Watchdog's study on YouTube

The Parents Television Council recently did its first study of online media, logically deciding to focus on YouTube - I guess the Web site closest to replicating the broadcast medium, though far from the only video-sharing site youth use. "While we applaud YouTube for its commitment to gating procedures and its recently announced plans to curb inappropriate content [the PTC's research was done before YouTube's announcement this month], the core implication of our analysis is that the site isn't doing enough to protect kids," the PTC press release states (the release links to the full study). One of the "major findings" it highlighted was: "Children entering such 'child-friendly' search terms as 'Miley Cyrus,' 'Jonas Brothers,' 'High School Musical' and 'Hannah Montana' were confronted with highly offensive content in the accompanying text commentary posted by other site users." "Posted by other site users" is a key qualifier.

What's difficult, here, is that an organization focused on conventional mass media (providing regulated content produced by the broadcasters) is critiquing a social media provider (hosting media produced largely by its users). There is no denying the problems that arise when people of all ages use a huge general site and when some of the content users produce and share in the site is inappropriate for youth. The problems are not unique to any single site, not even to media-sharing sites or the Web itself (they're also found on wireless networks - see this on cellphone "sexting"). Yes, parents need to know that a site popular among kids has a whole lot of profanity and sexual innuendo in user comments associated with videos, but let's not compare apples to oranges - a user-driven medium to conventional media - and let's not get distracted from an important collective effort to educate parents and youth about the spectrum of youth risk online (including youth-generated online risk) by looking too much through the lenses of our own experience with media or thinking that adolescent behavior has changed a great deal when one of the realities we're dealing with is that age-old, sometimes shocking adolescent behavior is now a great deal more visible to parents. [Here's more on the PTC study, as well a FilteringFacts.org blogger David Burt's own experience with YouTube search.]

Safe New Year's partying online & off

Here's really good New Year's advice from MySpace's (and its parent Fox Interactive's) chief safety officer Hemu Nigam. I'm biased in saying this - I like what he's posting because it's what we've been saying to parents asking about safety on the social Web for years - in NetFamilyNews.org, ConnectSafely.org, email, speaking engagements, and our book, MySpace Unraveled. Here's the best part: Whether we're talking about MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube, or any other site, safety on the social Web is not about technology; it's about behavior, human relationships - civility, consideration, and common sense. These are things parents and kids have been talking about since long before the telephone even, long before anything we think of as technology. "Too often it seems too complicated to talk to your teens about online safety," Nigam writes. "After all, it’s the online world and they know it better than you do. But is it? Did you know how a car engine works, what the transmission does, or how an airbag gets deployed when the car bumps something at 30 mph? Yet, you got right in there and taught your teen how to drive. Correction, you taught your teen how to drive safely.... You’ve done it all your life – these lessons on safety.... The world may have changed, but the lessons are still the same. Don’t stop the dialogue."

Breastfeeders protest Facebook's terms

Actually not an atypical challenge for a social networking site's customer-service staff these days: one user's idea of obscenity is another's of beauty. The "nurse-in" protesting the site's decision in this particular case was staged by breastfeeding Facebook users. Led by Mothers International Lactation Campaign (MILC), "nearly a dozen mothers breastfed their babies" at Facebook's headquarters this past Saturday because the site - citing its Terms of Use - last month took down a profile photo of a Provo, Utah, mom breastfeeding her six-month-old daughter, Palo Alto Online reports. It added that later in the month, Facebook removed a second photo she posted. The mother said that she sent Facebook two emails requesting an explanation and never heard back. In a written statement, Facebook said it "does not allow photos with a visible nipple or areola but the company takes no action on breastfeeding photos unless other users complain." In this case, it said, another user did complain that the Utah mother's images were obscene.

RIAA to stop suing 'pirates'

After suing some 35,000 people since 2003, the RIAA apparently has decided to stop going after individual file-sharers for pirating music - well, most of them. What the recording industry trade association "should have said," CNET blogger Greg Sandoval reports, "is that it won't go after most people who illegally file share. My music industry sources say that the RIAA will continue to file lawsuits against the most egregious offenders - the person who 'downloads 5,000 or 6,000 songs a month is still going to get sued'." The main strategy now, reportedly, is to get Internet service providers to do the policing. The RIAA says it has preliminary agreements with some ISPs but won't say which, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

Americans' cellphone texting costs

Both a US senator and a business professor writing about him in the New York Times found it a challenge recently to get to the bottom of cellphone texting's costs to customers vs. their costs to the cellphone carriers, given that the amount of texting Americans do has grown ten-fold in the past three years. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, was curious about why the cost of individual text messages (not unlimited plans) had doubled between 2005 and '08, and - when he asked the carriers - they spoke "at length about pricing plans without getting around to the costs of conveying text messages." Those costs did not go up anywhere near proportionately to the volume increase of text messages. The way the professor/commentator put it in the Times, "Customers with unlimited plans, like diners bringing a healthy appetite to an all-you-can-eat cafeteria, might think they’re getting the best out of the arrangement. But the carriers, unlike the cafeteria owners, can provide unlimited quantities of “food” at virtually no cost to themselves — so long as it is served in bite-sized portions [e.g., 160 characters per text]."

