Verdict in Megan Meier case

In the cyberbullying case against Lori Drew, the Missouri mother involved in the creation of a fake MySpace profile that led to Megan Meier's suicide, "a federal jury delivered a mixed verdict," the Los Angeles Times reports. She was convicted of misdemeanor charges involving unlawful computer access, but the jury "rejected more serious felony charges." It was also "deadlocked on a conspiracy count." The L.A. Times added that Drew "faces anywhere from probation to three years in prison." For details on what happened, see my first post on the story a little over a year ago.

Digital backchannel for the classroom

I love it! A teacher subverting the formal classroom experience and making the informal result a learning experience! He's doing so by turning the classroom "backchannel" into a teaching tool (the backchannel is that age-old back-o'-the-classroom multi-directional chat the digital version of which looks like an instant-messaging window on the screen). Author and college instructor Ira Socol uses Today'sMeet (a software tool created by his son), which bring the backchannel forward - public - for all to see, he says in his blog. He checks it every few minutes to see if he needs to "adjust" the class discussion. "In a big class it gave me real access to far more students than I can possibly get by watching for raised hands. And it let me - and the class - hear from many who never raise their hands. Honestly, I could even judge, much more clearly than usual, what was connecting and what was missing. As an instructor - I loved it." Here's the coolest part (for reflexive critics who might wonder, "Why add another distraction from the lecture to all that those multitasking students have on their plates?"): The backchannel tech "began to overwhelm Facebook and email use in the room [amazing in itself]. The distraction technology became engagement technology [emphasis mine]." Atlanta-area high school teacher Vicki Davis, who I follow in Twitter, blogged about Socol's blog post, with photos. She picked up on 2 big pluses: The first in Socol's words, quoted in her post: "the ways this kind of technology supports the shy user, the user with speech issues, the user having trouble with the English Language, the user who'd rather be able to think through and even edit a statement or question before asking it." The second plus is hers: "It is also important to point out that archived backchannels give students the ability to take group notes and have the information later."

2008 videogame 'Report Card'

The National Institute on Media & the Family (NIMF) released its 13th-annual videogame report card this week , and the "grades" are better, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. "In the past, the report has criticized video-gamemakers and given grades - often low - on how their products affect children. But this year, the grades are up and the tone is conciliatory." The reason, says the Institute, is that most of its past policy recommendations have been implemented by the gaming industry - for example, parental controls for the three main consoles and more accurate game ratings. The NIMF also warns parents against game addiction in this year's report, Gamasutra reports (see also "Don't just take away the Xbox: Psychiatrist's view"). Further NIMF coverage in the Washington Post leads with the year's worst game content.

Cellphone cos. & cyberbullying

It was a microcosm of the dynamic between government and industry where cyberbullying's concerned. The industry - in this case mobile-phone companies in Ireland - saying there is no technology that can stop phone-based bullying and lawmakers saying, "You could do more." Both are right, really. Bullying is a reality of growing up that long predates communications technology, but there's always something more companies can do. The dynamic was played out this time in an Irish parliamentary committee. Members had recently heard from a Singapore-based phone parental-controls vendor and called in the Irish Republic's four main cellphone operators to explain why they weren't using its "KidSafe" technology, the Irish Times reports. The phone companies said they'd considered KidSafe but the technology didn't work. "It did not prevent bullies from leaving voicemails, it rebooted when somebody who was not authorised tried to get through, it did not stop multimedia messaging service (MMS) which was used to send pictures, [and] ... it worked only on Samsung handsets which made up a small percentage of the market in Ireland." Maybe technology that actually does what it claims exists, maybe not. Maybe the phone companies should help develop said. But everybody also needs to look beyond technology for both prevention and cure, including phone companies. Besides citizenship and empathy training in schools, there is always room for more cooperation between companies and consumers and schools, not just law enforcement (e.g., UK mobile operator O2's 100+ customer service staff people dedicated to children's phone-based behavioral issues, especially cyberbullying, as described to me by a UK colleague - see "What mobile carriers need to do for kids").

Regular, micro & now 'slow blogging'

First there was fast food, then slow food. Now, instead of mere blogging, there's slow blogging, the New York Times reports - more reflective blogging. Clearly, blogging is a maturing medium. It's diversifying. "Some slow bloggers like to push the envelope of their readers’ attention," not unlike just about all bloggers, who start out with enthusiastic high-frequency posting that they later find hard to sustain. What's even harder to sustain when the frequency goes down is "stickiness" - when posts aren't daily, readers get out of the habit of checking in. Which may be one explanation for the popularity of the Huffington Post: "With about 50 new posts a day," it's more like a daily newspaper - high frequency and a little something for everyone. Besides the maturing of the technology itself, another factor is tech segmentation. There are new technologies for "fast blogging" or "micro blogging," e.g. Twitter, in which you can link to longer posts in a blog, but you're under no obligation to say much. And Twitter has secondary technologies such as Twitter news feeds that automatically announce to your Twitter followers when you've posted. This layer is like a blend of blogging and instant messaging. I know, I know. You might be asking, "Where does it stop?" Maybe nowhere. ;-) BTW, there's fresh thinking too, now, on a similar movement: fast (global) retail to slow (more local) retail. [See also "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger."]

