Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Conficker worm help (aka April Fool's worm)
It has been all over the news today, so a quick summary on what to do if you're concerned about family computers getting infected: You can see if your computers are ok by checking if they have MS08-067 installed. How? The exact steps depend on what version of Windows is on the particular PC, but they go pretty much like this: Go to Start > Control Panel > Programs > View installed updates. If you see among them "Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB958644)," your machine's all set. That update was issued last October, so if your family's doing automatic security updates, everybody's fine. If you don't see that update in the list, go to Microsoft.com, search for the MS08-067 security update, and install it. Here's CNET's live blog on the Conficker worm, TrendMicro's guide, Symantec's guide, and ConnectSafely.org's Larry Magid talking about it on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
Major update on Net predators: CACRC study
As scary as some of the reports covering it may make it look, there's a lot of good news for online youth in the much-anticipated new study from UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center, "Trends in Arrests of Online Predators." I hope the news coverage doesn't focus solely on the nearly five-fold increase in online predator arrests since the CACRC's last such study in 2000, but even if it does, that finding points to great preventive police work throughout the US (in 2006, 87% of those arrests involved police posing as teens, not real young people, the study found). Those arrests likely prevented crimes against children, and they're sending the message that cops are out there patrolling "the neighborhood."
But there's a lot of other positive news in the report. For example...
Between the CACRC's last study of Net-related predation arrests and this one, there was only a "modest" increase - 21% - of arrests of offenders soliciting young people, its authors report, "from an estimated 508 arrests in 2000 to an estimated 615 in 2006," at a time when the number of US 12-to-17-year-olds online went from 73% to 93%, or more than 25 million, in 2006, and when their Internet use was getting a lot more social.
Overall sex offenses against youth declined during this period, and Internet-initiated child sexual exploitation constituted only 1% of overall child sexual exploitation.
Despite all the hype about registered sex offenders, only a tiny percentage of the arrests surveyed were of registered sex offenders, which indicates that, while blocking them from sites may reduce, it by no means stops sexual solicitation (and we already knew that a significant percentage of the solicitations come from peers).
Not good news, but a notable finding in the study is that there has been "a significant increase in arrests of young adult offenders, ages 18 to 25," which also challenges the image of "predators" presented in the news media.
What about social networking?
Now let's zoom in on what the authors say about online social networking - not just because it's so important to our kids (and statistically of growing use to us too), but also because of all the hype and news coverage about predators in social network sites since 2005:
"There was no evidence that online predators were stalking or abducting unsuspecting victims based on information they posted at social networking sites.
"The nature of crimes in which online predators used the Internet to meet and victimize youth changed little between 2000 and 2006, despite the advent of social networking sites."
Going even further, USATODAY later cited the view of study lead author David Finkelhor that "ongoing studies show that being on a social networking site doesn't create risk for sexual victimization."
Where the risk is
The key to cutting through all the hype and really protecting kids from online predators is in understanding where the risk really lies. Since social networking hit the public radar screen in late 2005, the misconception has grown that the problem lies in a particular technology or "place" online. Dr. Finkelhor put it this way in an email the day the study was released: "The SNS [social-network sites] issue like the age authentication solution is all about mistaking the problem as one of 'access'," he told me. "It’s not about access. It’s about what kids do when interacting online: behaviors."
As for what those behaviors are, Dr. Finkelhor spelled some of them out in a CBS/CNET interview for Larry Magid, my ConnectSafely.org co-director: talking about sex with strangers in a lot of different places online, especially chatrooms about sex and romance, and getting into sexual relationships with people met online (see also "Profile of a teen online victim" from a talk Finkelhor gave in 2007).
"I think the messages [about online safety] need to warn kids about the very risky things they can do in their adolescent naivete and interest in exploring the world," he told Larry. Finkelhor added a risk-prevention behavior that both the Internet industry and all child safety advocates can help promote: "We also need to encourage other people online, the bystanders, people who know these young people or see these interactions on various sites, to report it, to caution the kids about what they're doing, to intervene, to begin to feel they need to take some action to short-circuit what they're seeing might happen." Watching each other's backs, I'm hearing Finkelhor suggest. One of the country's top experts on online safety is pointing to the need to foster digital citizenship.