Missouri's new cyberharassment law

Seven people have been prosecuted under Missouri's new online-harassment law, passed after 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide as a result of cyberbullying in 2006. "When a press report in 2007 revealed the role that 47-year-old Lori Drew played in Meier's harassment, local authorities felt pressured to charge Drew with a crime, but could find no law under which to prosecute her. So Missouri lawmakers drafted legislation to outlaw future threats or harassing communication that causes emotional distress," Wired's Kim Zetter reports, adding that, under this law, either misdemeanor or felony charges can apply. The seven current cases involve everything from harassing messages to physical threats, most involved text messages via cellphone, and - interestingly - none of the cases Wired cites involved social networking. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch cites the view of author and cyberbullying expert Justin Patchin that laws like Missouri's "fail to deter such behavior by young people because most don't understand what cyberbullying is." They may be more effective, he added, in "protecting children targeted by adults," but the Post-Dispatch says he's "skeptical that such laws will be upheld in courts." At least 18 states now have laws targeting Internet harassment and cyberstalking, according to the Post-Dispatch. Here's the ReadWriteWeb blog on all this with a post about current efforts to reduce or end online anonymity.

Check out the SantaCam!

Would anyone who celebrates Christmas like to track Santa tonight? They can follow - sorry, track - his movement in Twitter! He's in Southeast Asia right now and wondered if his reindeer and sleigh could make it through the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur (Rudolph's quite a hotdog, apparently). I learned about Santa's tweets in "Christmas 2.0" at the Toronto Globe and Mail. NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa on Christmas Eves since 1955 (great story on how that began in the Globe & Mail piece), but now with Google's help, there's a map and SantaCam video of his flight path here. Here's the SantaCam. What I love is that "kids can follow along in seven languages through the website or on a smart phone by using Google Maps." BTW, I just checked, and since I mentioned KL, Malaysia, he's moved on to Dhaka, Bangladesh (he definitely seems to twitter between rooftops). Oh, and here's TechCrunch on how to Twitter a last-minute gift to charity. Happy whatever Holidays to every last one of you!

Ireland: Guide for parents on mobile bullying

Ireland's cellphone companies - Vodafone, O2, Meteor, and 3 - got together and created a parents' guide to protecting kids from phone-based bullying, the Irish Times reports. Available on the companies' Web sites and at retail stores, it explains the mobile operators' service called "dual access," with which "parents can check the numbers their child has been calling and texting, and keep an eye on the amount of money spent. Parents can also ask operators to block certain services." To see what mobile carriers on this side of the Atlantic are doing for parents, see this item last May. Also: ConnectSafely.org's "Tips to help stop cyberbullying," "Cellphone safety tips," "Mobile parenting," and - for more on the discussion in Ireland - "Cellphone cos. & bullying." [Thanks to the EC's QuickLinks for pointing the above story out.]

Tech parenting from our POV

"Is it smart or sneaky for parents to have accounts on facebook or myspace to monitor their children's behavior?" "I won't let my teenager on Facebook or MySpace. Is that a mistake? Should I?" "Of the social networks, which do you consider to be the most safe, and which do you consider to be least safe?" Those are just a few of dozens of questions from parents around the US my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid and I enjoyed answering in a one-hour, live online discussion at the Washington Post last week. It's now archived at the Post's Web site here. (Whew! The virtual version of thinking on your feet.) Do check it out and tell us what you think (or ask us your own questions) in the ConnectSafely.org forum.

Japan's cellphone novels

Are they the soap operas of the digital age, Japanese-style? [Maybe some American kid will break the gender barrier of Japan's cellphone novels and write the sci-fi version of Huck Finn's adventures on his cellphone. How 'bout it, English teachers?! Though maybe not till US cellphone companies make unlimited texting cheaper!)]

Anyway, they're serial text messages - sometimes 20 screens or 10,000 words a day - posted by mobile phone to a blogging site. Cumulatively, they become full-blown romance novels that, in book format, would be several hundred pages long. The best of them do become published books. By the end of last year, cellphone novels "held four of the top five positions on [Japan's] literary best-seller list," The New Yorker reports. [Though there is some controversy in Japan over the use of that word "literary," some argue that the world-famous Tale of Genji, written more than 1,000 years ago, was the original cellphone novel.] Maho i-Land (meaning "Magic Island"), "is the largest cellphone-novel site" with 1 million+ titles. Besides the potential readership and - possibly - income, part of the appeal for their writers may be that they can be written in bed (hmm, think about that too, English teachers). ReadWriteWeb.com reports that the site - kind of a literary version of Blogger.com - "provides tools for people to write their own mobile phone novels." US versions of Magic Island, both in beta, are Quillpill.com and textnovel.com, according to The New Yorker.

Interestingly, they're not hurting book sales; they've added a whole new genre, printed in gray or colored text and left to right on the page, as on a phone screen, according to The New Yorker (which adds that 82% of Japanese 10-to-29-year-olds have their own cellphones). One mobile novel (or keitai shousetsu) publisher speculated for ReadWriteWeb that the book versions are like "keepsakes" for the blog readers, many of whom had posted suggestions and critiques to the novel bloggers and "end up feeling as if they had a hand in helping craft the novel."

The stories they tell are strangely at the same time empowering to their writers and demeaning of women (the latter because so culturally conservative: depicting women "suffering passively, the victims of their emotions and their physiology; [yet] true love prevails"). The market for this is seemingly bottomless. The moral of one best-seller-cum-box-office smash hit: "not that sex leads to all kinds of pain, and so should be avoided, but that sex leads to all kinds of pain, and pain is at the center of a woman's life."

