Wii-related 'parental challenges'

A California mom was "lucky" enough this past fall to walk into a toy store right after a fresh shipment of Nintendo Wii consoles had been received. So she bought one for her child as a gift, only too soon to discover some "hidden costs." "Be prepared for "post-Wii stress disorder," she wrote in the Los Gatos Weekly Times. In the last four paragraphs of her story, she suggests how parents of Wii players can prepare themselves (including if they get hooked themselves).

Oral culture online

You know how most communication, story-telling, and history used to be oral? Well, with social networking, humanity may be coming full circle. "Academic researchers are starting to [explore] the parallels between online social networks and tribal societies," the New York Times reports. "In the collective patter of profile-surfing, messaging and 'friending,' they see the resurgence of ancient patterns of oral communication. The growth of social networks - and the Internet as a whole - stems largely from an outpouring of expression that often feels more like 'talking' than writing: blog posts, comments, homemade videos and, lately, an outpouring of epigrammatic one-liners broadcast using services like Twitter and Facebook status updates." The Times tells of cultural anthropology Prof. Michael Wesch at Kansas State University who at one time lived with a tribe in Papua New Guinea, "studying how people forge social relationships in a purely oral culture." Dr. Wesch "applies the same ethnographic research methods to the rites and rituals of Facebook users."

The social Web Petri dish

Social-networking sites are important Petri dishes. By studying the social Web, researchers are learning a lot about how people interact - not just about how they do so now and online but about human interaction in general. In fact, research in social-networking sites "may be more accurate than personal information offered elsewhere online, such as chat room profiles, because [it's] based in real-world relationships that originate in confined communities like campuses," reports the New York Times, referring to a UCLA- and Harvard-based study of 1,700 Facebook users in the junior class of one northeastern US college. One of the things they're looking at: "weak ties," those between, say, two classmates or people who meet at a big party. "Weak ties are significant, scholars say, because they are likely to provide people with new perspectives and opportunities that they might not get from close friends and family." According to the Times, "social scientists at Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, the University of Texas and other institutions are mining Facebook to test traditional theories in their fields about relationships, identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement. The Washington Post recently ran a gossipy piece about the fledgling social-media research community which got some reaction in the academic blogosphere (e.g., ), but it does name a number of the individual researchers and projects working on the social Web right now. Back to the Harvard-UCLA project: An important concept they're exploring is "triadic closure," "first put forth by the pioneering German sociologist Georg Simmel … whether one’s friends are also friends of one another. If this seems trivial, consider that a study in 2004 in The American Journal of Public Health suggested that adolescent girls who are socially isolated and whose friends are not friends with one another experienced more suicidal thoughts."

Politician's profile deleted

It was Liberal Democrat Steve Webb, a British member of Parliament, whose Facebook page was deleted after someone sent in an abuse report calling it an imposter profile. Soon there was a Facebook group called "Steve Webb is Real!", CNET reports. His profile was shortly reinstated, to the satisfaction of his 2,500 Facebook friends and constitutents. But what's interesting about all this is that on the social Web it's sometimes as hard to prove there's a real person behind a profile as it is to prove there isn't. [See also "Extreme cyberbullying: US case comes to light."]

New features afoot at MySpace

MySpace plans to be people's dashboard for navigating cyberspace, USATODAY reports - the place "where they can check in on the activities of friends, peruse email, get the latest on news and weather, and post their favorite photos and videos." To deal with the growing threat Facebook represents to MySpace, USATODAY says, the latter is projecting itself as a place for self-expression rather than being the social "utility" it says Facebook is (Facebook declined comment for the story). There are 6 million bands registered on MySpace, USATODAY adds. Other plans for 2008 include: giving members "the option of creating multiple profiles tailored to friends, family and business associates. A channel with Oberon Media, a maker of multiplayer games, is in the works for the first half of 2008. MySpace unveiled a service that lets MySpace members make free Internet phone calls through Skype (EBAY). And it just unfurled Transmissions, a program that lets musicians showcase music on their pages and sell performance videos," according to the article. With more members than the population of Mexico and local versions in 22 countries and territories outside the US, MySpace also continues its international expansion, planning to open offices and "launch custom sites in India, Russia, Poland, South Korea, and Turkey, the Zooped blog reports. For example, in India, where Net speeds are comparatively slow, a less bandwidth-greedy version is in the works. In South Korea, where blogging is hugely popular, MySpace will be more of a blogging site than in the US (though blogging is part of the US MySpace experience). Meanwhile, Facebook is growing fast internationally too - see Zooped for some comScore figures it cites.

Controversial 'Cool Girl' game in Oz

Is it a way for "cool girl" wannabes to vent their frustrations, does it teach them to bully, or does it simply entertain? Those are the questions reportedly surrounding a new mobile-phone game in Australia that's drawing international attention. Called "Coolest Girl in School," the game - quite an anomaly because designed specifically for girls - "invites young players to 'lie, bitch, and flirt your way to the top of the high school ladder'," reports Sydney-based SmartHouse magazine. It went on sale last week and the Australian Family Association called for it to be banned. The game was designed by Adelaide-based developers Holly Owen of Champagne for the Ladies and Karyn Lanthois of Kukan Studio, who said they were surprised by the pre-release international attention.

Australia's very connected families

Ninety percent of Australian families with children are online, up from 7% in 2005, reports Australian IT, citing new findings from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Three-quarters (76%) of those online families have broadband connections. The study also found that "most Australian families with children older than eight now have three televisions, three mobile phones, a gaming console, and Internet access," and 98% own a computer. Oz's 15-to-17-year-olds spend on average an hour and 15 minutes a day online, and 42% have posted content to social-networking sites. As for TV, it has diminished in importance in Australia too, but 20% of Australian children have TV sets in their bedrooms now (up from 8% in 1995), and that compares to 70% of UK kids and 75% of US kids, according to the report. "The vast majority of [Australian] parents say their children's media consumption is fairly easy to control."

Oz union's Facebook profile

The Australian Workers Union is marketing itself to youth by establishing a presence in Facebook, Australian IT reports. Though union leaders say its profile will get more sophisticated, for now "users can add the ‘Proud AWU Supporter’ application to their profile pages to obtain the organisation's latest news feeds." Version 2.0 will let users "interact directly" with the union, which says it wants to differentiate itself from most unions, which "generally ignore new forms of communication."

Musicians' view of teen social networking

Come enter, here's my world
Closed off from pain and cold
Come enter, come inside
A secret place of light
'Cause in this world I'm rid of you,
You can't get through

Those are lyrics from a song entitled "Digital Deceit" by Netherlands-based band After Forever. A rare artistic depiction of teen social networking, it's part of a concept CD "about a family with serious issues," wrote researcher Daniel Cardoso in an email to me. Most of this song represents the voice of the daughter, who is "taking refuge in her Internet persona," said Daniel. You may recognize the other voice in the lyrics, that of the adults around her….

Stop dreaming and wake up
Your silly world is not what's real
This world of fake friends
and computers - digital deceit

What struck me immediately about the teenage voice in this song is how it resonates with the latest research in the US about the teens who are most vulnerable to exploitation on the social Web (see "Profile of a teen online victim"): Online "I'm beautiful and all my friends would say the same … the queen of her own world … another me, not someone insecure and strange / My father's will in here, it doesn't mean a thing / And I don't fear his violent rage" (here's a video of After Forever performing the song in YouTube). By the end of the story, however, this teen sounds too grounded to move toward victimization (for more on this CD as a whole, click to this sidebar on my server).

I was fortunate to have met Daniel Cardoso at an online-safety conference held in Lisbon last week by MiudosSegurosNa.net (Portugal's pioneering online-safety organization) and sponsored by Portugal Telecom. The conference was an unprecedented opportunity for the country's biggest Internet provider, children's advocates, research community, law enforcement, and government to compare notes on an important subject. Daniel is a researcher as well as Webmaster for EUKidsOnline Portugal, directed by Prof. Cristina Ponte at the New University of Lisbon (EU Kids Online is a huge ongoing research project involving research in 24 countries).