'High School Musical' malware

This is a computer-security problem more likely to affect families with kids and tweens - especially young file-sharers (high school students are a bit old for "High School Musical"). If fans of Disney's High School Musical series uses P2P networks such as eMule or eDonkey, they need to be especially alert, CNET reports. It cites a report from Panda Security that warns of Trojan software called VB.ADQ or Agent.KGR, as well as "the adware Koolbar, that's circulating around those file-sharing networks. Pay attention to the file extension before you download any file that looks like a tune or clip from the series. "Many of the malicious files have the extension '.exe'," which is "rarely the case with a legitimate music or video file," CNET reports.

Teen's tragic, very public suicide

The tragedy of 19-year-old Abraham Biggs's suicide last week was compounded by the fact that hundreds of people watched as he streamed his death live on the Web. [The Hollywood, Fla., college student died after taking a combination of opiates and the drugs he'd been prescribed for his bipolar disorder, USATODAY reported.] Some viewers "expressed shock, while others laughed or encouraged Biggs to die. Some members uncovered Biggs' identity, phone number, and address, and at least one online community member called police," InformationWeek reported. By the time the police arrived, Abraham was dead. Investigators told InformationWeek that "some users told them they did not take Biggs seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before," but they are "investigating the role of Web site moderators and discussion board members," InformationWeek adds. They have a tough job. The Montreal Gazette editorialized that online suicides can't be stopped. "Live video feeds ... have become part of modern life. Most live-streaming and video sites have policies that prohibit the webcasting of violent or disturbing content. But technically, the problem with sites such as YouTube or Justin.tv ... is that with millions of videos uploaded, it's just not possible for administrators to know what is being shown." But, more important, what about the human factor? USATODAY talked to Texas Christian University sociology professor Keith Whitworth, who said that the anonymity of the Internet may cause some users to behave in ways they wouldn't in person. It has a dehumanizing effect by putting distance between viewers and the person in trouble, allowing viewers to feel absolved of personal responsibility (sound like a factor in bullying?). Whitworth told USATODAY they are "'absolutely not'" absolved, but "they also cannot be held accountable." He also told the paper that "Biggs' act is similar to suicide pacts in Japan and school shootings in the USA that end with suicide: All are well planned by people seeking fame." He worries about copycat suicides amid national - and now international - news coverage (choose from 1,300+ more stories here).

Europe on age verification, social networking

As the Internet Safety Technical Task Force wraps up its year of studying potential tech solutions for youth risk on the social Web, some perspective from across the Atlantic seems timely. The ISTTF's report, which we worked on together this week as Task Force members, goes to the 49 attorneys general who formed the ISTTF at the end of the year. The European Commission last summer held a public consultation on social networking, age verification, and content rating "to gather the knowledge and views of all relevant stakeholders (including public bodies, child safety and consumer organisations, and industry)." More than 6 dozen entities responded (links to their individual comments are included here).

Reports on those stakeholders' 70+ comments were presented at the EC's Safer Internet Forum in September. Here are the EC's conclusions on social networking and age verification, two subjects of particular interest to the US's state attorneys general and the ISTTF (so I'm zooming in on these two):

1. Summary of European views on age verification

Bottom line: "There is no existing approach to Age Verification that is as effective as one could ideally hope for.”

Flaws a reality: “Each individual method carries its own flaws, as does any combination of methods used.”

"Universal" really means "universal": The effectiveness of age-verification systems already in place in the UK and Germany is "largely undermined by the availability of sites offering similar services” in countries where there is no age verification in place. It can only be effective if it is "universally accepted, inclusive, secure and relatively inexpensive."

Avoid false sense of security: "Concerns were also raised about the false sense of security that might be provided and the adverse effects on safety this might have."

2. Conclusions from report on social networking

Significant consensus. "There was an important degree of consensus between respondents across most questions."

The peer-to-peer risk. "Bullying and other threats which young users inflict upon each other may be more likely to arise than threats from adults."

Communication not confrontation. "Parental involvement in their children's online activity is important, but principles of privacy and trust should dictate how parents help children to stay safe."

Education > regulation. "Education and awareness are the most important factors in enabling minors to keep themselves safe."

Industry self-regulation > legislation. "Industry self-regulation is the preferred approach for service providers to meet public expectations with regard to the safety of minors. Legislation should not place burdens on service providers which prevent them from providing minors with all the benefits of social networking.

Mandatory safety minimums maybe. "Available safety measures vary greatly from one provider to another and mandatory minimum levels of provision may need to be established."