Two more of many fascinating cultural and literary notes in The New Yorker piece: 1) the anti-fame attitude and m.o. of even the most popular authors, shy of posting photos of themselves with their content (which is "consistent with the ethos of the Japanese Internet"); and 2) "In the classic iteration, the novels, written by and for young women, purport to be autobiographical and revolve around true love, or, rather, the obstacles to it that have always stood at the core of romantic fiction: pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, rape, rivals and triangles, incurable disease. The novels are set in the provinces - the undifferentiated swaths of rice fields, chain stores, and fast-food restaurants that are everywhere Tokyo is not—and the characters tend to be middle and lower middle class. Specifically, they are Yankees, a term with obscure linguistic origins (having something to do with 1950s America and greaser style) which connotes rebellious truants - the boys on motorcycles, the girls in jersey dresses, with bleached hair and rhinestone-encrusted mobile phones." I used to see this greaser look among some of the thousands of young people who gathered at Hachiko in Shibuya weekend evenings when I lived there even back in the late '80s.

It'll be interesting to see how much cellphone authorship takes off on this side of the Pacific - a mainstream or vertical interest like anime? We've seen teen bloggers become book authors, so why not teen texters? And will this be done in the classroom, along with podcasts, wikis, social networking, blogs, and virtual worlds? I'll keep you posted on what turns up!

Do cellphone novels repel or intrigue you? Post in the forum or email your thoughts to anne[at]netfamilynews.org!

YouTube's new help & reporting tool

YouTube has a new "Abuse & Safety" help section with simple, straightforward advice on what to do about anything from impersonation to hateful comments to violations of the site's Community Guidelines. YouTube says it wanted to make it easier for users not only to flag abusive content of any kind, but also to deal with stuff that comes up, WebProNews reports. In its coverage of this and other sites' efforts to ease reporting, the Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube says it "has 'a zero-tolerance policy for predatory behavior, stalking, threats and harassment' and reacts to most flags in less than an hour' ... [and] videos raising 'more complicated' issues may take longer." Perhaps one meaning of "more complicated" is imposter profile reports - YouTube says they need to come from the person being impersonated - it's not always easy for customer service staff to tell who's doing the reporting and whether it's sincere or a form of abuse itself. The Journal also explains how MySpace and Facebook have gotten more abuse-report-friendly.

Patch those family 'puters

The latest critical security patch from Microsoft was all about the Explorer Web browser, and this is an important patch for the computers of avid Web users at your house. "That doesn't mean that Firefox and Chrome are exempt from other vulnerabilities, writes my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid in Yahoo's "Connected Parent," but if your family uses Explorer, here's the scoop on that: "The latest threat is a flaw in all versions of Internet Explorer that makes it possible for an attacker to take remote control of your PC, capture user names and passwords and log keystrokes," Larry reports. A week after the flaw became known, Microsoft released a fix, InformationWeek reported. It probably updated your PC automatically if you have automated updates turned on. "To be sure, you can manually scan your computer to see if its security fixes are up-to-date by visiting WindowsUpdate.microsoft.com," Larry writes. "For this particular site, you must use Internet Explorer (other browsers such as Google's Chrome and Mozilla Firefox works with the vast majority of sites but not this one)."

Student sues principal on free-speech grounds

Used to be, when a high school student had a beef with a teacher, she talked about it on the phone or maybe passed a note in class, no expletives deleted. Now it gets posted on MySpace or Facebook, hopefully with privacy tools turned on. But privacy apparently wasn't of interest to Katherine Evans, who was suspended for starting a Facebook group about her English teacher entitled "Ms. Sarah Phelps [her English teacher] is the worst teacher I've ever met!" [Three other students joined to defend the teacher; Evans deleted it a few days later.] Now a freshman at the University of Florida, she is suing the principal of her former high school for suspending her, the Miami Herald reports. Her lawsuit claims the principal violated her First Amendment rights, "including the free exchange of ideas and opinions in the public arena" (she's seeking removal of the suspension penalty from her academic record and no money damages beyond legal fees). Here's further coverage.

Of mobile social networkers: Survey

This is a pretty digitally advanced group (active mobile social-networking users aged 16-52), and itsmy.com was surveying 15,000 of its own users, but the findings from this big early-adopting group are pretty interesting if you wonder about mobile social networkers habits: 95% of those in the US and 96% of UK ones "already use the mobile as the main means of communication with their beloved ones," and 42% never used a social site designed for computer screens," and 42% never used a social site designed for computer screens, reports itsmy parent GOFRESH, based in Munich, Germany. Other key findings: the average users is surfing 160 mobile Web pages a day, and heavy users "log in up to 10 times a day for up to 2.5 hours" to write and check messages, find out where their friends are and what they're doing "at this very moment," or upload photos and videos to their itsmy pages. More than 90% said that if they had "reasonably priced flat rates," higher network speeds, and faster phones with longer battery lives, they would increase their mobile Web use. But despite current high prices, "even the current economic situation does not stop most of them from using the mobile Web: "only 1/3 of all respondents tend to reduce their mobile online time to save money."

Is 'sexting' a teen trend?: Study

Just how pervasive is 'sexting,' the nude-photo-sharing by cellphone that seems to be happening a lot? I've seen reports of the practice in more than a dozen US states, New Hampshire the latest one (see this). A new study tried to get a handle on just how much this is happening, if not why. The survey, commissioned by the nonprofit National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com, found that "about a third of young adults 20-26 and 20% of teens say they've sent or posted naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves, mostly to be 'fun or flirtatious'," USATODAY reports, adding that "a third of teen boys and 40% of young men say they've seen nude or semi-nude images sent to someone else; about a quarter of teen girls and young adult women have. And 39% of teens and 59% of those ages 20-26 say they've sent suggestive text messages." All this in spite of the fact that nearly three-quarters of these young people (73%) "said they knew sending sexually suggestive content 'can have serious negative consequences'."