If you're wondering about After Forever's music, the band itself says it's hard to categorize. In its MySpace profile, it says it "has never pinned itself strictly on any given style. They have the obvious combination of metal and classical themes, but can just as easily implement rock, pop, industrial and progressive styles into their songs." The songs I've heard on this concept CD (including this other, climactic, one), sound like rock opera to me, maybe partly because they're part of a story.

Daniel kindly sent more info on the CD - Invisible Circles - as a whole. You'll find it and lyrics of "Digital Deceit" here.

'Teens rule the Web'

That was just one (the Washington Post's) of an interesting range of headlines about the latest Pew Internet & American Life study about US 12-to-17-year-olds online. The Post's reporter blogged about how "teens continue to lead the pack in creating content on the Web." The San Jose Mercury News reported that "More teens move their social lives online." The Associated Press and USATODAY took the boy-bites-dog angle - that good, ol'-fashioned (land-line) phones and face-to-face conversation are still valued by US teens communicating with friends. Internet News zoomed in on the "super-communicators" part: "Representing 28% of teenagers, super-communicators are those kids who use every technology to communicate that is available to them, including landlines and cell phones, social-networking sites, text messaging, instant messaging and, as a last resort, email." The study was picked up internationally, of course, including in Mumbai, India, at the TechShout blog. Here are some key findings:

"Publishing" as conversing: 41% of teens who are on social networks said that they routinely use those sites to send messages to their friends. When teens blog, post videos, etc., they're "looking to start a conversation as much as they are trying to promote their own creative output," Internet News reports.

Privacy - 66% of teens with social-networking profiles limit access to their pages; 77% of those who post photos "restrict access at least some of the time." Pew's study released earlier this week found that adults are less concerned about privacy protection than teens.

64% of online teens in general "engage in at least one type of content creation," up from 57% in 2004.

"Girls dominate most elements of content creation," according to Pew/Internet.

Blogs, girls; videos, boys - 28% of online teens have created a blog (up from 19% in 2004), and almost all of the new ones are girls'; while 19% of online teen boys had posted video, compared to 10% of girls.

27% manage their own Web site.

39% post photos, videos, and other artistic content; 54% of girls and 40% of boys have posted photos.

Kid videogame picks & pans

Just a quick heads-up for any last-minute shopping: CNET has a "18 top game picks: The DOs and DON'Ts of games for kids." The guide includes screen shots so you can see what the games look like, and it offers "nine games you can count on for your child, and nine you should shy away from (or keep for yourself)." They're all good games, just not all child-appropriate, CNET adds. There is one "don't" concerning hardware rather than a game, on the very last page: the Xbox 360 headset. "The premise: This simple headset plugs into your Xbox 360 controller and enables voice chat over Xbox Live and compatible games. The good: Lets your kids talk to other people over Xbox Live. The bad: Lets your kids talk to other people over Xbox Live." See also "Support for young videogamers."

Public wi-fi's risks

If you're traveling for the holidays, be careful when you use wi-fi hotspots in public places. "Few things expose your [computer] to greater security risks than latching onto a public Wi-Fi service," USATODAY reports. "Computer criminals can 'sniff' the traffic in a cafe, or set up a fake hot spot that you might innocently log into. When that happens, watch out: Everything you type goes directly to the host computer, known as an 'evil twin'." The "twin is ready to grab passwords, financial info, etc. Some retailers with wireless service are now advertising secure connectivity, which really helps. If you log on and see "https" instead of "http," your connecting is also probably secure. USATODAY has a sidebar with other tips.

Parents speaking 'txt'?

This is probably not news to you: Many technologically challenged parents are being introduced to the world of texting by their children, the Denver Post reports. "Statistics point emphatically to kids and young adults under 25 driving the tidal surge in text messaging - up fourfold in the past two years to almost 30 billion messages a month," the Post cites wireless industry figures as showing. But I love the basic message of the article, that "the process of young people instructing their parents can be gratifying for both." It tells of an Arizona computer services company advising parents that it's fun to surprise your kids by sending them an out-of-the-blue message like, "I love you" or "What would you like for dinner?" Meanwhile, it looks like 2007 is the year when Americans will have spent more on cellphones than on landlines, the Associated Press reports.

Be wary of e-cards!

Warning: Those "holiday e-greetings" you and your kids find in your email in-boxes may not all be from friends. "E-cards can spread cheer, cheesy humor, and, unfortunately, computer viruses," the Christian Science Monitor reports. "Spammers and hackers continually shift their strategies to match the calendar. And this time of year, they often hide behind season's greetings." The temptation to click on a friendly greeting is called social engineering. The Monitor quotes a Trend Micro expert as saying that the most successful email virus ever had the subject line "I LOVE YOU." One thing people should always do is check to see if the email has the name of the person sending you the greeting and that you know the person! Check out the article's sidebar for other tips for malicious e-card avoidance.

Very public binge drinking

When CNN contacted a 22-year-old university business major about a video she posted of herself drunk she took it down, saying the interview request made her realize anyone could see it, CNN reports. She's a member of a Facebook group with more than 172,000 members called "Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night," which has a page linking to 5,000 photos of drunk college students - many of them extremely humiliating (CNN describes some of them). And many of the photos "are accompanied by full names and the colleges the women attend, apparently without much concern that parents, or potential employers, will take a look." I hope it doesn't take a call from a news reporter for it to occur to other group members that the images and videos they post could be harmful to future prospects! Forty percent of US college students binge drink, reports CNN, citing a 2007 report by the Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse.

Half of us search for ourselves...

…or someone else in Web search engines, according to the latest study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The exact figures are 47% searching for ourselves, up from 22% in 2002, and 53% searching for others. The findings "reflect how people are sharing more and more of their lives on the Internet, as well as how Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace are encouraging users to post their home videos, photographs and personal profiles online, including data ranging from their favorite movies to their cell phone number," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. In other findings, some 36% of us have searched for someone we've lost touch with and 9% have "dug up information on someone they were dating." In its coverage, the Associated Press reports that teens are "more likely than adults to restrict who can see their profiles … contrary to conventional wisdom." In other findings, some 36% of us have searched for someone we've lost touch with and 9% have "dug up information on someone they were dating," according to the Chronicle. Note that 60% of us are not worried about how much information about us is online, sixty-one percent "have not felt compelled to limit it," and 38% use privacy controls. The Pew/Internet study - "Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency" - is here.

Euro social networking

Lots of news this week about European social networking, with headlines about Bebo, Piczo, Facebook, and Bahu. Piczo, reportedly the UK's 4th-largest social-networking site, is going mobile, The Guardian reports. The site will allow users "to post photos, videos and messages from their phones to their profile pages." [The Times of London reported that "British adults are more frequent users of social networking sites than any of their European counterparts," with 40% of Britons using them compared with 17% of adults in France, 12% in Germany, and 22% in Italy.] France-based Bahu.com Bahu.com, a social site started by students for high school students across Europe, just received its first round of funding, it announced. "Bahu now counts over 300,000 members, and counted 2 million unique visitors in November." San Francisco-based Bebo, meanwhile, just announced its plans to "join forces with Poland’s leading media company Agora to deliver a content-rich social-networking experience to the Polish online audience. It's particularly appropriate to mention European developments this week because of the signing Thursday of the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union's reform treaty, at Lisbon's Jerónimos Monastery (see this in the Associated Press and this commentary in The Guardian).

Schools' sex-offender detection tech

The national sex-offender database is being put to another use in some of the US's public schools. The Washington Post describes a new computerized security system being put in place in the Prince William County School District, Virginia's second-largest. The system, called "The Raptor" "scans government-issued identification cards and checks them against a database of listings of 460,000 sex offenders from across the country." Designed by a Texas company, it's now in some 4,000 US schools, the Post reports. "In many cases, the security programs can also store parental custody information and tabulate parent volunteer hours." Some parents think it's a lot faster than waiting in line to sign in. But some immigrant-rights organizations worry about possible privacy violation, though school officials say IDs will only be checked against sex-offender registries. "Signs are being placed at schools' front desks to advise visitors that they can show an ID other than a U.S.-issued driver's license, such as foreign driver's license, a passport, a green card or a reentry permit."