More research needed. "Much is known about potential risks, but more research on the nature and extent of harm actually experienced by minors online is needed."

Related links

From this week's US news: "Age verification: An attorney general's concern" in the New York Times and my blog post about it

"Age verification debate continues; Schools now at center of discussion" at Adam Thierer's tech policy blog

*Serious* informal learning: Key online youth study

Just picture it: Young people sharing their ideas and productions (videos, poems, commentaries, tunes, podcasts), getting nearly immediate feedback from friends near and far. With quick, always available feedback, they can continuously tweak their compositions and thinking. Doing this authentic, literally peer-reviewed, kind of learning is not only exciting and inspiring to a student, artist, and/or thinker, it can also accelerate the development of a person's body of work at a very young age, preparing that person for a profession in a concentrated, enriching way that's unprecedented for youth.

This is actually what's happening on the social Web - in MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Facebook, and so many specialty sites and services on the Web, as well as with mobile phones and other connected devices. It's called "self-directed, peer-based learning," and it's part of what's being described in "Living and Learning with New Media," a three-year study by the MacArthur Foundation-funded Digital Youth Project.

Parents may appreciate insights from the report into the two approaches youth have to using the social Web: friendship-driven and interest-driven (neither approach necessarily ruling out the other in any one person's online experience, however). Friendship-driven, the more generalized form of teen social networking, focuses on socializing with their friends in Real Life (adults not particularly welcome and - if not invited - largely ignored). Interest-driven social-Web users are more focused in their socializing or collaboration. They may have moved on from "messing around" to "geeking out": "Messing around is an open-ended activity that involves tinkering and exploration that is only loosely goal-directed. Often this can transition to more 'serious' engagement in which a young person is trying to perfect a creative work or become a knowledge expert in the genre of geeking out. It is important to recognize, however, that this more exploratory mode of messing around is an important space of experimental forms of learning that open up new possibilities." Learning that's informal, experimental, yes, but also substantive, focused, authentic.

Tech educators I know will find support in this finding: "Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access 'serious' online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions" more intent on filtering the Web at school. [Educators will not want to miss what the report says about "the growing divide between in-school and out-of-school learning" by today's highly skilled information hunter-gatherers," as MIT professor Henry Jenkins describes young Internet users in his book Convergence Culture.]

Related links

"Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing" in the New York Times

"Online time is good for teens" in the BBC

"Teenagers learn important social, technical skills online: study" from Agence France-Presse

"Internet socialising is good for teens" in India-based IT Examiner

"Kids gain valuable skills from time online" in the San Francisco Chronicle

...and more than 100 other news reports around the world.

Enhancements to game ratings

The people who brought you videogame ratings - the Entertainment Software Rating Board - are making them a little more useful to parents. They've created a mobile ratings site for cellphones (http://m.esrb.org), CNET reports. So parents can now access a rating even at point-of-purchase, when pressure from those kid gamers can be intense and a little right info at the fingertips can help. Both the mobile site and the regular Web one also have rating summaries. "The idea," according to CNET, "is to allow parents to see some of the thought process behind the agency's decision" for each game - "the context and relevant content that factored into a game's ESRB rating assignment." The summaries will soon be available for all new games, as well as those rated since July 1. Meanwhile, USATODAY reports that, despite the tough economic times, it could be a record year for videogame sales.

Key week for bullying awareness

Bullying needs to be detected and addressed early! "By age 24, 60% of identified bullies have a criminal conviction. Young children who were labeled by their peers as bullies required more support from adults, from government agencies, had more court convictions, more alcoholism, more anti-social personality disorders and used more mental health services," according to research by psychology professor Debra Pepler at York University (here's a sample of her work . That's just one of a group of statistics - some disturbing, some calls to action - that Bill Belsey pulled together and distributed to mark this week, Canada's sixth-annual Bullying Awareness Week. A parent and teacher too, Bill is founder of the award-winning Bullying.org and Cyberbullying.ca. Here are some other eye-opening numbers from Dr. Pepler and other Canadian researchers (for more info, see BullyingAwarenessWeek.org):

Bullying occurs in school playgrounds every 7 minutes and once every 25 minutes in class.

85% of bullying episodes occur in the context of a peer group.

Bullying usually stops in less than 10 seconds when peers intervene on behalf of the victim.

25% of kids children say teachers intervene in bullying situations, while 70% of
teachers believe they always intervene.

Bullying is reduced in schools where principals are committed to reducing bullying.

See also the McGill News on an experience that brought cyberbullying home - literally - for cyberbullying expert and McGill University professor Shaheen Shariff; Tips to help stop cyberbullying; "Cyberbullying better defined"; "Online harassment: Not telling parents"; and "Teaching students to help stop cyberbullying."