As for the why question, that 73% finding didn't surprise me - I suspect most teens know full well this is risky behavior. But since when did awareness of risk stop risky behavior among teens or in any way reduce the cachet it often has for them? Then there's the brain-development factor, explaining why risk assessment is a primary task of adolescence. Neurologists tell us the frontal cortex, the impulse-control, executive part of the brain, is in development till everybody's early-to-mid-20s. Generally speaking, their brains just aren't there yet, where fully understanding the implications of their actions is concerned (why caring adults need to be a part of the online, tech-enabled part of their lives).

There are also the realities of technology and sexual content. In her coverage of the survey, Jacqui Cheng of ArsTechnica suggests this is the next phase of the long-standing phenomenon of inappropriate content in email - "since the age of 12, my inbox has been filled with inappropriate photos of people, whether I wanted to see them or not," she writes. That sounds a little extreme to me, but sex-related spam has been around almost as long as email and does seem to be at least part of the wallpaper of online life. In the journal Pediatrics, researchers at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center wrote in 2005 that "exposure to online porn might have reached the point where it can be characterized as normative among youth Internet users, especially teenage boys. Medical practitioners, educators, other youth workers, and parents should assume that most boys of high school age that use the Internet have some degree of exposure to online pornography, as do girls."

Back to teen-produced content, NBC's Today Show covered the sexting survey in light of a story concerning video-sharing on the Web even though nudity was not involved....

Fast-food & other pranks: Why?

Risque behavior recorded in video-sharing or social-networking sites is not about the Web or technology so much as it's about age-old teenage pranks and dares. The latest high-profile example involved three bikini-clad girls who - apparently influenced by a YouTube video of a similar "exploit" at Burger King - "bathed" in a KFC dishwashing tub as re-recorded by NBC's Today Show. The difference here, of course - and where new technologies do have a role - is how extremely public these antics can become.

"Well, first let's look at the why," writes a mobile-communications blogger, pointing to another factor in all this self-exposure: our sexualized culture. "These girls have grown up on-screen, be it in home movies or MySpace profiles." Here's the most interesting part of the post: "Their lives are lived in the story - the telling and the showing. They also think that their value lies in their bodies. This is part of pop culture. Heck, it's almost an honor for actresses to pose for Maxim, Playboy and the like. But also keep in mind that girls probably don’t intend for these to go public (though they will, of course…)." Several thought-provoking points, there, including that last one about some video "actors" thinking they're just playing to their own circle of friends, not potentially everyone on the Internet and for virtually all time (there's more reflection on this at YPulse).

There's an inherent, important contradiction there, too - just acting out for one's friends but with the potential for overnight YouTube fame lurking in the back of one's mind. Being sex objects in a sexualized culture is only one possible element. Reality TV's insta-fame has been suggested as a likely factor, too. "Kids are getting all these messages saying, 'Expose, expose, expose'," social-media and digital-youth researcher danah boyd told me when I was researching our 2006 book, MySpace Unraveled. "If you don't, your friends will expose you. We're all living in a superpublic environment, getting the message that you have more power if you expose yourself than if someone else exposes you." A master of managing her superpublic is Taylor Smith, 18, described by the New York Times as "the most remarkable country music breakthrough artist of the decade." Is her very smart, open PR strategy what some teens are emulating (or vice versa!)?

For more about this pressure on teens to self-expose as always-on, one-person PR firms, see "Not actually 'extreme teens'."

Tech & the student athlete

In proportion to their notoriety, star athletes (and aspiring ones) run the risk of a different kind of celebrity on the social Web. Established student athletes have probably already learned this, hopefully not the hard way. "Post a photo of yourself on your own or someone else's Facebook page holding a beer at a party or engaging in some other objectionable behavior and you could find yourself a star on badjocks.com" (if that isn't a badge of honor for some kids), TMCnet.com reports. "Not to mention suspended or kicked off your team, even expelled from school. Post a racist or profane message that embarrasses yourself, your team and your university, and you could face similar punishment." One coach likens posting photos on profiles to getting a tattoo - post it and it becomes part of it. Sure, profile owners can delete photos, but there's no guarantee somebody else hasn't copied, pasted, or sent them elsewhere.

9th graders' Lively protest

"It's free expression in a dignified, a powerful and a passionate manner," a School Library Journal blogger reports, referring to Digiteens' protest against the impending shut-down of Lively avatar chat by its parent, Google. The Digiteens are Camilla, Ga., 9th-graders whose goal, they say in their protest blog, "to teach digital citizenship to students via an easy to use 3D virtual world that is easily accessible to people who do not have a lot of bandwidth or good computers and allow schools to create [online chat] rooms at minimal or no expense." The protest has gotten some viral support around the world (see these from the Philippines and Hong Kong). The project received some, to me, surprising flak in the comments section of this ReadWriteWeb post about it, to which the Digiteens' teacher, Vicki Davis, responded in her own blog.

Cellphone to be No. 1 access tool: Study

By 2020, the mobile phone will be the main tool for connecting to the Internet for most of the world's people, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's latest "Internet Evolution" study. "The study asked a group of 'Internet leaders, activists and analysts' to forecast what they expect to be the major technology advances of the next decade," the Washington Post reports. Two other interesting predictions concerned social tolerance and virtual reality, and the experts polled seem to have felt just as uncertain as the rest of us about what impact connective technology will have on human relations and social tolerance: "The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness." Their prediction about virtual reality lines up with teens' approach to tech for some time: "divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations."