Fresh data on phone-based porn

"Revenues from mobile 'adult services' are set to approach $3.5 billion by 2010," reports VNUNET in the UK. It's citing new findings by Juniper Research, which says the growth "will be fuelled by increasing adoption of streamed video and video chat" on phones and "a sharp rise" in the use of "3G" or smart phones that are really Net-connected computers more than mere communications devices. A lot of that new revenue will come from North America because it's an "underdeveloped" market for phone-based pornography, compared to Europe. And eastern European consumption "is rising at a higher rate than previously anticipated." Cellphone service providers are reluctant to provide the content in North America, VNUNET reports, but the Web on phones is another whole platform for porn operators. in the adoption of 3G services. But analysts say that the most popular content is "graphic amateur content." That would be the user-produced kind, not the "professional" kind. What worries me is the kids who share risqué or sexually explicit video of themselves via the Web or phone - the devastating impact this can have on their lives if the content is made public (see "Teens' child porn convictions upheld"). Here are some tips in ConnectSafely.org for safe video-sharing.

Penthouse's social sites

If you check your child's browser history, you probably don't want to find any of the social-networking sites Penthouse has just acquired. Even though the adult content industry says all the homemade x-rated videos on the user-produced Web have hurt its business, Penthouse Media is bullish, the New York Times reports. Penthouse has invested $500 million in Various Inc., which has more than 2 dozen sites, the "most popular Web site [being] adultfriendfinder, which describes itself as a personals community for swingers and sex. But Various owns a variety of other social networks like Italianfriendfinder.com, gradfinder.com and bigchurch.com, which offers to help users 'meet people who share the same spiritual beliefs as you'.”

Disney's UK kids portal

Disney says it's about to launch a site for UK children and tweens. Disney.co.uk will be a portal pulling together the company's assets (including social networking) for kids, Reuters reports. "At its heart [is] a feature called Disney Xtreme Digital" in which users can "customize multimedia content simultaneously while watching and sharing videos, messages, music, and games." It'll be interesting to see what is meant by "social networking," but Reuters says "online parental-protection measures are wrapped into the site, along with functionality that prompts children to use Disney-proposed online-chat phrases that have an emphasis on being polite while also using language that can reflect whether the user is looking at content focused on pirates or princesses."

The teenage brain & the social Web

Two articles about the teenage brain and juvenile crime have a message for the way we think about the youth-driven social Web. "The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash," reports the Associated Press (it's in the Chicago-area Daily Herald). He's a psychology professor at Temple University referring to researchers' growing understanding that the frontal lobe, or executive part, of the brain isn't fully developed until people's early to mid 20s. That understanding should have an impact on criminal sentencing of minors, many experts argue, but it also says something about what society worldwide is seeing on the teenage part of the social Web. Identity exploration and risk assessment, experts tell us, is part of adolescent brain development. It always has been offline, but now a lot of it is on display before adults' very eyes on the Web. Awareness of teen behavior can be a little unnerving for adults and - again - always has been, but concern multiplies when 1) the adult observer doesn't fully understand the medium; 2) teen behavioral norms, as always, different from adults'; and 3) the views, behaviors, and images of entire social networks are on display and instantly accessible to adults (a "super public," as social-media researcher danah boyd calls it). Teens by definition take and assess risk, but this does not mean they don't sometimes need someone "in the car" with them to help engage the brakes. [The other AP story was in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area's Pioneer Press. See also the National Institute for Mental Health's "Teenage brain: A work in progress."]

Videogame 'Report Card' for 2007

Because "videogames" includes the word "games," there are still some parents who don't take videogames seriously enough, said David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family this week. So parents got a "C" on the organization's 12th-annual "Video Game Report Card" (see p. 12 of the 26-page document). The videogames rating board, the ESRB, got a B- for its education efforts; the ratings themselves got a C+ (for "not being based on all of games' content and code, locked or unlocked," the latter meaning gamers' ability to modify the content); the game industry got a C; and the big national retailers got a D for not enforcing the ratings at point of purchase. "The institute conducted 58 sting operations and found almost half the time, children as young as 12, could buy games rated M for 'mature' - intended for kids 17 and older," ABC News reports. For holiday game shoppers, see p. 14 of the institute's report for lists of 10 recommended games and 10 "games to avoid for your children and teens." Other resources include the ESRB's ratings site, where you can search for a game title on somebody's wish list, the Washington Post's "Holiday Videogame Guide," a transcript of Post game columnist Mike Musgrove's
chat with readers on this year's videogames, and WhatTheyPlay.com's game reviews for parents. Here, too, is the Associated Press's coverage on the "Report Card."

Facebook apologizes about ads

Facebook seems to prefer to ask for users' forgiveness rather than permission. A "humbled [Facebook] CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement apologizing for the way his company rolled out the Beacon ad platform," Internet News reports. He said that now users could bow out of the program entirely, "bowing to pressure from privacy advocates and many Facebook users." More than 50,000 of them had signed a petition initiated by MoveOn.org which demanded that Facebook not broadcast information about users' purchases on other Web sites without their permission, the Financial Times reports. Internet News added that "Facebook’s retreat marks the second time it has been forced to make changes to a new technology because of privacy concerns. Last year, users protested after it introduced 'News Feed,' which allowed users to keep track of their friends’ actions on the site." Here's the New York Times's coverage.

Mobile Web: We're on the cusp

There has been a whole lot of media hype about the mobile Web. So much so that smart reporters are now writing reality checks (see the New York Times). But with the iPhone's arrival, Google's plans for the FCC's looming 700 Mhz spectrum auction, and an announcement this week from Verizon Wireless, we really do seem to be at an important crossroads. eWeek reports that "the mobile industry is shifting into Internet gear." Business Week reports that Verizon Wireless's move "to let customers use a broader range of cell phones and wireless features on its network was greeted by many observers as a stunning about-face." And the Baltimore Sun offers the big picture on what this means for all of us, including our kids - upsides and downsides, of course. For one thing, I think it means phones really will be access points to the Internet. Which means that parents and educators either will need to need to apply rules and "parental controls" to more devices and access points or will need increasingly to help young people develop their internal filters - critical thinking and content and behavior online.

Cellphone etiquette

I think you will appreciate, as I did, these fundamentals for working with young cellphone users on the best ways and places to use those phones. They're from author and parenting specialist Jan Faull. She looks at where to talk, when to talk, and the example we grownup cellphone users are setting for them. Here are a couple more pointers I would add: 1) Know when and how much your child is using his mobile - for talking and texting (the latter being silent, so harder to get a handle on) - and establish boundaries. 2) Know what else she's using her phone for (photo-sharing? video-uploading?) and talk about the implications for her and other people in what's being shared. See also ConnectSafely.org's "Cellphone Safety Tips" and this on a study about the role of cellphones in "teen dating abuse" and what parents know about it.

Cellphone college class in Japan

Japan's degree-granting Cyber University, the country's only all-Internet university, just started offering a class people can take on their phones, the Associated Press reports. For classes on personal computers, the lecture appears on the screen as text and images, and a video of the lecturer appears in a smaller window in the corner. "The cellphone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset's tiny screen," just displays the PowerPoint, and you can hear the lecturer through the phone's speaker. More than 1,800 students are enrolled in Cyber University, which says lecturer attendance is at 86%. "Whether students play the lecture downloads to the end can be monitored by the university digitally," officials told the AP. Meanwhile, "half of Japan's top-10 selling works of fiction in the first six months of the year were composed [by their authors] on the tiny handset of a mobile phone," after which they're turned into books, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

ClubPenguin members can give to charity

Parents of penguins probably already know that gold coins are earned by playing games in the site. With them, penguins can now not only feed and care for their puffles, and buy surfboards, etc. They can give to charity, the Associated Press and the in-site Penguin Times report (I like that my 10-year-old started reading that paper unbeknownst to me). "Starting Dec. 14 and running through Dec. 24, kids can choose to donate their virtual money to support the environment, children's health or children's education. The company will then split $1 million real dollars among three charities, including the World Wildlife Fund, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Free The Children." This started before ClubPenguin was acquired by Disney, according to the AP. "The Canadian website donated a little more than $30 million to charity after Disney agreed to pay $350 million for the company earlier this year."