Age verification: An attorney general's concern

The headline chosen by the European Commission's QuickLinks blog certainly cuts to the chase: "No Adults Allowed. (Marketers Welcome)." What it links to is a timely New York Times piece about the potential unintended consequences of the age verification that state attorneys general are calling for (consequences that would not please many parents). What the headline refers to is the alleged business model of some of the 2 dozen+ companies who want to help (and involve US schools in helping) verify American children's ages - apparently for the purpose of protecting them online but also reportedly to make a business out of selling data they gather on kids to marketers. Kids' social sites, virtual worlds, and other services would pay the age-verification vendor a "commission for each [child] member" a school signs up; "the [kids'] Web site can then use the data on each child to tailor its advertising," the Times reports. One of the age-verification companies the Times talked to, eGuardian, says kids are exposed to ads anyway (well, in some, not all, kids' sites), it just makes sure they're appropriate. The question is, how can that "appropriate advertising" be guaranteed? There's a pretty sexualized media culture and a lot of obesity in this society anyway, to name only a couple of issues. One of the remarkable things about this piece is the quote at the bottom from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a leading proponent of age verification, saying that verifying kids' ages online to promote marketing to them would be very concerning. This is the first qualifying statement about age verification we've seen from the attorneys general since they started calling for its implementation more than two years ago.

Not actually 'extreme teens'

This bit of pop anthropology in the Financial Times may interest parents: a university student telling an older friend how glad she is not to be a teenager these days. With social-network sites and services, she says, teens are on display 24/7. Sure, they put themselves in that position, but there's a great deal of pressure on them to, she suggests. They not only have to project an image but also protect it by being one-man or one-woman, always-on "PR machines" while also dealing with schoolwork, homework, sports and other extracurriculars, sometimes jobs, etc. "It's driving them all crazy," she told her friend, adding that this is normal. This isn't just "popular kids." But here's what I think everybody (teens, parents, educators, psychologists, etc.) needs to think together about going forward: "And there are so many casualties and nobody talks about it." The casualties of these new norms. And "casualties" doesn't necessarily mean drop-outs from this reality, but whatever impact it has, day-to-day, on young people's emotional and social well-being. [Readers, your comments - here, via email to anne at netfamilynews.org or in the ConnectSafely forum - would be most welcome!] BTW, here's how someone who actually is an "extreme teen" and social-Web PR master does it, according to the New York Times, referring to 18-year-old star singer/songwriter Taylor Swift, "the most remarkable country music breakthrough artist of the decade." Is her very smart, open PR strategy what many teens are emulating (or vice versa!)?

Teaching students to help stop cyberbullying

A conference on cyberbullying last week in Montpelier drew some 300 middle and high school students from all over Vermont, the Rutland Herald reported. Judging by the reporting, it was very effective - a research-based approach that encouraged empathy and gave young people information they could act on (along those lines, see our new "Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying" at ConnectSafely.org).

The keynote was given by John Halligan, father of Ryan Halligan, who was 13 when he killed himself after being bullied online. Telling Ryan's story "made the students think twice about online communications," according to the Herald. Halligan told the students that he believed it's up to them, not adults, to stop cyberbullying. [Here's an interview PBS's "Frontline" producers did with Mr. Halligan for its "Growing Up Online" documentary, which you and your kids can watch in full by clicking in the upper-right-hand corner of its home page.]

Phil Fogelman, an education director at the Anti-Defamation League, which sponsored the conference, also spoke. He explained that the social and emotional impact of cyberbullying on people can be "devastating." "The students gathered in small groups for two hours of workshops, identifying the most common forms of cyberbullying, which include sharing secret or embarrassing information about someone, sending cruel messages, spreading rumors online and posing as someone else," according to the Burlington Free Press.

Speakers taught students how to recognize and address cyberbullying when it happens. The Herald reported that "most of the students said that when they encountered cyberbullying they tried to remain uninvolved. Instructors said it was important not to participate, but also said being a bystander is not enough. Students were urged to report cases of cyberbullying to an adult."

Related links

Further info for everybody: Cyberbullying & Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress, by Nancy Willard, and Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying, by Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin

For teens: Letters to a Bullied Girl: Messages of Healing and Hope, by teen authors Olivia Gardner, Emily Buder, and Sarah Buder

For schools: Cyber Bullying: A Prevention Curriculum for Grades 3-5 and Cyber Bullying: A prevention Curriculum for Grades 6-12, by Susan Limber, Robin Kowalski, and Patricia Agatston

"Cyberbullying better defined" in NetFamilyNews, 9/19/08

"Online harassment: Not telling parents" in NetFamilyNews, 10/6/08

"Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying" from NFN's sister site, ConnectSafely.org

Sesame Street on video-sharing sites

Believe it or not, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie are 39 years old this year, and now there's a Sesame Street not only in 140 countries but also on the Web. It'll soon launch its YouTube channel with 100 video clips from the TV show, Reuters reports. Like YouTube, Hulu will also Hulu, an online video venture between News Corp and General Electric Co's NBC, will host 100 segments, and in addition "30 other segments featuring celebrity actor guests such as Julia Roberts and Laurence Fishburne." Reuters adds that full episodes of the show can be downloaded and purchased from iTunes "from season 35 and onward for $1.99." The first 10 seasons of Sesame Street are available only on disk.