Anti-cyberbullying teachable moment

There has been a lot of news coverage about the legal issues surrounding the Megan Meier case, but not many useful takeaways for parents and kids. Here are some great talking points for family discussion from Nancy Willard, author of Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens and director of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use....

"Megan was allowed to establish a friendship link with someone who was not known in person by her or her friends. Especially when starting an account on a social-networking site, teens should link only to friends. Later, they may expand to acquaintances or friends of friends - someone known in person by a person they know. This way, they know that no false persona has been established. When they are much older [maybe 18+], perhaps strangers.

"Whenever they establish a friendship link - especially to someone they do not know well - they should take the time to carefully review the person's profile to see if anything posted causes concerns. What are this person's friends like? What images has this person posted? How does this person communicate in public and private? And how does all of this reflect on this person's values? They might also want to keep in mind that others will be judging them based on their friends, images, and communications.

"They need to be very alert to signs that someone is trying to manipulate them. The key signs of this are overly friendly messages, including comments like, 'Wow, you're hot,' "I am really glad I met you" and the like. [See "How social influencing works."]

"Teens also should be very careful if anyone appears to be trying to establish a special relationship - when there is really no 'real world' basis for that relationship.

"Teens are going through a very vulnerable time and really want to find acceptance. So they are vulnerable to fantasy online love. They send messages back and forth indicating how much they love the other person - just because they want to receive these same messages and it's fun to think you have this great love relationship - just like in the movies. They need to understand how to distinguish between fantasy love and real relationships that are healthy and viable.

"If someone starts to communicate in a hurtful manner, the appropriate response is to leave the site, end the communication, and/or block the person. Filing a complaint [as in using social sites' "Report abuse" buttons] may also be an option. If someone makes you mad online, keep your hands off the keyboard - because you will just make things worse [emphasis mine]."

So the key take-away, I think, is that the younger the child the more important it is to keep online socializing as grounded as possible in real life. As teens mature, their brains are developing, particularly the impulse-control "executive" part that understands consequences, so they generally get better at navigating the complexities of their social networks - the developing social norms, tools, signals, and relationships. It's a lot to figure out, and they deserve not just advice but, more importantly, the steady back-up that a parent or other caring adult mentor can offer: perspective that is always running in the background and ready to come forward at teachable moments - hopefully in a loving, nonconfrontational way that keeps communication lines open.

[Readers, your own additions, responses, tips, and experiences are most welcome in our ConnectSafely forum or via email to anne[at]netfamilynews.org. With you permission, I like to publish them for the benefit of all.]

Readers, your own additions, responses, tips, and experiences are most welcome in our ConnectSafely forum or via email to anne[at]netfamilynews.org. With you permission, I like to publish them for the benefit of all.

Related links

All the details. Kim Zetter of Wired provided some of the most steady, in-depth reporting on the Drew case. Here's her blog and her participation in NPR's "Talk of the Nation" in a segment headlined "Is Creating a Fake Online Profile a Criminal Act?"

Not the right law. "MySpace Suicide Prosecutors Used Wrong Law," by my ConnectSafely.org co-director at CBSNEWS.com

Terms of Use. "Cyberbullying verdict turns rule-breakers into criminals" in the Toronto Globe & Mail

Cyberbullying authority. "Age & identity misrepresentation on the Internet," by cyberbullying book author Sameer Hinduja, who was interviewed by the New York Times for its story on the Meier case

"Questions raised by Megan Meier case"

"Tips to help stop cyberbullying"

Online safety czar called for

The Family Online Safety Institute, the only such US organization with offices on both sides of the Atlantic, this week called on President-Elect Obama to promote "a national strategy on how to best educate children, tweens, teens and their parents on online ethics, safety and cybercitizenship," citing the "excellent example of the UK government" in developing industry best practices, funding research, and setting up the UK Council on Child Internet Safety (for disclosure, I'm on FOSI's Advisory Board). In a report FOSI released at its annual conference this week, CEO Stephen Balkam, makes four recommendations: that the Obama administration 1) hold an annual White House Online Safety Summit, 2) create a US Council for Internet Safety (the FCC's National Telecommunications & Information Administration is right now putting together something similar, a "working group" called for by a just-signed broadband Internet law), 3) create a $100 million online-safety program to fund research and educational and awareness campaigns, and 4) create a National Safety Officer position in the office of the US's new chief technology officer. Here's the Washington Post's coverage.

Korean crackdown on malicious Net use

South Korea has cracked down on malicious Internet use, Agence France Presse reports. "South Korean police have rounded up more than 2,000 people for spreading malicious rumours on the Internet during a month-long crackdown sparked by an actress's suicide," AFP reports. Eleven people "have been formally arrested and detained for serious legal breaches." It adds that Korea's National Police Agency's cyber-terror prevention centre is asking prosecutors to charge "another 2,019 with various offences," and the crackdown will continue, AFP adds, referring to the centre's chief investigator. Charges include libel (about 59% of those arrested), breaching laws on contempt, blackmail, and cyberstalking.

Teen entrepreneur: Low entry fee

Parents could share this with teens at their house - for their inspiration or insights into a way into the job market. One of 18-year-old Jessica Mah's reasons for starting InternshipIN.com - true to its name, an internship-listings site - was "to show my friends (and the world) that it doesn't take more than a $200 to throw a Website together," she's quoted in TechCrunch as saying. It's a little raw, TechCrunch reports, but this newest project of the teen blogger and University of California, Berkeley, junior, has opened its "doors." I appreciated the context TechCrunch gives this story: "There are alternatives, such as After College.com. But a site that just does internship listings could work. What would be better would be a site that combines listings with ratings. Maybe Mah should try to pair up with InternshipRatings.com." See the article for comes examples of internships.