Student 'tech sherpas'

Senior Jayson in a Freeport, Me., school district "says he wants teachers to see that technology isn't as hard as they might think." He's a "tech sherpa" for his high school, a group of students that support the district IT department, help teachers with classroom tech, and earn credit in the process, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "This fall the group also launched a weekly live Web-stream show called 'The Tech Curve,' in which students field questions about various Internet teaching tools and the new Mac laptops that the state is issuing to high school teachers (see www.nokomiswarriorbroadcasting.com)." Each year an organization in Olympia, Wash., called Generation YES helps about 200 schools to set up the curricula behind the tech-sherpa program, the Monitor adds. This is the kind of tech-training program that empowers youth as well as educators. The program in Maine is clearly a confidence builder for the "sherpas," who also learn patience and diplomacy in working with adults. "They're relating to people, not just computers," working collaboratively to solve real problems. The school's tech coordinator told the Monitor that "the most valuable assignments he can give are 'authentic' tasks – of real use to the school or the community."

Teen 'cybercrime kingpin' arrested

The 18-year-old New Zealander's screenname is "AKILL," and he is the alleged head "of an international cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers" and stealing $20+ million from victims' bank accounts, the Associated Press reports. "Working with the FBI and police in the Netherlands, New Zealand police raided" his house in Hamilton and took him and several computers in custody. His arrest was part of an international crackdown on criminal hackers who hack or social-engineer their way into large numbers of computers, install malicious software, and take control of the machines, turning them into "zombies." The zombie computers become part of large networks (or "botnets") of computers that can launch denial-of-service attacks on large Web commercial Web sites, extort, manipulate stocks, etc. "Eight people have been indicted, pleaded guilty or have been convicted since the investigation started in June."

Toddler tech, er, 'toys'

The toy business is getting out of toys, the New York Times reports. Toy manufacturers and retailers think toddlers want tech devices, not toys, because they want to emulate Mom and Dad with the real thing, not "fake" phones, music players, and computers - of concern to some educators and pediatricians. We can see for ourselves, though: "Consider the 'hottest toys' list on Amazon.com, which includes the Easy Link Internet Launch Pad from Fisher-Price (to help children surf on 'preschool-appropriate Web sites') and the Smart Cycle, an exercise bike connected to a video game…. Inside the Toys 'R' Us, the shelves near the store’s front were brimming with toys with a high-tech twist." It's good news for the toy biz because toy sales have been flat, and this is a growth area.

Facebook changes ad system

Amid growing flak that its new advertising system reduces users' privacy, Facebook made some changes this week. Now users can "opt in" to having their online shopping broadcast to friends; before they had to "opt out" - a problem if they didn't know their purchasing decisions were being broadcast and they were, for example, buying holiday gifts and wanted their friends to be surprised). "The move comes a week after MoveOn.org, the non-profit public policy advocacy group, joined a growing chorus of critics of the new service," the Financial Times reports. Facebook did stop short of allowing users to opt out of the system altogether, the FT added. The system is "part of an effort to boost revenue growth by tapping into the deep social connections between Facebook users" - aimed at making social networking attractive to advertisers by tapping into the viral-marketing idea that friends are influenced by what their peers buy. Among other concerns was that of a University of Minnesota law professor. Citing his view, a New York Times blog asked the question, "Are Facebook's Social Ads Illegal [in New York]?" And consumer privacy advocates are pushing for greater control for consumers of their personal data on the Internet (see this at the Center for Democracy and Technology).

Uninformed game givers

Sixty percent of kids 8-17 expect to 1) get a game they didn't want or a game for a console they don't have, or 2) not get any or all of the games they asked for, according to a study by Weekly Reader Research cited by USATODAY. It also found that 80% of kids said they'd ask for a videogame this holiday season, and 59% for a game console. Their five favorites are Guitar Hero, Mario Party DS, Super Mario Galaxy, My Sims and Halo 3. Key advice for getting the right games, USATODAY says: know what console the child has and know the child's game picks. I would add: Know the games' ratings! Go to ESRB.org to see if a child's pick is age- and maturity-level appropriate. Meanwhile, as the New York Daily News reviews the three top consoles: Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3, the Los Angeles Times reports that Microsoft is pushing to broaden the market for Xbox Live and the online gaming it enables. See also "Support for young videogamers," zooming in on what online gaming can be like for tweens and teens.

Related links

A mom's change of heart. See this from a mom who went from videogame critic to buyer because of research she read about active videogames.

Senators critical on ratings. Four senators, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, sent a letter recently to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board calling on it to "review the rating system for video games since Manhunt 2 received an 'M' for Mature" rating instead of an Adults Only one, Information Week reported.

WhatTheyPlay.com's giving guide - for parents who want to learn more about game consoles

USATODAY's "Joysticks to the world: A videogame Gift Guide" for kids, tweens, teens, adults, and older/casual players

Readers, your views and stories are always welcome. Email them anytime to anne[at]netfamilynews.org, comment here, or - ideally - post them in our forum at ConnectSafely.org. I sometimes reprint for the benefit of your fellow readers.

Real music, fake guitars

The two hottest videogame (console, not computer) titles of the season, according to the San Francisco Chronicle - Rock Band and Guitar Hero III - are also among the most social. "The fun ramps up considerably with more players." On the other hand, "there's something mildly distressing about living in a society where cash-strapped public schools are more likely than ever to be cutting their music programs, and yet the must-have game of the season teaches you to play a fake guitar" and "the plastic Guitar Hero guitar is pretty much useless around the campfire. (Even as kindling.)" But writer Peter Hartlaub is only half serious (don't miss the wisdom of his distinction between "happiness" and "fun."

Socializing + gaming: Trend

For once, 30- and 40-somethings may be leading a trend: the blending of social networking and online games. Some analysts call MySpace and Facebook "massively multiplayer games in disguise," the Daily Globe reports. The article's about sites like Kaneva.com that are "less about skill levels and escapism and more about joining friends and strangers in virtual spaces where chatting, comparing fashions, going dancing — and, yes, slaying monsters — are all options." The Daily Globe describes the experience of "a 41-year-old homemaker" who spends "hours online every day playing Kaneva," a "shopping-and-partying game - where she operates a virtual nightclub and hosts parties - because it helps her interact with people, not provide escape from them as traditional games often do." Both sides see financial gain from this trend, with social sites adding gaming features and game sites adding social ones.

PCs for the world's children

I've pointed before to stories on the "Give 1, Get 1" program for Americans to help get laptops to kids in third-world countries, but this one in the Washington Post goes in-depth and shows the scope of the challenges. One challenge for the MIT people behind Give 1, Get 1 is competition at home. What Intel and Microsoft are doing to seed new markets around the world, though, is a benefit too. "By the end of the year, Intel [for example] will be running laptop pilot programs in schools in 30 countries with an eye to figuring out what kind of software services, Internet connectivity, local educational content and technical support are needed." There are also projects by Microsoft and NComputing (spinning off of eMachines). But the MIT program is focused more on children's education than on markets, its leaders say. What do they see in it for kids? "[Nicholas] Negroponte and [program president Walter] Bender believe that playing with their own laptops will engage children's intellects, spark creativity and provide an outlet for self-expression." Bender told the Post that, like vaccines, laptops aren't a cure. Vaccines allow bodies to manufacture cures; laptops alow brains to engage in education, to manufacture learning. [See also my earlier post on this.]

Parental controls improving

We - parents - are the winners in the "showdown of new parental controls in Apple's Leopard versus Microsoft's year-old Vista," CNET's Stefanie Olsen reports. The reason is, filtering, monitoring, and time-control features are increasingly built in right at the operating-system level on both PCs and Macs now. That means it's all easier for parents to use and tougher for kids to find workarounds (younger kids, anyway). The huge key thing parents need to keep in mind, though, is that the idea of "the family computer" is beginning to fade - at least in the world's wealthier, more connected countries. More and more households have multiple computers, which might require rules restricting kid use to particular computers. But even so, the Web is available on more and more devices, most of them highly portable. It's also available at friends' houses, or course. The friend's house (or public library, or local wireless hot spot, etc.) is probably the No. 1 "workaround" for which no parental-control software you buy or set up works. Even so, Olsen reports, "parents are clearly paying more attention to technology for managing their children's computer use, especially as more kids venture online at younger ages." She cites NPD research showing that "sales of parental control software were up 47.3% percent in the first nine months of 2007 over the same period last year," and some of the top-selling off-the-shelf parental-control products are Enteractive, Microforum, and ContentWatch.