MTV's multitasking viewers

Actually they're far from being mere viewers or consumers, and they're not just MTV's. But MTV came up with some fascinating data that certainly confirms no teen is just viewing even when the TV's on, YPulse reports. Certainly don't forget the tiny screen. Nearly half - 47% of 9-to-17-year-olds surveyed by MTV - said their social lives would end without texting. A full half (50%) use mobile texting and the same percentage "consider their mobile as an entertainment platform," YPulse adds. The latter figure is not surprising, because it seems to me that socializing is just as entertaining as any entertainment content on a given device. As far as multitasking goes, here are a few more numbers: 31% of teens' "home Internet activity occurs while watching TV"; 45% IM or text friends while watching TV shows at the same time in their respective homes; and 35% have participated in or played games that they were informed about while watching TV shows."

Real competition for Teen Second Life?

There are some great virtual worlds out there for kids' entertainment, but nothing quite holds a candle to Teen Second Life for its collective-creativity tools. Until Lego Universe arrives on the scene, says Barry Joseph, director of Global Kids' Online Leadership Program, in his blog. In the organization's blog he refers to it as "a bright light in the distance," he wrote in the organization's blog, point to Lego Universe, expected to debut sometime next year. Apparently it'll be virtual world and massively multiplayer game combined. The reason why it could offer TSL serious competition is Lego's track record for collective creativity online and the fact that it has a tangible, well-known Real Life connection: those little plastic bricks (you may be interested in my interview way back in 1998 with Robbie Berg, whose work at the MIT Media Lab contributed to the development of Lego MindStorms). Joseph's post includes a video preview of what Lego Universe will look like, including one that depicts "one avatar building a car followed by a second avatar collaborating on its construction." With this game/world, parents probably will quickly find the same kind of comfort level they found with Lego Star Wars. In that case, little Lego people running around with light sabers just can't seem very violent; in the case of a virtual world, this environment's more like ClubPenguin than Teen Second Life. Building and leveraging RL Lego fans will have to make up the difference for teens. [See also "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users."]

Social (networking) scene in Canada

Canadians have definitely taken to social networking. "Some 17 million have a Facebook profile, 4.5 million are on MySpace, 14.5 million visit YouTube every month, and 3.6 million upload photos to the sharing site Flickr.com," the Toronto Globe & Mail reports. It doesn't even mention home-grown Nexopia, based in Edmonton, with about 1.4 million users. The Globe & Mail article (and accompanying Q&A with readers) is about privacy concerns regardless of users' ages ("social networkers shape their identity with these sites, essentially broadcasting their public image around the world"), pointing to a problem social sites are dealing with wherever their users are: "Many social-networking sites have privacy systems in place, but many users ignore them, only to find out - too late - that they shouldn't have left their photos, blog postings and personal information available for anyone to discover." Here are Part 2, "When a widget attacks your profile," and Part 3, "Underage kids flock to social networks." South of the border, an article in the Kansas City Star suggests this "public explosion in self-documentation" is a generational thing. Is it?

Virtual-word murder, real-life arrest

It's the first known arrest for the murder of an avatar. Japanese police arrested a 43-year-old woman in southern Japan for murdering the avatar of a 33-year-old man in northern Japan, Fox News reports. Their avatars had been married in MapleStory, a virtual world that has seven Asian editions (Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc.) as well as editions for North America, Europe, and most recently Brazil . She was so angry upon hearing of the avatars' "sudden divorce" that she allegedly used his log-in info, obtained in happier times, to kill his avatar off. "The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world," a Japanese official told Fox, but was arrested and "jailed [after being transported 620 miles north to Sapporo] on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data." If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000. Teacher Vicki Davis in Atlanta uses this story as an example of how "online behavior has offline consequences" and how technology is not the issue (see TechLearning.com): "So many schools are punishing the portal, the website, the tool," she writes. "It is not the tool's fault that humans misbehave. That is human nature. Hold the humans accountable who do wrong things in these spaces." I think she's absolutely right but also hope people's take-away on the Japanese story is that the woman was arrested for hacking not murdering an avatar.

Is anger rife online or...

...in "real life," or both? CNN focuses on the Net, saying that "though there are any number of bloggers and commenters who attempt to keep their postings and responses on a civil level, all too often interactive Web sites descend into ad hominem attacks, insults and plain old name-calling. Indeed, there are even whole sites devoted to venting, such as justrage.com ... and mybiggestcomplaint.com." It's exactly what digital-citizenship instruction needs to address, but remember too that disagreement can be respectful and anger ok if not hurtful. Civility, certainly, but also anger management, empathy, critical thinking, and thicker-skin development are all good topics for digital-citizenship discussion. Here's CNN's sidebar on anger in Second Life.