Related links
"Social norming for risk prevention"
MySpace's PR problem
"Social media literacy: The new Internet safety"
"Pennsylvania case study: Social networking risk in context"
But there's a lot of other positive news in the report. For example...
What about social networking?
Now let's zoom in on what the authors say about online social networking - not just because it's so important to our kids (and statistically of growing use to us too), but also because of all the hype and news coverage about predators in social network sites since 2005:
Going even further, USATODAY later cited the view of study lead author David Finkelhor that "ongoing studies show that being on a social networking site doesn't create risk for sexual victimization."
Where the risk is
The key to cutting through all the hype and really protecting kids from online predators is in understanding where the risk really lies. Since social networking hit the public radar screen in late 2005, the misconception has grown that the problem lies in a particular technology or "place" online. Dr. Finkelhor put it this way in an email the day the study was released: "The SNS [social-network sites] issue like the age authentication solution is all about mistaking the problem as one of 'access'," he told me. "It’s not about access. It’s about what kids do when interacting online: behaviors."
As for what those behaviors are, Dr. Finkelhor spelled some of them out in a CBS/CNET interview for Larry Magid, my ConnectSafely.org co-director: talking about sex with strangers in a lot of different places online, especially chatrooms about sex and romance, and getting into sexual relationships with people met online (see also "Profile of a teen online victim" from a talk Finkelhor gave in 2007).
"I think the messages [about online safety] need to warn kids about the very risky things they can do in their adolescent naivete and interest in exploring the world," he told Larry. Finkelhor added a risk-prevention behavior that both the Internet industry and all child safety advocates can help promote: "We also need to encourage other people online, the bystanders, people who know these young people or see these interactions on various sites, to report it, to caution the kids about what they're doing, to intervene, to begin to feel they need to take some action to short-circuit what they're seeing might happen." Watching each other's backs, I'm hearing Finkelhor suggest. One of the country's top experts on online safety is pointing to the need to foster digital citizenship.
Related links
Teen sexting prosecutions: Negative reactions
A federal judge has barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls in a sexting case. "US District Judge James Munley said he was issuing a restraining order on Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick because his proposed action would violate freedom of speech and parental rights," Reuters reports. The ruling came after the ACLU last week said it would sue District Attorney Skumanick for his approach to child-pornography law (see my item on this). Also last week, Maureen Kanka, "the mother of the New Jersey girl whose death inspired Megan's Law," criticized "prosecutors who charge teenagers with child porn for distributing nude photos of themselves," the Associated Press reported. Apparently she was referring to a New Jersey case in which a 14-year-old girl was charged with distributing child pornography for posting nude photos of herself on MySpace. Kanka said the prosecutors "are harming the children more than helping them."
Monday, March 30, 2009
Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 6: Old-fashioned pretend play in a new-fangled world
by Sharon Duke Estroff
During my time on Club Penguin, I became a regular at the local pizzeria. I liked it because of the cliché Italian piano music, the cozy candle-lit tables, and the fiery brick oven; but mostly because of the friendly waiters and waitresses who never, ever delivered my pizza.
Sure, I was initially stumped over how I could have given my order to 16 separate penguins and not have as much as a slice to show for it, but then I realized that these avatars/kids were only pretending to be waiters and waitresses. And they thought I was pretending to be a customer. We were playing the old "let's pretend" game in a new sort of setting.
Mom Break: Charming? Yes. Strictly worry-free? No. After all, it may walk like a penguin and talk like a penguin, but that doesn’t mean it's a penguin. Unlike traditional imaginative play, kids didn’t dream up this bustling restaurant scene on Club Penguin; graphic designers did it for them. The storylines were fueled not by children’s imaginations but by the robotic clicks of a computer mouse.
I’ve learned during my years of studying child psychology that childhood is a learning process by design, and old-fashioned pretend play is an essential, integral part of the curriculum. Dress-up games and tea parties aren’t just remnants of the retro-childhood, they're the building blocks of imagination and the means by which children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. As traditional low-tech playtime progressively gives way to high-tech virtual playtime, the concern over its impact on millennial children is real and far-reaching. It's up to us millennial parents to maintain a consistent balance for our kids between real and virtual fun.