Parental controls improving

We - parents - are the winners in the "showdown of new parental controls in Apple's Leopard versus Microsoft's year-old Vista," CNET's Stefanie Olsen reports. The reason is, filtering, monitoring, and time-control features are increasingly built in right at the operating-system level on both PCs and Macs now. That means it's all easier for parents to use and tougher for kids to find workarounds (younger kids, anyway). The huge key thing parents need to keep in mind, though, is that the idea of "the family computer" is beginning to fade - at least in the world's wealthier, more connected countries. More and more households have multiple computers, which might require rules restricting kid use to particular computers. But even so, the Web is available on more and more devices, most of them highly portable. It's also available at friends' houses, or course. The friend's house (or public library, or local wireless hot spot, etc.) is probably the No. 1 "workaround" for which no parental-control software you buy or set up works. Even so, Olsen reports, "parents are clearly paying more attention to technology for managing their children's computer use, especially as more kids venture online at younger ages." She cites NPD research showing that "sales of parental control software were up 47.3% percent in the first nine months of 2007 over the same period last year," and some of the top-selling off-the-shelf parental-control products are Enteractive, Microforum, and ContentWatch.

Social networking benefits for youth

The benefits of social networking "can far outweigh the potential dangers," wrote Dr. Brendesha Tynes in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Research. The assistant professor of African American Studies and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign further argued that "banning adolescents from social networking sites - if this were even feasible - as well as monitoring too closely might close off avenues for beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development that are available to young people in the online social world," reports the Wilkes University Beacon (in Pennsylvania) about the study. Among the upsides cited in the article were "beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development"; global political and cultural awareness (because many social sites have international memberships); and "perspective-taking, argumentative, decision-making and critical thinking skills."

Social-networking benefits for youth

The benefits of social networking "can far outweigh the potential dangers," wrote Dr. Brendesha Tynes in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Research. The assistant professor of African American Studies and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign further argued that "banning adolescents from social networking sites - if this were even feasible - as well as monitoring too closely might close off avenues for beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development that are available to young people in the online social world," reports the Wilkes University Beacon (in Pennsylvania) about the study. Among the upsides cited in the article were "beneficial cognitive and psychosocial development"; global political and cultural awareness (because many social sites have international memberships); and "perspective-taking, argumentative, decision-making and critical thinking skills."

Social site choices & user ethnicity: Study

Social media researcher danah boyd caught some flak for similar observations last July (see below), but now research at Northwestern University agrees that "college students’ choice of social networking sites is related to race, ethnicity and parents’ education," a PsychCentral.com blog reports. The survey of 1,060 freshmen at the University of Illinois, Chicago (among the US's Top 10 universities with regard to student ethnic diversity) found that white students prefer Facebook, Hispanic students like MySpace, and "Asian and Asian-American students are least likely to use MySpace." That last group are "prodigious users of Facebook" but also like Xanga and Friendster a lot, according to the research, which also found "no statistically significant social networking choices for black students." The study's author, Eszter Hargittai, said in Northwestern University's press release about it: “Everyone points to that wonderful New Yorker cartoon of the dog at the computer telling a canine friend by his side that ‘on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.' In reality, however, it appears that online actions and interactions should not be viewed as independent of one’s offline identity.” I think the New Yorker cartoon's just from back in Web 1.0 days. [Here's a Wired blog post on the study and my earlier item about danah's observations "Social Web's class divide?"]

Net-addiction rehab in Korea

It's South Korea's first "Internet addiction" rehab camp and it may be the first in the world too. The Jump Up Internet Rescue School is "part boot camp, part rehab center [and] resembles programs around the world for troubled youths," the New York Times reports. "Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming." The incredible accessibility of broadband Internet in Korea, where 90% of households are connected even while "dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner" seems to have some associated problems. The Times quotes Korean child psychiatrist Ahn Dong-hyun as saying that "up to 30%" of South Korean children and teens (about 2.4 million) are "at risk of Internet addiction" and American psychiatrist Jerald Block as saying that "up to nine million Americans may be at risk for the disorder, which he calls pathological computer use. Only a handful of clinics in the United States specialize in treating it, he said." The article leads with the story of a 15-year-old patient at Jump Up who'd been spending 17 hours a day online. [For Dr. Block's work in the area of videogames, see "Notable fresh videogame findings."]

US sex-offender registries: Update

If anyone wonders how law enforcement people around the US will be handling sex offender registries, see this article in Police Chief magazine. Any day now, the Justice Department will be issuing guidelines on how law enforcement agencies can implement the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which established "comprehensive standards for sex offender registration and notification" across all 50 states (before it, standards and practices were up to individual states' discretion). The US attorney general's office issued guidelines last May which were then open to public comment, ending August 1. The final guidelines are "expected to be released 60–90 days after closing of the comment period," Police Chief reports. [See also "Young sex offenders" and "Juvenile sex offenders & Net registries".]

Web's inventor & the social Web

ZDNET blogger Dan Farber says the social Web just "reached a new stage of legitimacy" with a recent post by Tim Berners-Lee, the Web's inventor (in 1989, BTW). Berners-Lee says the Web has evolved in people's minds from connecting computers to connecting documents (maybe this was "Web 1.0") to connecting the things those documents are about - from relationships to all manner of interests and activities. For example, Berners-Lee said, "biologists are interested in proteins, drugs, genes. Businesspeople are interested in customers, products, sales. We are all interested in friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances." Building on that, he later added that "it's not the Social Network Sites that are interesting — it is the Social Network itself. The Social Graph. The way I am connected, not the way my Web pages are connected. We can use the word Graph, now, to distinguish from Web." In his blog post, Farber was making the connection between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's term "social graph," or "the network of connections between people," and Tim Berners-Lee's use of the term.

Battle against child porn far from over

Humanity still has a battle ahead in its effort to stop online child pornography, says Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in a commentary in the Christian Science Monitor. "While inroads have been made in the fight against child pornography, the problem remains severe," he writes. "The Internet has become a child pornography superhighway, turning children into a commodity for sale or trade. Analysts at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) have reviewed 9.6 million images and videos of child pornography on the Internet just since 2002. There are millions more such images in cyberspace that we have yet to find. The Internet has become a child pornography superhighway, turning children into a commodity for sale or trade." One of the horrible realities of child porn is that 75% of the photos were taken by people the victim knows - 35% by a parent, 15% by another relative, and 20% by "someone close to the child or the family." Another terrible reality is that the children in the photos circulating the Net are getting younger - Allen writes that 58% haven't reached puberty. He adds that law enforcement agencies and NCMEC have identified almost 1,200 of the children depicted in these photos; NCMEC has "provided more than 12,000 evidence reports to prosecutors and law enforcement officers to assist in prosecutions"; and - thanks to a coalition of financial institutions - the use of credit cards has been "virtually eliminated" from online child-porn transactions.

More than 150 friends?!

The Wall Street Journal's "numbers guy," Carl Bialik, zoomed in on that number - 150 - which many reporters have cited as the limit to the number of personal contacts any human being could possibly sustain. This is when they're writing stories about the lengthy friends lists some teens have amassed in social sites. The 150 comes from the research of Robin Dunbar at Oxford University, "extrapolating from social groups in nonhuman primates and then crediting people with greater capacity because of our larger neocortex, the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language." Ah, got it. So we definitely can sustain more friendships than primates. But, actually, Dunbar himself, Bialik reports, believes that social sites "could 'in principle' allow users to push past the limit." To the professor, the real question is "whether those who keep ties to hundreds of people do so to the detriment of their closest relationships - defined by Prof. Dunbar as those formed with people you turn to when in severe distress." Bialik cites another recent UK survey that found - no huge surprise - friendships really start offline, but "less-close friendships and acquaintanceships, however, also die offline, while the Web can help sustain them" [read the article for examples]. I suspect this is one of the things youth who move far away, go off to college, or graduate and leave behind college friends so appreciate about social networking. There's much more that's thought-provoking in the Journal column - do check it out.