China's definition of Net addiction

Sheer critical mass could be one reason why Chinese doctors had to come up with a definition of Internet addiction. Net users aged 18-30 make up half of China's estimated online population of some 250 million people, and 10% of that group of Netizens are addicted (about 70% of them male), China Daily reports. That's 12.5 million addicts. The announcement, by Dr. Tao Ran of Beijing's Military General Hospital, was one of two firsts for China: the first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction "amid efforts to address an increasing number of psychological problems that reportedly result from Internet overuse" and China's first Internet addiction clinic. "China could become the first country to classify Internet addiction as a clinical disorder and plans to lead the world by registering the condition with the World Health Organisation," the Times of London reports. Symptoms include "yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping." Dr. Tao "classifies as addicts those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one symptom in the past three months." He said 80% can be cured with treatment that "usually lasts about three months." The Times adds that "research by the internet media company InterActiveCorp showed that 42% of Chinese youngsters polled felt addicted to the internet, compared with 18% in the US."

Teens' nude photo-sharing in NH

New Hampshire is the latest state where there have been reports of teens passing around via cellphones nude photos of peers. "Students at Salem High School were allegedly circulating graphic photos of fellow, underage female students among themselves via cell phone, prompting a police investigation," the New Hampshire Union Leader reports. Police said photos of at least two girls were disseminated by both boys and girls to a "significant number of students" but not throughout the entire student body of 2,300. The Caledonian Record later reported that "police, prosecutors and school officials ... are warning students that ... taking, possessing and distributing explicit pictures of children is a crime." The school held an assembly Monday night to inform students that the photos constituted "pornography," the Eagle-Tribune reported, leaving "at least one parent" upset that it did more to spread rumors than provide facts. For stories in other states about this trend, see "Naked photo-sharing trend" and "Nude photo-sharing: Q from a family that's been there."

Brain scans & bullying

It appears some bullies literally feel better when viewing others suffering. "Brain scans of teens with a history of aggressive bullying behavior suggest that they may actually get pleasure out of seeing someone else in pain," Reuters cites researchers at the University of Chicago as finding. Though unsurprising to victims of bullying, probably, the finding is not actually what the researchers expected. "The prevailing view" is that bullies are "cold and unemotional," while this indicates that they actually "care very much" about the impact of their behavior, they told Reuters. For the first time, the researchers used fMRI to watch the brain activity in eight 16-to-18-year-olds with aggressive conduct disorder while showing them "video clips of someone inflicting pain on another person." They did the same with a control group of eight teens with no aggression problems. "In the aggressive teens, areas of the brain linked with feeling rewarded - the amygdala and ventral striatum - became very active when they observed pain being inflicted on others. But they showed little activity in an area of the brain involved in self-regulation - the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction - as was seen in the control group." What this indicates, as eScience News put it, is that "some aggressive youths' natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted in ways that increase aggression." The researchers told Reuters their study - entitled "Atypical Empathetic Responses in Adolescents with Aggressive Conduct Disorder: A functional MRI Investigation" and appearing in the journal Biological Psychology - wasn't conclusive; a larger one is needed. [This just in: a New York Times blog post about this study, with interesting reader comments following it.]

Invisible publics

In this digital-media age, teens' invisible audiences are many: relatives, employers, marketers, school officials, government agencies, and possibly even stalkers. Another way to think of some of these publics - not just marketers - is as "data miners," mining on an individual level (mining individuals' private thoughts made public) as well as mining profiles in aggregate. Yet, I'm seeing it said in a number of research papers and analyses that teens are either not aware of these invisible publics or choosing not to care. In a paper in FirstMonday - "A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States" - Susan Barnes looks at the implications, asking if social networkers really have any privacy. She mentions privacy scholar Oscar Gandy’s "metaphor of a Panopticon - an architectural design that allowed prisoners to be monitored by observers" and writes that "online social networks allow for high levels of surveillance.... Social-networking sites create a central repository of personal information. These archives are persistent and cumulative." New information is not replaced in this global archive of innermost thoughts; it's just moved down. So, instead of the well-used definition of privacy that might make teens' eyes glaze over, parents and teens might consider this as worth protecting: "Privacy isn't just about hiding things. It's about self-possession, autonomy, and integrity." Barnes is quoting Simson Garfinkel, author of Database Nation. Parents, note that many teens already practice this approach by adding fictional elements to their online profiles (see "Fictionalizing their profiles"). Barnes makes this point too, while pointing to potential social, technical, and legal solutions. I agree with her that "it will take all levels of society to tackle the social issues related to teens and privacy," and that "awareness is key."

Related links

The Digital Natives Project's Diana Kimball takes you (anyone) on a "field trip" through Facebook's privacy controls.