Online video: More amazing growth data

The growth of US Web video-viewing is pretty phenomenal. We viewed 13.5 billion online videos this past October! Not "million" - "billion"! That's a 45% increase over October 2007, according to comScore's latest figures. ComScore measures by the companies that own the sites - so Google topped the list (its YouTube represented 98% of its video-viewing traffic) at 5.4 billion videos viewed (39.7% share). The rest of the top 10 video sites were more clumped together in traffic numbers, the only surprise being Hulu.com's rapid rise to the No. 6 position. Here are the US's 10 biggest video-viewing providers, going down from Google: Fox Interactive Media (mostly MySpace) at about 520 million (3.8%); Yahoo Sites 363 million (2.7%); Viacom Digital 305 million (2.3%); Microsoft Sites 286 million (2.1%); Hulu 235 million (1.7%); Turner Network 228 million (1.7%); Disney Online 127 million (0.9%); AOL 123 million (0.9%); and ESPN 105 million (0.8%). BTW, amateur video producers with the most viewers at YouTube are now "earning six-figure incomes from the Web site," the New York Times reports, because of the ads YouTube puts with them (it has a revenue-share program). See the Times for examples.

The Net & suicide: Another view

In light of the recent Lori Drew verdict and 19-year-old Abraham Biggs's tragic suicide, it might be helpful to read the story about how the Internet was responsible for a suicide not happening. In a commentary on National Public Radio, Ayelet Waldman, who, as Mr. Biggs did, suffers from bipolar disorder, explains how her Internet community saved her - after writing a blog post while "in the throes of the worst depression of my life." She suggests that we all can "take a certain comfort in the way that very technology [implicated in the Biggs tragedy] has given us new opportunities to reach out, to connect. Both of these are true."

'Child-proofing' for Firefox browser

This is an interesting development for families with elementary-school-age kids: Kidzui built right into the Firefox browser - built-in parental control in a new form. "Once installed and activated by a parent, [the Kidzui browser extension] locks the child (or anyone else for that matter) out of accessing non-Kidzui approved sites, or other areas of the computer, by taking up the entire screen," CNET's Webware blog reports. That last phrase means kids can't even get to other applications on the computer like Word or instant messaging without inputting "a password, which is chosen by the parent" - the only way out of KidZui. It's up to parents, of course, to decide if older kids can have the password. The add-on is free, like the basic version of Kidzui too, but also supports the $40/year edition with extras such as kid social-networking features (e.g., having a profile and "Zui" avatar) and extra parental-control tools. For more on Kidzui, see my October post on new sites and services for young people.

Viral happiness

Instead of misery, happiness loves company, according to a new study. Documenting "how happiness spreads through social networks," NPR reports, researchers at Harvard and University of California, San Diego, have "found that when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25% higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8% increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it's 34%." Obviously the study, published in BMJ, a British medical journal, wasn't about online social networking per se, but physical proximity doesn't have to be a factor. "When one person becomes happy, the social network effect can spread up to 3 degrees - reaching friends of friends." What that means, according to one of the study's authors, cited in the New York Times, is that "if your friend’s friend’s friend becomes happy, that has a bigger impact on you being happy than putting an extra $5,000 in your pocket." It's a good time to know that! A health blogger at US News & World Report speculates about what can happen with the online version of social networking.

Videogames not just child's play

Videogames certainly aren't just for kids. That's the key take-away from a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, finding that more than half of US adults play videogames. [Another Pew survey I covered in September found that 97% of US 12-to-17-year-olds do.] People 65+ are no slouches where videogaming's concerned: Nearly a third of people 65 and up play games everyday, Pew found, while only 20% of all younger players do so everyday. Younger players prefer gaming consoles (e.g., PlayStation or Xbox), older ones prefer computers, which are the most popular gaming devices - 73% of adult gamers play with computers to play games, compared with 53% consoles, 35% cellphones, and 25% portable gaming devices. Here's coverage in a Washington Post blog, and the San Jose Mercury News has a shopper's guide to the latest videogames.

Oz: Landmark child-porn ruling

In a landmark ruling, an Australian Supreme Court judge ruled that an online cartoon depicting The Simpsons engaging in sex acts constitutes child pornography, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "Justice Michael Adams upheld a magistrate's decision convicting a man of possessing child pornography after the cartoons ... were found on his computer." The BBC reports that Justice Adams "said the purpose of anti-child pornography legislation was to stop sexual exploitation and child abuse where images of 'real' children were depicted. But in a landmark ruling he decided that the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people." It added that the judge said the Simpsons cartoon could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children." and therefore upheld the conviction for child pornography.

New Net Nanny

Net Nanny, parental-control software for family computers, has released its latest version (not long after issuing Net Nanny for Macs), and PC Magazine gave the product 4.5 stars and its Editor's Choice Award. "Net Nanny does everything a parental-control utility should do. It also offers unique features like secure Web-traffic filtering and ESRB-based game control. Balancing privacy and security, it can record IM conversations only if they seem dangerous." The product, Net Nanny 6.0, sends email alerts to parents at work and allows them to configure or change preferences from work. SafeEyes 5.0, CyberPatrol Parent Controls 7.7, and Net Nanny 5.6 were next on PC Magazine's list, each having been awarded four stars. NetNanny and CyberPatrol run about $40, SafeEyes about $50.