Applying for college at Facebook

Yup, it's now possible. I would love to hear from you if high schoolers at your house or school are using Facebook not only to research schools but also to apply. The widget's called College Planner, and its source, Embark.com, says students can research some 5,000 schools and apply to more than 1,000. As a CNET blogger points out, it's hard to imagine that people wouldn't wonder if colleges and universities would take such applications seriously, much less want to share all their academic plans with social-networking peers. As of this writing, only one person has added the widget to his profile (as seen on the College Planner widget page in Facebook). According to a thorough writeup on this in the Yale Daily News, Yale University has "no immediate plans" to join this program. Anyway, if you have any first-hand knowledge of this Facebook feature, email anne(at)netfamilynews.org. Here's the L.A. Times's latest report on Facebook in general.

UK data security breach & kids

A massive security breach involving the personal information of "virtually every child in Britain" has occurred in the United Kingdom, The Guardian reports. It "could expose the personal data of more than 25 million people - nearly half the country's population," CBS News reports. The data concerns "families with children, including names, dates of birth, addresses, bank account information and insurance records." Two computer disks containing the data were sent via ordinary mail between two government departments and were apparently lost in the mail. The breach was announced to the House of Commons yesterday by Alistair Darling, Britain's equivalent to our treasury secretary. He said this wasn't the first time Britain's tax agency had experienced such a breach. There was, however, no evidence that the data has fallen into criminal hands. This is a clear illustration of risky it would be to have a national database of children's personal information in the US, which is what would be required in order to establish children's age verification online (for more on this, see "Social networker age verification revisited").

Librarians: Parents' best friends

Here's a thought to bookmark, parents of teens: If you have questions about how social networking works or a particular site, a really good person to ask is your local librarian. So many people now log on to their profiles and blogs at public libraries that librarians (and not just youth librarians) have become experts on the subject. See this article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, for example. So, either come to our forum, ConnectSafely.org, to talk about social networking online, 24/7, or talk to the social-Web expert at your local library. Some libraries are actually conducting "Social Networking 101"-type classes for parents and other adults looking to learn about the social Web.

YouTube's push to beat bullying

YouTube has set up an anti-bullying channel, the BBC reports. The channel "aims to revolutionise how young people access information on how to avoid being bullied and importantly on how to avoid being the person who does the intimidating." Here's YouTube's channel (see also "What does cyberbullying look like?"). It comes at a good time, as the story of a US cyberbullying incident that ended in a young teen's suicide (see NetFamilyNews last week) has been picked up by news media in multiple countries (see these in Google News search). National-level coverage in the US started later last week. ABC News's Good Morning America and NBC's Today Show interviewed the girl's parents, saying local police are concerned about vigilantism against the family that allegedly created the profile of a fictional boy which was reportedly central to the story. Calls for a regulatory response to this case reflect a misunderstanding of how social networking works, but national-level awareness, even indignation (not vigilantism), is an important step toward this society's working toward nationwide public education about bullying on any digital device.

What virtual worlds teach kids

Their effect is not entirely unlike hanging out at the shopping mall in the "real world," is my take-away from reading CNET on researchers' just-released study of kids' virtual worlds. Of course, my characterization is simplistic and on the negative side, but "the inherently commercial nature of virtual worlds like Club Penguin and Webkinz, which encourage kids to play games, dress up online characters, and buy virtual goods to decorate their in-world homes or avatars," seems to send kids the message, they said, that good residents, users, or "citizens" know how to make money (amass points by playing games) and buy the right things (e.g., furniture for your igloo, cute pets, and attractive clothes and accessories, I've found from watching my 10-year-old play in ClubPenguin).

But there were positives among the findings of researchers at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication, the recipients of major funding from the MacArthur Foundation for research on young people's use of digital media. "Kids who are active members of virtual worlds are learning how to socialize" and "how to be technologically savvy" - things they'll need when they enter the workplace - as well as "how to be good little consumers," writes CNET's Stefanie Olsen. Important to know, since "more than 50% of kids on the Internet will belong to such an environment by 2012," she reports. Another thing they're learning: the ability to adapt to and move in an environment of constant change. I was particularly interested in one thing Stefanie picked up on: that absorbing information is no longer the most important form of education - it's what to do with information and distinguishing between fact and fiction, i.e. media literacy. An educator said that to me recently: "Our kids know so much more than we did when we were their age. We don't need to fill their brains more. We need to help them manage all they're taking in."

Back to the consumerism part, The Telegraph tells of ClubPenguin's soon-to-launch, UK-based competitor, MoshiMonsters.com. Gizmodo calls it’s a mashup of Tamagotchi, Pokemon and NintenDogs, and my 10-year-old son calls it "a monster version of Neopets." And - because it plans to sell Moshi Monster charms, it looks like there'll be comparisons to Webkinz.com too. In any case, most appear to have aspects of this formula: games or puzzles to earn currency that buys things for an avatar that's sometimes real, sometimes virtual, sometimes both.

What virtual worlds teach kids

Their effect is not entirely unlike hanging out at the shopping mall in the "real world," is my take-away from reading CNET on researchers' just-released study of kids' virtual worlds. Of course, my characterization is simplistic and on the negative side, but "the inherently commercial nature of virtual worlds like Club Penguin and Webkinz, which encourage kids to play games, dress up online characters, and buy virtual goods to decorate their in-world homes or avatars," seems to send kids the message, they said, that good residents, users, or "citizens" know how to make money (amass points by playing games) and buy the right things (e.g., furniture for your igloo, cute pets, and attractive clothes and accessories, I've found from watching my 10-year-old play in ClubPenguin).

But there were positives among the findings of researchers at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication, the recipients of major funding from the MacArthur Foundation for research on young people's use of digital media. "Kids who are active members of virtual worlds are learning how to socialize" and "how to be technologically savvy" - things they'll need when they enter the workplace - as well as "how to be good little consumers," writes CNET's Stefanie Olsen. Important to know, since "more than 50% of kids on the Internet will belong to such an environment by 2012," she reports. Another thing they're learning: the ability to adapt to and move in an environment of constant change. I was particularly interested in one thing Stefanie picked up on: that absorbing information is no longer the most important form of education - it's what to do with information and distinguishing between fact and fiction, i.e. media literacy. An educator said that to me recently: "Our kids know so much more than we did when we were their age. We don't need to fill their brains more. We need to help them manage all they're taking in."

Back to the consumerism thing, The Telegraph tells of ClubPenguin's soon-to-launch, UK-based competitor, MoshiMonsters.com. Gizmodo calls it’s a mashup of Tamagotchi, Pokemon and NintenDogs, and my 10-year-old son calls it "a monster version of Neopets." And - because it plans to sell Moshi Monster charms, it looks like there'll be comparisons to Webkinz.com too. In any case, most appear to have aspects of this formula: games or puzzles to earn currency that buys things for an avatar that's sometimes real, sometimes virtual, sometimes both.

UN to target Net predators

One of the outcomes of the United Nations' recent Internet governance conference in Rio de Janeiro was a call to protect young Net users from predation. "The meeting, which was attended by more than 1300 representatives of governments, the private sector and the internet from 109 countries, centered on keeping children safe from pedophiles lurking on the internet," Australian IT reports. Participants said that there were disagreements on a lot of topics at the meeting, but not on this one. The Council of Europe's representative called on countries to join a convention toward greater international cooperation on catching online predators. Another principal topic of discussion was the digital divide, since only about 1 billion, or 20% of the world's population have Net access," the Associated Press reports. Less than 4% of Africans have access, for example. But the AP cites figures from conference organizers showing that, in the past decade, Net use has risen from 5% to 35% in "the less-well-off nations that hold nearly three-fourths of the world's population." Later this week, Stephen Balkam, head of the London- and Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute, offered his perspective on the Rio conference at the Huffington Post (see also his "The politics of fear" in our forum site, ConnectSafely.org).