I'd be very interested to know - via anne(at)netfamilynews.org - if what you hear from your kids when together you dig into this subject (in a single family discussion or over time) is not the rough equivalent to: "Young people today are already developing an attitude toward their privacy that is simultaneously vigilant and laissez-faire. They curate their online personas as carefully as possible, knowing that everyone is watching - but they have also learned to shrug and accept the limits of what they can control." That's from Clive Thompson in the New York Times Magazine.

Who'll see what I post 20 yrs from now?

That's a question that needs to hang around 24/7 in the back of social networkers' and bloggers' minds, because - according to the authors of just-published Born Digital (Basic Books, 2008) - "at no time in human history has information about a young person been more freely and publicly accessible to so many others.” This comes as no surprise to many parents, but few of us know the reasons. Here's one good one from authors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser: Teen "social norms suggest that more information about yourself will attract more friends." So a few interesting questions you could ask your kids in a dinner-table conversation (from a blogger in the Digital Natives blog) are: Will sharing their thoughts and everyday life online make them more popular? (Remember, it's normal if they feel that way - this is a commonly held view among youth - just explain you read it was a social norm and are honestly interested in your child's take on it.] "Do [they] understand the gravity of what and how much information [they] expose of themselves on the Internet?" And do they "ever take into account that [their] information is owned by the companies offering the services [they] are using? (Parents and teens can look at any social site's Terms of Service for information on how users' own content might be used; hopefully the site enforces them.)

Mobile parenting

I especially liked Nos. 4 and 6 in Marian Merritt's blog post about how parents can help their kids keep mobile phone use safe and affordable. If you use cellphone parental controls (she speaks to those, and I wrote about them last May here), "tell your child you are installing and using parental controls and show them the details on what you'll be limiting." She adds that this is not the time to be spying on your child." I agree, for the simple reason that, if you did monitor them surreptitiously and found something untoward, you'd have to talk with them anyway, and then it'd be really hard to keep anger and communication breakdown at bay. There is one exception, though: If your child is spending an unusual amount of time online and is being secretive and uncommunicative, monitoring software might be justified to ensure s/he's not at risk. For more on mobile parenting, see our "Cellphone Safety Tips" at ConnectSafely.org. A couple of other posts on the subject: "Teen uber-texters" and "Cellphone etiquette."

Tragic end to Canada's search for a boy

In a deeply sad follow-up to last week's feature, hunters this week stumbled upon the body of a boy believed to be 15-year-old Brandon Crisp of Barrie, Ontario, the Toronto Globe & Mail reported. An autopsy is being performed today (Friday), but police said they believed the cause of death to be hypothermia. Brandon had left home weeks ago on his bike, angry after a family argument about videogame play. The bike was later found broken. For parents seeking expert advice on videogame addition, please see "Don't just take away the Xbox."

Harvard prof on RIAA anti-piracy tactics

The number of challenges to the US recording industry's approach to copyright infringement is on the rise. But a new challenge, by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, has "opened a new front" in the battle between the RIAA and music file-sharers, Computerworld reports. It challenges the constitutionality of the statute the RIAA has used in thousands of cases against file-sharers. Nesson argues that it's a criminal statute unlawful to use in civil cases. "He also challenged the constitutionality of the steep penalties for copyright violations that are provided under the act. The penalties range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement, with a maximum of $150,000 for certain willful violations," according to Computerworld. Nesson likens the tactics to the creation of a "private police force giving out million-dollar tickets ... using the courts as "collection agencies." So far legal challenges to the RIAA's campaign "have tended to focus on the constitutionality of the statutory fines provided under the copyright act," Computerworld adds. BTW, for your kids or students, here's a fun, animated explanation of fair use in copyright law, "A Fair(y) Use Tale" at YouTube. It's by Prof. Eric Faden of Bucknell University and, as he puts it, "delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms." See also "Defending remixers, future artists."

'The parents' fault. Not.'

Those are the words of tech educator Will Richardson, who in his blog tells of a conversation with a high school principal. Richardson had said in his presentation that no one was teaching young people how to use social-network sites well. So the principal told Richardson he was teaching them - when he hauls them into his office, shows them the nasty stuff he'd found on their profiles, and watches the "genuine astonishment" on their faces that he'd found their profiles. Clearly that cluelessness was their parents' fault, the principal indicated. Richardson thought not, but the solution is not the one-shot "parent awareness night" or "some type of scary Internet predator presentation by a state policeman." He continued: "For the life of me, I can't understand what is so hard about opening up the first and second and third grade curriculum and finding ways to integrate these skills and literacies in a systemic way. If you want kids to be educated about these tools and environments, then maybe we should, um, educate them." Hear, hear! But here's a literacy we can integrate into our kids' lives too: life literacy, learning how to function in community (online as well as offline), learning treat others as we'd like: Tech-etiquette basics like "no texting or talking during dinner." [See also "Cellphone etiquette."]