That said, I want to end this one on a positive note: Unlike the cyberbullying and romancing I describe in earlier Undercover Mom installments, I ultimately found the pretend play in the pizzeria to be more refreshing than concerning. You see, while those cyber-waiters and -waitresses might not have delivered my pizza, they served up something far more delicious to me: precious glimmers of hope that in every age and every generation, in this world and the virtual one, childhood will prevail.
Note from editor Anne Collier: Here are views from another respected source, Izzy Neis, a long-time moderator of kids' virtual worlds and online communities....
How children use (and implement) their imaginations in ClubPenguin
How young CP users' own seemingly impossible idea - actually tipping the iceberg - compares to Izzy's amazing experience of children's imaginative play and storyline creation on the beach
A conclusion Izzy posted last spring: "Basically, kids want to be included in the magic, they want to build empires from scratch, they want to emotionally invest themselves in seemingly-silliness, etc. It’s fun. It’s a release. It’s escapism – all the while feeling included and excited. I see this play pattern/behavior all the time on Club Penguin. From 'snowball' wars ... to parties in the igloo (much more fun in theory and planning and rounding up than the actual dancing part). Club Penguin provides tools… triggers… that allow the users to 'go to town' - making up their own rules & play. Club Penguin tries to support by facilitating pieces of storyline - just enough of a taste that the users will run away with the end."
Here's an index to all issues of Undercover Mom to date.
During my time on Club Penguin, I became a regular at the local pizzeria. I liked it because of the cliché Italian piano music, the cozy candle-lit tables, and the fiery brick oven; but mostly because of the friendly waiters and waitresses who never, ever delivered my pizza.
Sure, I was initially stumped over how I could have given my order to 16 separate penguins and not have as much as a slice to show for it, but then I realized that these avatars/kids were only pretending to be waiters and waitresses. And they thought I was pretending to be a customer. We were playing the old "let's pretend" game in a new sort of setting.
Mom Break: Charming? Yes. Strictly worry-free? No. After all, it may walk like a penguin and talk like a penguin, but that doesn’t mean it's a penguin. Unlike traditional imaginative play, kids didn’t dream up this bustling restaurant scene on Club Penguin; graphic designers did it for them. The storylines were fueled not by children’s imaginations but by the robotic clicks of a computer mouse.
I’ve learned during my years of studying child psychology that childhood is a learning process by design, and old-fashioned pretend play is an essential, integral part of the curriculum. Dress-up games and tea parties aren’t just remnants of the retro-childhood, they're the building blocks of imagination and the means by which children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. As traditional low-tech playtime progressively gives way to high-tech virtual playtime, the concern over its impact on millennial children is real and far-reaching. It's up to us millennial parents to maintain a consistent balance for our kids between real and virtual fun.
That said, I want to end this one on a positive note: Unlike the cyberbullying and romancing I describe in earlier Undercover Mom installments, I ultimately found the pretend play in the pizzeria to be more refreshing than concerning. You see, while those cyber-waiters and -waitresses might not have delivered my pizza, they served up something far more delicious to me: precious glimmers of hope that in every age and every generation, in this world and the virtual one, childhood will prevail.
Note from editor Anne Collier: Here are views from another respected source, Izzy Neis, a long-time moderator of kids' virtual worlds and online communities....
A conclusion Izzy posted last spring: "Basically, kids want to be included in the magic, they want to build empires from scratch, they want to emotionally invest themselves in seemingly-silliness, etc. It’s fun. It’s a release. It’s escapism – all the while feeling included and excited. I see this play pattern/behavior all the time on Club Penguin. From 'snowball' wars ... to parties in the igloo (much more fun in theory and planning and rounding up than the actual dancing part). Club Penguin provides tools… triggers… that allow the users to 'go to town' - making up their own rules & play. Club Penguin tries to support by facilitating pieces of storyline - just enough of a taste that the users will run away with the end."