Extreme cyberbullying: US case comes to light

Unlike other extreme cyberbullying cases I've written about, this one occurred in the US and ended in a teenager's suicide. In this case, covered this week in a suburban newspaper in the St. Louis area, Megan Meier, 13, committed suicide allegedly because a 16-year-old boy had changed his mind and no longer wanted to be her friend. It was a cyberbullying case because the "relationship," from beginning to end, was conducted entirely online. Adding to the tragedy, the "boy" never existed. As in the New Zealand cases, the "owner" of the social-networking profile around which the "relationship" developed was a fictional character.

What's different about this case - and what makes it even more perplexing - is that the cyberbully, the creator of the fictional profile and relationship, was an adult. The mother of a teenage girl who had parted ways with Megan allegedly created a MySpace profile for "Josh." The story she made up - because, she told the paper, she wanted to see what Megan would say about her daughter online - was that "Josh" was new in town, being home-schooled, came from a "broken home," and had no phone number. Helped by her daughter and another teenage girl, the mother reportedly had this fictitious boy contact Megan through her MySpace profile and ask her to "friend" him. The girl, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and struggled with being overweight, reportedly was thrilled - for the six weeks last fall that the Josh profile's creators led her on. She committed suicide on Oct. 16, 2006.

No criminal charges have been filed, the Suburban Journals reports, and the parents "do not plan to file a civil lawsuit." A police report has been filed, but local law enforcement told the paper there was no charge that fit the case. There was a brief FBI investigation, the Journals reports. It spoke of problems the FBI had accessing content on the family's hard drive, but it didn't mention whether the FBI contacted MySpace with a subpoena for evidence on its servers. The town's working on making online harassment a crime, a "Class B misdemeanor," the Journals reported separately, "punishable by 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine." At the state level, that would be a Class A misdemeanor, possibly leading to a year's imprisonment and/or a $1,000 fine, the Journals added. Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-19th District, of O'Fallon (Mo.) said she would explore proposing state legislation but acknowledged that cyberbullying is a problem that goes well beyond town, state, and even national jurisdictions.

The case could eventually have national implications, starting at least with raising public awareness. The hundreds of individual responses posted below the article fill about 90% of the Web page, and the story apparently has caught national media attention - CNN was to interview Megan's parents this week, the Journals said. SuburbanJournals.com added that local officials said they would call on the federal government to address cyberbullying.

Related links

On the latest US cyberbullying research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project

"Cyberethics training needed"

Various aspects of the cyberbullying problem

"'eBullies': Coping with cyberbullying"

"Predators vs. cyberbullies: Reality check"

"Extreme cyberbullying: 2 cases"

Cyberbullying & Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress, by Nancy E. Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use

Cyberbullying.ca - a help site by award-winning Canadian educator Bill Belsey

Cyberbullying.us - a research site by Profs. Sameer Hinduja Florida Atlantic University and Justin Patchin at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Japan's cyberbullying problem

Bullying can be 24/7 in Japan too, but there it's as much over the phone as on the Web in this country where 96% of high school students have mobile phones. Reuters cites the experience of now 19-year-old Makoto, who stopped going to school it was getting so bad. But even after that he "became anorexic and rarely emerged from his room for nearly half a year," and he attempted suicide twice. Reuters adds that "the problem drew public attention in July, when an 18-year-old boy leapt to his death at his high school in Kobe, in western Japan, after classmates posted a nude photo of him on a Web site and repeatedly sent him emails demanding money." Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Disney is partnering with Softbank, Japan's No. 3 mobile carrier, to offer cellphones complete with Disney content and services for kids in that country.

For videogamers' parents

Less than half - 43% - of parents of kids who play video games play them with their children, the Associated Press reports, citing a just-released AOL/AP survey. "Overall, the survey highlighted how pervasive - yet age-related - interest in electronic gaming is today." The survey found that 81% of children 4-17 play computer or video games at least occasionally, compared with 38% of adults. As for those parents who aren't familiar with the games their children play, there's an alternative. They can read reviews of the games at a new site called WhatTheyPlay.com, which is a great idea. Surprisingly, a Los Angeles Times article about the site makes no mention of another helpful service for parents of videogamers: ESRB.org, where they can look up any game's rating (the site of the Entertainment Software Rating Board). Type a game's title into its search engine box - e.g., Halo 3 - and its rating will turn up (for this one, it's "M" for "Mature," for violence and blood and gore). The ratings guide adds a little detail, e.g., the appropriate-age recommendation for M games: 17+.

Videogames: Great teachers for good & bad

They are very effective teaching tools, a new study found, including for teaching aggression. "Students who played multiple violent video games actually learned through those games to produce greater hostile actions and aggressive behaviors over a span of six months," reports Science Daily, citing a study of almost 2,500 young people - "Violent Video Games as Exemplary Teachers: A Conceptual Analysis" - to be published soon in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It worked with 430 kids in grades 3-5, 607 in grades 8 and 9, and 1,441 students with an average age of 19, assessing "aggressive thoughts and self-reported fights, and their media habits - including violent video game exposure. Teachers and peers were also asked to rate the participants' aggressive behavior." With the grade-school students, "playing multiple violent videogames increased their risk of being highly aggressive … by 73%, when compared to those who played a mix of violent and non-violent games, and by 263% compared to those who played only non-violent games." The study's authors are father and son J. Ronald Gentile, distinguished teaching professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York, and Douglas Gentile, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University. At the University of Victoria in Canada, researchers Kathy Sanford and Leanna Madill have some comments on the kinds of literacy videogames can teach.

Bebo's part in differentiation trend

Bebo stands out as a great example of how social sites are differentiating themselves. It's moving from being purely about social networking to being a social-media platform, as The Guardian puts it. For one thing, the site (based in San Francisco but huge in the UK, with 10.7 million "regular users" there), it's specializing in social TV - a kind of hybrid of reality TV and social networking. "A new reality series from Big Brother producer Endemol follows the fortunes of six young people as they travel the world," The Guardian reports. "But you won't find it on BBC 3 or Channel 4. The Gap Year is online social network Bebo's third original content commission in six months; part of a bold strategy raising eyebrows among programme-makers and broadcasters." This is different from other social sites, which generally host user-generated ("amateur") video, TV supplied by traditional programmers, or advertiser-produced video. What Bebo offers is attractive to both young users, who like to be involved in the programming - to customize it, in a way - and to advertisers, who can get closer to "viewers" (or, in effect, "co-producers") than ever before. The Financial Times quotes Bebo international president Joanna Shields as saying that other social sites are more like a communications device, while Bebo is more like a media player. The service is also partnering with traditional media companies, the FT says. "Bebo’s Open Media initiative will allow companies such as the BBC and CBS to make their video content available on Bebo’s site, using their own media players and selling their own advertising around the content if they wish." Here's coverage from a CNET reporter's blog too.

Sex-trafficking in Canada, US

This story about sex trafficking in the Edmonton Sun is not about teen social networkers, it's about adults. But I'm including it this week as an extreme example of how vulnerable young people whose brains aren't fully developed can be found online, then victimized (prefrontal cortexes, or the executive part of brains, aren't developed till we're in our early 20s - see this at the US's National Institute of Mental Health). Edmonton "city cops are investigating two suspected human-trafficking rings believed to be part of an international network that enslaves hundreds of young Albertans each year, many of whom are forced into the sex trade in Las Vegas," the Sun reports. A police officer told the Sun that, though human-trafficking groups have operated in western Canada for "at least 20 years," they're now recruiting on social-networking sites too, "choosing naïve or vulnerable victims for 'grooming' who are right around 18 years old in order to avoid detection by authorities looking for predators after underage kids." [See also "How to recognize grooming" and "Profile of a teen online victim."]