US's record youth vote

Voters under 30 traditionally tend to vote similarly to those over 30, MSNBC reports. Not in this election. "Young voters preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by 68% to 30% - the highest share of the youth vote obtained by any candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age in 1976," MSNBC cites CIRCLE (a non-partisan organization that promotes research on the political engagement of Americans 15-25) as saying. "Early reports" are indicating that this election's youth turnout exceeded that of 2004, "which was itself a year with a big surge in voters ages 18 to 29," according to MSNBC. Rock the Vote, too, says it's seeing a record youth turnout this year. It worked with Facebook to register 50,000+ new voters this year, ZDNET reports. Among other developments, "just after midnight on Nov. 4, about 1 million people used the Causes application to simultaneously set their Facebook status with a unified message to remind their friends to vote. Facebook is calling it one of the largest online rallies in history, with more than 1.5 million people participating." As for election-related Internet use overall, ZDNET reports that around the time Obama was being declared the winner, "an Internet usage record was being broken." Citing Akamai figures, it adds that "at the peak, there were more than 8.5 million visitors per minute visiting news sites around the globe - with more than 7.5 million of those visits occurring from Web connections in North America."

Videogamers and/or future composers?

The latest edition of Guitar Hero, "World Tour," is not more of the same, Mike Musgrove at the Washington Post reports. In it, you can go into "studio" mode, lay down your own tracks, then "click a button and 'publish' the song online so that any other player with a Web-connected game console can download and play your song, just as they would play any other song in the game. If other players like your creation, they can vote for it and you can get the satisfaction of watching your song climb the online charts at the game's online service, called 'GH Tunes'." Even more cool than this, though, is that it's part of a trend. "Many of the hottest new titles appearing this holiday season include software tools that allow users to express themselves and share their work with an online audience." Examples: create your own characters in Spore, design and share your own games in Xbox Live's "community games" (coming soon); write and share your own adventure story in LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3; and compose tracks based on your movements with Wii Music.

Videogame for SAT prep

This makes sense: Up nationwide test scores by trying to make preparing for SATs fun! "Two of the country's largest test-prep course providers are pairing with video game companies for the first time, to give students another way to practice," the Akron [Ohio] Beacon Journal reports. One of the games, designed with the help of Kaplan, helps students with "simple math, reading, and writing games." It runs $40. Portable prep makes even more sense: A $30 version for the Nintendo DS should be available now. "Princeton Review Inc. is also collaborating on a test-prep game," the Beacon Journal adds.

Videogames & aggression: New study

A just-published article in Pediatrics looked at three studies - one in the US and two in Japan - which found that "playing violent videogames is a significant risk factor for later physically aggressive behavior and that this violent videogame effect on youth generalizes across very different cultures." The authors added that the research "strongly suggests reducing the exposure of youth to this risk factor." But context is important. The study's lead author Craig Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, told the Washington Post that the findings "should be understood in the larger context of a child's life." Playing 5-10 hours of a violent videogame isn't going to change a "healthy, normal, nonviolent child" into a violent one, Anderson said, adding that extreme aggression usually results from an array of "risk factors." The Post points out some such risk factors identified by the US surgeon general in 2001: "gang involvement, antisocial parents and peers, substance abuse, poverty and media violence." The study in Pediatrics reported that videogames are played in 90% of US homes with children 8-16 and "US average playing time of four hours a week in the late 1980s is now up to 13 hours a week, with boys averaging 16 to 18 hours a week," according to the Post. Here's coverage at Wired's geekdad blog and Health magazine. See also "US teens' gaming highly social."

M.U.S.I.C. in class

With the US election tomorrow, it seems a fitting time to read Thomas Paine and Jimmy Cliff at the top of a middle-school assignment about social justice and perseverance, followed by 7th-graders' interpretations. New York City teacher John Chase's 8th-graders' even more powerful responses to songs about social responsibility and empathy indicates how much the assignment resonated with them (put this into an anti-cyberbullying lesson, teachers and advocates!). Music - or rather M.U.S.I.C. (Musicians United for Songs in the Classroom), a nonprofit organization Chase formed - is literally bringing history to life, or rather to his students' everyday lives and connections with the people in them (including their teachers!). Here's the Paine-Cliff assignment in Chase's own words in his MySpace blog, where so many musicians and students are: "Last month 7th-grade students studied the American Revolution and learned about the 'power of the pen' and Thomas Paine's essay, 'The American Crisis.' We also listened to and discussed Jimmy Cliff's song, 'The Harder They Come.' I then asked my students to practice being Paine or Cliff, and compose a personal mission statement, poem, or lyric to inspire and motivate people to 'fight on' in our times." Here's the story on Chase and the M.U.S.I.C. program, as well as the past summer's project, with comments from musicians involved. In his bio Chase quotes Maya Angelou as saying, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”