Here's an index to all issues of Undercover Mom to date.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Self-injurers on the social Web
Here's one example of the opportunities for social-Web safety as our field emerges from predator panic to focus on research-based strategies: how to help self-injuring teens. I was prompted to write about this by an article headlined "Self-injury on the rise among young people" in the Los Angeles Times. Cutting and embedding (embedding objects like paper clips or staples for recurring self-harm) is usually secretive behavior by someone seeking relief from more extreme emotional pain, experts say. It's less secret now, however, thanks to the social Web. Teens sometimes post images of scarred arms and other forms of self-harm in their profiles, which can be a step toward getting help.
Because the social or participatory Web is by definition user-driven, helping self-injuring teens isn't a top-down control proposition for social-networking sites any more than it is for self-injurers' friends and relatives (kids sensing efforts to control or stop them can just go to other, lesser-known sites, where help may be less available). There's no question public awareness of self-harm needs to be raised using all media available, and this is one thing the social-Web industry's marketing resources can help with. But this issue also cries out for the kind of help social-Web users can offer best: social-norming. Peers have a great deal of influence, for good and bad, and the social-networking industry (as well as parents and educators) can promote positive peer influencing or social norming. Through education, we can all enlist the help of our young people's peers as part of the healing process, knowing that, generally, they're the only ones who know what's happening where individual cases are concerned.
It's a "remarkably prevalent," underreported behavior, the L.A. Times cites researchers in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (especially the 2/08 issue) as saying, "15-22% of all adolescents and young adults [having] intentionally injured themselves at least once in their lifetimes. One study of 94 girls, ages 10 to 14, found that 56% had hurt themselves at least once." It's important to know that there's a broad range of severity in self-harm. "Most self-injuries are not serious, and some people try it once and never again.... A small group self-injures to seek attention or as a cry for help. Another group self-injures excessively and is at high risk for suicide," the Times reports.
Both the Times and Canada's CBC tell of a Columbus, Ohio, radiologist, William Shiels, who uses ultra sound to find embedded objects and developed "a minimally invasive surgical technique to remove them," the CBC reported. Dr. Shiels recently reported at a medical conference that 9 of the 10 girls aged 15-18 in the study he presented "said they'd had thoughts of suicide or had attempted suicide previously"; 40% were victims of sexual abuse. "The high rates found among young people [as opposed to adults] seem to go hand in hand with other studies suggesting today's youth may suffer from more mental health problems than previous generations," the Times adds.
So back to where the social Web comes in. Beyond awareness-raising, how can the social-Web industry help this group - actually all groups - of at-risk teens? It can help bring psychological and risk-prevention expertise into the public discussions and conferences about online safety as well as into business practices, for example, in having such expertise available on-call to customer-support departments. To summarize, I suggest social Web sites consider...
Raising awareness with apps and widgets, house ads, and any other advertising tools available, sending the message to users that everyone deserves help, and helping those in trouble - not standing by passively or, much worse, gossiping - is what friends do!
Monitoring site activity for self-destructive behavior to whatever extent possible and at the very least...
Providing a number to call. Have the number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and psychiatric health-care advice at the fingertips of customer-service staff 24/7 to share with any user who points out a need.
Prominently displaying the number and Web address of the Lifeline on at least the safety pages if not every page of their Web sites. [The Lifeline coordinates the work of more than 100 hotlines nationwide that deal with everything from suicidal thoughts to domestic violence to depression 24 hours a day for free (for more on this, see "The social Web's lifeline," 3/07).]
Related links
"Self-injury 'support' online"
"1 in 6 self-injure"
Even as early as 2006, when social networking was a new concept to most adults, MySpace was one of the biggest sources of referrals to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline; that's when I first blogged about the Lifeline. I'll be getting a thorough update on their work at a SAMHSA conference in DC in May.
Because the social or participatory Web is by definition user-driven, helping self-injuring teens isn't a top-down control proposition for social-networking sites any more than it is for self-injurers' friends and relatives (kids sensing efforts to control or stop them can just go to other, lesser-known sites, where help may be less available). There's no question public awareness of self-harm needs to be raised using all media available, and this is one thing the social-Web industry's marketing resources can help with. But this issue also cries out for the kind of help social-Web users can offer best: social-norming. Peers have a great deal of influence, for good and bad, and the social-networking industry (as well as parents and educators) can promote positive peer influencing or social norming. Through education, we can all enlist the help of our young people's peers as part of the healing process, knowing that, generally, they're the only ones who know what's happening where individual cases are concerned.