Clear-eyed look at Net risks

Rarely do we see balanced reporting on the subject of children's online safety. So it was good to see USATODAY's Janet Kornblum looking at both the real risks and the misconceptions that have developed about how teens are victimized online. Not that dangers don't exist, but "some worry that parents are falling victim to 'predator panic' and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether," she reports. She also cites the view from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Center's director, David Finkelhor, told her that - contrary to impressions from news outlets such as NBC Dateline - "overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005," and the vast majority of those involve abusers the victims know in real life. For more from Dr. Finkelhor, see "Profile of a teen online victim." [For other articles along these lines, see "Social-networking dangers in perspective" and "Abduction by online predators rare."]

Virtual vs. real: Line blurring

William Gibson - the one-time science fiction author who now writes about the present and coined "cyberspace" - had something to say about youth in an interview he gave Rolling Stone for the magazine's 40th anniversary issue. He said (and I think he's right) that "one of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn't cyberspace is going to be unimaginable [as it is now to many young social networkers]. When I wrote 'Neuromancer' in 1984, cyberspace already existed for some people, but they didn't spend all their time there. So cyberspace was there, and we were here. Now cyberspace is here for a lot of us, and there has become any state of relative nonconnectivity. There is where they don't have Wi-Fi." I recently heard a group of women bemoaning the fact that teens actually say they "hang out" with friends in social sites, that they can say they hang out with people who aren't even in the same room. How anti-social, they felt. Maybe if a child, out of fear or anxiety, is social networking is replacing socializing with people in "real life," maybe not if s/he is just making use of another tool for socializing with real-life friends, nearby or distant. But what do you think? Would love it if you'd post your thoughts at ConnectSafely.org - or email me at anne@netfamilynews.org. Thanks!

Social networking: What cops know

Indiana State Police Lt. Charles Cohen's 16-year-old nephew "has seven MySpace pages, including one in which he and his buddies pretend to be Chuck Norris," the Associated Press reports. That's a great observation for parents to hear, echoed by many experts on Web 2.0 - that there are all kinds of blogs and social-networking profiles, from pure fiction to "reality TV" on the Web to hybrids of the two (the majority probably being in that in-between gray area). The content of Lieutenant Cohen's talks to fellow law enforcement say something about how police work is changing, about social networkers' use of privacy tools, and about how the Web increasingly mirrors offline life (here's the main article. "Many police departments have computer crews that perform skillful forensic analysis on hard drives and specialize in nailing online predators." Cohen's talks are for everybody else - "beat cops, homicide detectives and other investigators" who are either in denial about needing to understand the Net or don't realize what a tool it can be.

Tragic school shooting in Finland

A high school student in Finland shot and killed himself, six other students, and the school principal yesterday "after announcing plans for the rampage on YouTube," the Financial Times reports. The FT cites a Reuters reports saying the boy's video was "called 'Jokela High School Massacre' and posted by a user called Sturmgeist89, meaning Storm Spirit in German. The video's musical backing was a song called Stray Bullet." The Washington Post reports reports that "the song was a favorite of Eric Harris, one of the Columbine High School shooters, who had featured the band's lyrics on his Web site." According to the FT, "there have been occurrences around the world, including the death of 16 children in 1996 in Dunblane, UK, the 1999 killing of 12 students at the Columbine High School in Colorado, the 2002 deaths of 18 in Erfurt, Germany and this year's killing of 32 at Virginia Tech University in the US." The Times of London looked at what's unique to Finland about this tragedy.

'Kickstart' for students

Yahoo has a new niche social site for college students that's supposed to be more professional than social but not quite as professional as LinkedIn.com, a PC World blog reports. Apparently a profile on "Kickstart" is designed to be more like a resume than a place for friends' "pokes" and comments. The site's photo upload page reminds users, "You'll want to use a professional-looking photo, since your future boss may see this."

Child porn networking shut down

European police arrested 92 people allegedly involved in a child pornography operation that sold videos to 2,500 customers in 19 countries "including teachers, doctors and lawyers," the Associated Press reports. "The alleged mastermind, Italian Sergio Marzola," and a Belgian man suspected of abusing his own children, were arrested last year. Marzola "allegedly made some 150 videos in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Belgium." Investigators said that at least 23 girls aged 9 to 16 were tricked into on-camera abuse by being promised "lucrative modeling careers." Here's coverage from The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald.

New virtual worlds for kids 6+

Close on the heels of her report that a "boomlet" of kids' virtual worlds was in the works, CNET's Stefanie Olsen blogs about toy company Playhut's two new online playgrounds, one for girls 6+, one for boys. Like ClubPenguin, it appears, "the free sites enable members to play games, dress up virtual characters and chat with friends - once parents send a permission slip via e-mail to the site." Well, ClubPenguin has very limited, scripted, chat, where kids are given phrases to choose from. VirtualWorldsNews reports that the free sites are Wowbotz for boys and Mystikats Kutties for girls.

New book on cyberbullying

The good news is there are usually no physical scars from cyberbullying. The bad news is there are usually no physical scars to alert parents to what's going on. And that's not even the biggest problem with cyberbullying: "that children will not report it," reports CNET, citing a new academic book on the subject, Cyber Bullying: Bullying in the Digital Age, by Patricia Agatston, a licensed counselor and consultant on bullying, psychology Prof. Robin Kowalski at Clemson University, and Sue Limber, director of the Center on Youth Participation and Human Rights at Clemson. Rather than report cyberbullying, kids "try to deal with it themselves for fear of being cut off. Many times parents will overreact and punish the victim by forbidding them to continue using things like instant messaging, blogs, or a social network." Overreaction and overprotection are increasingly risky these days because of the damage they can do to parent-child communication in a time when the Web is so ubiquitous on so many devices in so many places, and communication with caring adults is the most reliable protection kids have.

'Protecting Social Networkers' Privacy 101'

If people at your house are concerned about their or others' privacy in social-networking sites, there's help at GetNetWise.org now. The nonprofit, Washington-based site (for full disclosure I'm a big fan and on GNW's Advisory Board) has simple, step-by-step video tutorials on how to turn on privacy features in three of the most popular social sites: Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga.

Now, you may be one of those Net-literate people who knows there are thousands of social-networking sites and sites on phones and the Web with profiles, media-sharing, and other social-networking features. This fact in no way diminishes the value of these tutorials because…

1. The three sites they're about together have well over 200 million profiles on them, and
2. Though each site has a unique set-up, the tutorials show (parents, mostly) that privacy protection is not rocket science.

They illustrate how easy it is to use privacy tools in social sites, which promotes parent-child discussion and may help get kids over a big hurdle we've noticed in the ConnectSafely.org forum which social networkers have trouble clearing: checking out the tools and protections their favorites sites provide them. It's that age-old aversion we all have to reading instructions, but it keeps getting more important.

So, armed with the clear audio-visual info in these tutorials, parents can go through the privacy features with young social networkers and have informed conversations with older ones about how they're protecting their privacy - from restricting access to their profiles and photos to deciding if search engines can list them to blocking comments and other communications from people who aren't their friends. There are more options in these sites than GetNetWise could possibly cover in a 2-3-minute video, so hopefully these little tutorials will make it easier for people to take a look at all the ways they can manage their privacy and reputations on the social Web.

Related links

"Online spin control"

"Protecting teen reputations on Web 2.0"

Our book, MySpace Unraveled, attempts to do something quite similar: demystify teens' social-networking experiences for parents with some background and an illustrated guide to how it works. Our reasoning: When parents understand how things work, we're less likely to overreact and send kids into "stealth mode," which can put them at greater risk than if they're using responsible Web sites we know about at home, where we (parents) still have some influence.

Social graces on the social Web

It's always fun to get a snapshot of where we (people in general) are in developing etiquette or, as Macworld put it, "social graces" on the social Web. And that's all there is, really, in this little article, a little snapshot of where the thinking is. The best reminder in it, for teens (or anyone) concerned about being seen as mean or snobby when they're just protecting their own interests or privacy in Facebook, is that it's ok to delete someone from their friends list - Facebook doesn't make an announcement or anything. Also, there's a good answer to the question, "What do you do if you get an unwanted invitation?" "I say ignore invitations without shame. Some people send them to everyone they have the slightest connection to - in that case, they probably won’t even notice your silent rejection."