech in Luxembourg, according to VNUNET. Europe "must lead the next generation of the Internet," she said. The EC is encouraging SN industry self-regulation and has created a task force to that end, PublicTechnology.net reports. Participants include MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Bebo, Amsterdam-based Hyves, Berlin-based StudiVZ, and Paris-based Skyrock; "a number of researchers and child welfare organisations. The EC reportedly plans to unveil best-practice guidelines for social-network sites on Safer Internet Day next February 10. For context, 7thSpace.com reports, social networking has grown 35% in Europe in the past year. It added that 56% of Europe's online population visited social-network sites last year, and the number of regular users is projected to increase from 41.7 million now to 107.4 million in the next four years.

Real help for exploited kids

This is about thoughtful, helpful legislation that, according to the New York Times's editors, offers "a blueprint that federal lawmakers would do well to follow." New York's governor, David Paterson, just passed the Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act, which presumes "young children arrested for prostitution are victims of sexual exploitation." These are children likely to have fallen into prostitution "after being driven from their homes by abusive or neglectful parents." Those born in New York will be given the kind of protection that US federal law has long given exploited children who come from foreign countries and now needs to provide for those born on US soil. Under New York's new law, "sexually exploited children will be placed under state protection and sent to safe houses for services that are usually unavailable in detention, including counseling and medical help." The law doesn't go into effect until 2010 while the services it calls for are being set up.