It's a "remarkably prevalent," underreported behavior, the L.A. Times cites researchers in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (especially the 2/08 issue) as saying, "15-22% of all adolescents and young adults [having] intentionally injured themselves at least once in their lifetimes. One study of 94 girls, ages 10 to 14, found that 56% had hurt themselves at least once." It's important to know that there's a broad range of severity in self-harm. "Most self-injuries are not serious, and some people try it once and never again.... A small group self-injures to seek attention or as a cry for help. Another group self-injures excessively and is at high risk for suicide," the Times reports.
Both the Times and Canada's CBC tell of a Columbus, Ohio, radiologist, William Shiels, who uses ultra sound to find embedded objects and developed "a minimally invasive surgical technique to remove them," the CBC reported. Dr. Shiels recently reported at a medical conference that 9 of the 10 girls aged 15-18 in the study he presented "said they'd had thoughts of suicide or had attempted suicide previously"; 40% were victims of sexual abuse. "The high rates found among young people [as opposed to adults] seem to go hand in hand with other studies suggesting today's youth may suffer from more mental health problems than previous generations," the Times adds.
So back to where the social Web comes in. Beyond awareness-raising, how can the social-Web industry help this group - actually all groups - of at-risk teens? It can help bring psychological and risk-prevention expertise into the public discussions and conferences about online safety as well as into business practices, for example, in having such expertise available on-call to customer-support departments. To summarize, I suggest social Web sites consider...
Related links
Thursday, March 26, 2009
ACLU sues prosecutor in sexting case
In a federal lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Pennsylvania district attorney who has "threatened to charge [three] girls with felony child porn violations over digital photos they took of themselves," Wired reports. "The lawsuit says the threat to prosecute the minors 'is unprecedented and stands anti-child-pornography laws on their head'." Wired adds that District Attorney George Skumanick is running for re-election in May. This is the worst-case scenario that parents and teens need to be aware of: a zealous prosecutor and minors with no criminal intent (or even awareness that their behavior was illegal). A New York Times blogger painted the legal picture pretty graphically today, showing how laws written to protect children have not caught up with "the dicey mix of teenagers’ age-old sexual curiosity, notoriously bad judgment and modern love of electronic sharing." I do believe, though, that merely sharing this story with young people at your house or school is all the education most of them need to avoid sexting. A few more details on Skumanick's approach: Wired blogger Kim Zetter reports that "in a meeting with the students and their parents, he said he would file felony charges against the students unless they agreed to six months of probation, among other terms. He gave the parents 48 hours to agree. The parents of the three girls in the ACLU suit refused to sign. Skumanick then threatened to charge the girls with producing child porn unless their parents agreed to the probation, and sent the teenagers to a five-week, 10-hour education program to discuss why what they did was wrong and what it means to be a girl in today's society." [See also our sexting prevention tips at ConnectSafely.org, and this from my co-director Larry Magid about the need for calm discussion.]
A great teen-adult conversation to join
I've just joined the Focus on Digital Media community and hope you will too. This three-week-long online conversation starts April 13 (but you can register now here) and is the "first-ever among parents, educators, and teens about ethical questions in digital life ... questions like, "Should parents and teacher ‘friend’ their kids on Facebook?" It's a joint project of New York-based Global Kids, a nonprofit urban youth educational organization; San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media; and the Harvard Graduate School of Education's GoodPlay Project, exploring how youth view and practice ethics and citizenship in social media. This is a key question for everybody's online well-being going forward, I think, and young people involved in this exploration are doing pioneering work. I want to see what they think about the idea that civility, ethics, and new media literacy bridge the participation gap by fostering participants' physical, psychological, and reputational safety (see this on Henry Jenkins's 2006 white paper on the participation gap and this more recent post on social media literacy.
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