YouTube's crackdown on suggestive content

"It's a bad week for Internet porn,"a Wired blogger reports. Indeed. Given the news from Ning and now with YouTube "cracking down on sexually suggestive content," as VentureBeat reports. Here's some of what YouTube's crackdown looks like: "Videos that are 'sexually suggestive' (but not prohibited) will now be age-restricted to viewers 18 or older [if younger ones are truthful about their ages when they register]. In addition, these types of videos will be algorithmically demoted on pages like 'Most Viewed' and 'Top Favorites'." Also, "thumbnails" (little still images that represent videos in YouTube) will be automatically generated by the site rather than chosen by the videos' creators. You see, people would put sexy "thumbnails" at the midpoint of their videos even if they had nothing to do with sex just to game the system and get them to rise to the top, and more likely to be seen. The result was index pages of thumbnails suggesting a lot more sex-related stuff than was actually there, making the site look more disturbing to parents than it needed to be and, for advertisers, apparently not a great environment for their ads. I touch on this in "Watch this video, parents!" Here's the rest of it from YouTube itself.

Ning to delete all adult content

Ning, a site where anyone can create his or her very own social-networking site (see "Mini-MySpaces") and where people are doing so at a rate of "around 2,000 new networks a day, announced the end of its "red-light district" this week . It's a relatively small red-light district - Ning told me less than 1% of its more than 600,000 social networks - but apparently legal adult content was becoming a business problem. "We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that's where this is heading," CEO Gina Bianchini wrote in Ning's blog. Ning has a reputation for strict compliance with federal law requiring ISPs to report illegal child-abuse imagery ("child porn"), so that was never allowed, but the legal stuff, Bianchini indicates, interestingly, was creating "a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks." The adult networks disappear by January 1, she said. This development is great news for all the other social-network creators - teachers, parents, artists, athletes, journalists, hobbyists, cancer survivors, alumni groups, government entities (e.g., the US State Department), and businesses. But if anyone's eyebrows are raised upon hearing that all these social site owners were on the same service as porn operators, it's important for you to know that people don't browse around Ning the way they might, possibly, a social networking site (and even then, most teen users just go to their own and their friends' profiles). Ning isn't a social site. It's a giant collection of social sites. Its member social networks are the destinations, not Ning itself. Here's coverage at CNET. A bit more interesting data on Ning as a global resource from Fast Company magazine last May: "About 40% of Ning's social networks originate outside the United States, and members from 176 countries have signed up, with the service already available in several languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Dutch."

New online-safety-education tool

Canadian children's advocacy organization the Media Awareness Network has an interesting approach to online-safety education for elementary and middle school students. Called "Passport to the Internet," it's a graphically appealing virtual environment for which students in grades 4-8 earn their "passports" by choosing avatars that walk through lessons in safety, ethics, bullying, critical thinking, and privacy management in "MyFace" - lessons that simulate "online environments used by young people on a daily basis," the Media Awareness Network told me in an email conversation. The curriculum can be licensed in either English or French by schools, districts, or education departments or ministries. Based on viewing the demo, it seems to me the curriculum would be more effective - at least here in the States - at the younger end of the targeted grade spectrum. Two reasons occur: "Passport" suggests we're talking about a different country or space to which one travels, and teens, at least, make less and less of a distinction between the online "space" and the "real world" one; social networking is just part of socializing. The other reason is that this is a curriculum by and from adults to kids, more effective in elementary school. I think for the middle-school level we need collectively to figure out how to work social norming into online-risk-prevention education.

Teacher's tough Facebook-privacy call

An elementary school teacher in Charlotte, N.C., faces the possibility of being fired for her comments about students in Facebook, the Charlotte Observer reports. Among the activities listed "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte." Her lawyer told the Observer that she thought the comment could only be seen by her Facebook friends. So either she didn't fully understand how to use the site's privacy features or a "friend" made her comments public. In any case, her story "is now part of a national debate that pits teachers' right to free expression against how communities expect them to behave," according to the Observer. Though this is more about judgment and discretion than technology, it does point to where technology does have impact: the invisible audiences of the social Web, as mentioned by social media research danah boyd in a 2006 interview. This story makes clear that it isn't just online kids who need to be thinking about who sees what they upload to the social Web.

Oz child advocates oppose filtering

US educators frustrated with school filters will be interested in this news from Oz: "Support for the Government's plan to censor the Internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children's welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters, aimed squarely at protecting kids, are ineffective and a waste of money," The Age reports. The plan - "to block 'illegal' content for all Australian internet users and 'inappropriate' adult content on an opt-in basis" - has also received "harsh opposition" from Australian consumers, online rights groups, the Greens, the Opposition, and the Internet industry. The Age cites the view of Holly Doel-Mackaway of Save the Children, "the largest independent children's rights agency in the world," that educating kids and parents is "the way to empower young people to be safe internet users." Filtering's flawed, she told the paper, because it doesn't get to the problem at its source and can't help but block useful online resources. "Live trials" of the filtering are scheduled to start by the holidays, The Age adds.

Questions raised by Megan Meier case

Although Lori Drew was convicted only on misdemeanor charges last week and though the case may yet be dismissed, the questions it raises are important ones:

Legal

Although what happened between the Meiers and Drews in the St. Louis area in 2006 was about cyberbullying, the case against Drew wasn't, actually. It was about computer fraud. Ms. Drew's involvement in the creation of a fake profile (or real profile of a fictional teen boy character) was called by the prosecutors "unauthorized access" violating federal computer fraud law, the New York Times reports. According to the Washington Post, the case thus "expands the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1986 as a tool against hackers, to include social networking Web sites." Even so, the Post cites legal experts as saying, this was "the country's first cyberbullying verdict."

The Times reports that MySpace's terms of service require users to be "truthful and accurate" when they sign up for an account, yet a lot of people of all ages all over the Web fictionalize or veil their identities for many reasons - the way authors with pen names have as long as there have been books. So do cops pretending to be 14-year-old girls as they set up stings to catch online predators. In other words, there are both legitimate (including protective) and ill-intentioned reasons to be pseudonymous or anonymous online. Does this case jeopardize legitimate use of anonymity (see also "Fictionalizing their profiles" and "Online anonymity vs. cyberbullying concerns")?

Another question is about those terms of service. Does this case mean social-networking sites must enforce their terms of use? That could be both good and bad. Terms of use could become more of a mutual contract between site and users whereby users (or their parents) might actually have some sort of recourse if terms are violated by bullies. On the downside, rigid enforcement does not always have good results, where human beings (and adolescent behavior) are concerned. This is a good reminder, though, that parents and kids together check site terms of use for what they say about truthfulness. I think it also suggests that social sites consider putting their terms in plain English! But it's concerning if, as the result of this case, violation of terms could be considered criminal behavior. The proverbial jury's still out on that last point.

Bad for case law: "Let's also make one thing very clear," writes social media researcher danah boyd (who lower-cases her name). "This case is NOT TYPICAL [it's extreme and extremely unusual]. Many are clamoring to make laws based on this case and one thing we know is that bad cases make bad case law. Most of the cases focus on the technology rather than the damage of psychological abuse and the misuse of adult power." I agree. This story, if not the case, is not about computers or social networking or solely online behavior; it's about behavior. Which leads to the parenting set of questions....

Parental

The message that parents need to be involved in right ways - as moderators (in every sense of the word) and not accomplices - is only getting stronger. Though this is a tough message for busy parents to hear, we want to be in the mix. Just as we've always needed to be engaged in our teens' offline social lives - because a primary task of adolescent brain development is risk assessment - we need to be involved in their online lives too.

We also don't want our role to be diminished in favor of "protective" law or policy, because we don't want our children's free speech and privacy rights taken away or in any way diminished ostensibly "for their own protection." Engaged parents are vital supporters of their children's rights.

An important aspect of this for parents to keep in mind is that the high visibility of an extreme case and increasing news coverage of cyberbullying in general do not mean bullying online is on the rise or adolescent behavior has changed. This is important to keep in mind about social networking too. Danah boyd makes the point that the Internet probably hasn't increased the amount of bullying; rather, it has made it and all adolescent behavior more visible - certainly, but naturally, with disturbing effect - to adults. "Now adults can see it. Most adults think that this means that the Internet is the culprit, but this logic is flawed and dangerous. Stifling bullying online won't make bullying go away; it'll just send it back underground. The visibility gives us an advantage. If we see it, we can work with it to stop it." Yes!

Potential positive outcome

Peer support and counseling online - by "digital street workers" - is what danah boyd proposes. When she was in college, danah writes, fellow students volunteered as street workers to help at-risk "teens on the street find resources and help. They directed them to psychologists, doctors, and social workers. We need a program like this for the digital streets. We need college-aged young adults to troll the digital world looking out for teens who are in trouble and helping them seek help. We need online counselors who can work with minors to address their behavioral issues without forcing the minor to contend with parents or bureaucracy. We need online social workers that can connect with kids and help them understand their options."

She's talking about kids whose parents simply aren't there - the young people who are at risk online. "They are the kids who are being beaten at home and blog about it. They are the kids who publicly humiliate other kids to get attention. They are the kids who seek sex with strangers as a form of validation. They are the kids who are lonely, suicidal, and self-destructive.... They are calling out for help. Why aren't we listening? And why are we blaming the technology instead?" When we stop doing that, we can really start helping at-risk youth online and increasing online safety.

I propose that all social sites and services employ...

1. "Digital street workers" (older peers/young adults as online community volunteers) and
2. Paid, trained counselors or social workers on their customer-service staffs - in addition to community moderators for socializing by minors.

Your views on any of this would be most welcome - via anne[at]netfamilynews.org, in this blog, or in our ConnectSafely forum. With your permission, I often publish readers' comments for everybody's benefit.

Related links

"The 'MySpace Suicide' Case, Social Networking, and the Law" in Findlaw

My first post on the Megan Meier case, Nov. '07 "Extreme cyberbullying: US case comes to light." See also "Dismissal urged in Megan Meier case."

'Cyber Monday' alert!

Apparently today is the biggest online shopping day of the year, but everybody needs to be extra alert for spam and phishing scams right through the holidays (not to mention every day). The Monday after the US's Thanksgiving "consumers are expected to spend $821 million this year, up 12% from 2007," USATODAY reports. "But a wobbly economy, combined with a consumer thirst for too-good-to-be-true bargains, has motivated cybercrooks to unleash a torrent of spam, phishing scams and malicious software." USATODAY adds that last year, phishing attacks rose 300% on Thanksgiving, and worse is expected this year. It's an excellent opportunity to teach critical thinking. Help your kids understand that, online too, too good to be true is usually exactly that: not true, not a "deal." USATODAY cites security experts as urging users "to be wary of cut-rate deals from unfamiliar online merchants. They also suggest using multiple passwords when shopping and using the most up-to-date Web browsers and anti-virus software."

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."]