Teen texting while driving: Data

A quarter of teen drivers in the US (26%) say they have texted while driving and "half (48%) of all teens ages 12 to 17 say they’ve been a passenger while a driver has texted behind the wheel," the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports. "Boys and girls are equally likely to report texting behind the wheel as well as riding with texting drivers," Pew adds, and the likelihood of riding with drivers who text grows as teens get older. It's not that they don't understand the risks, Pew senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart suggested, it's just that teens' strong desire to stay connected can outweigh safety. Some related data: 75% of all US 12-to-17-year-olds own a cell phone, and 66% use their phones to text; 82% of 16- and 17-year-olds have a cellphone and 76% of them text. [See also: "Teen drivers: Take a text stop."]

From users to citizens: How to make digital citizenship relevant

"Digital citizenship" is a rapidly expanding conversation in the online-safety field. Is it one we should be having? Is it relevant to young people, the "citizens" we all have in mind? On a recent conference panel, Prof. Tanya Byron of the UK seemed to suggest not – too abstract or complicated maybe. I agree with her a lot of the time but not on this point, because I think digital citizenship is what makes online safety relevant to the people Net safety is supposed to protect.

In a participatory media environment, focusing on citizenship helps everybody understand that: 1) they're stakeholders in their own well-being online, 2) they're stakeholders in their community's well-being as well as that of fellow participants (because in a user-driven environment safety can't logically be the sole responsibility of the community's host), and 3) they have rights and responsibilities online. Digital citizens have a right to the support of fellow members, as well as of the community as a whole, and in turn the responsibility to provide support as well as cultivate a supportive environment. As my friends at Childnet International in London say at Digizen.org, digital citizenship is about "using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same."

Two other recent conversations got me thinking about how digital citizenship might be made even more relevant to youth:

A student on a conference panel saying, "My friends and I never read the terms of service." (Of course not; they're written by lawyers.)

A colleague in another country wondering if "citizenship" means the same in his country as in mine. ("Digital citizenship" was mentioned a lot at last month's Safer Internet Forum attended by representatives from more than two dozen European countries plus Brazil, New Zealand, and Malaysia - see this account.)

Continuing the latter conversation, I asked my colleague what it meant to people in his country and, reflexively, he mentioned "rights and responsibilities." We all need to talk about this more, probably, but based on what I heard at the Safer Internet Forum and in this conversation, we have a viably universal, workable concept.

What do terms of service have to do with it? On the social Web, services (games, social network sites, virtual worlds, etc.), the communities of users they host, and users themselves all have rights and responsibilities. So I suggest that...

"Terms of service" are really Statements of Rights & Responsibilities but might at least incorporate language to that effect and have terms of both the site's rights and responsibilities and those of its users. Maybe this would help make the statements more readable. It might also help shift thinking away from a narrow legal focus to a broad participatory approach that fits the current media environment (I wrote a bit about community self-regulation or "the guild effect" here).

Service-wide support. Social media services such as Facebook, MySpace, Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, and cellphone carriers support good citizenship, or user rights and responsibilities, not just in terms of service but also in features, documentation, moderation and customer service, and marketing – as an industry best practice.

Support at home & school. Parents and educators blend the online and digital versions of citizenship into conversations and lessons about behavior, empathy, social norms, ethics, and critical thinking from the moment children begin using technology, at least in preschool.

The equation's incomplete without all the above, I think. For example, we can't reasonably expect a social site's support of citizenship to end bullying behavior all by itself, but it can help when backed up by similar messaging in users' homes and schools. But "what's the big deal about citizenship?" we might be asked by teens and Tanya Byron. The simplest answer in the research is that people who engage in aggressive behavior online are more than twice as likely to be victimized (see "Digital risk, digital citizenship"), so the civility of good citizenship is protective.

But Tanya, I'm right with you: If "digital citizenship" becomes just another term adults use or yet another "subject" students have to learn – if youth don't see it as their ticket to full, rich, healthy participation and membership in the highly participatory media, culture, and society they find compelling – we're talking to ourselves.

Related links

"A [proposed] definition of digital literacy & citizenship" for educators to consider (send your thoughts to anne[at]netfamilynews.org!)

A team of 12- and 13-year-old New Zealanders won that country's national Community Problem Solving Competition with their project "Creative Cyber Citizens," which uses Hector's World to teach younger students digital citizenship. Hector's World is an internationally recognized educational site designed to teach 2-to-9-year-olds online safety and digital citizenship, the latter now being the main focus Net safety in New Zealand. The winners will now work with a college in NZ to raise money to compete in the International Future Problem Solving finals in the US next May.

"Parents have rules to follow online too," a post in the Facebook blog by parent and CommonSenseMedia.org editorial director Liz Perle. Great tips! I only add one: Approach your children/students and their social media use with respect.

"Online Safety 3.0: Empowering & Protecting Youth"

My avatar, my self

Neuroscientists are looking into the relationship between self and avatar. A study of World of Warcraft players in their 20s (14 men and 1 woman) who spend an average of 23 hours a week in the game/world was recently presented at the Society of Neuroscience, NewScientist.com reports. From fMRI scans of the players' brains, the study found "next to no difference" in activity in the areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgment at times when the players were thinking about their virtual selves vs. times when they were thinking about their actual selves. "Disentangling how the brain regards avatars versus real individuals may help explain why some people spend large chunks of their life playing immersive online games," the study's lead author, Kristina Caudle, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth University, said. In future, she wants "to study volunteers who spend less time playing World of Warcraft to see if there are differences in how their brains discriminate between real and virtual worlds."

Social lives, media in their pockets

If our kids text, 80% of us do too, according to The Nielsen Company. Nielsen doesn't say why, but we all know: Our kids "hear" us better when we text them, and – besides – it's fun to text with them! Here's some more interesting cellphone data from Nielsen:

Phone owners are getting younger: Last year kids typically got their first phone at age 10.1; by the beginning of this year 2009, the phone ownership age "was down to 9.7." Same for borrowing: In 2008, the average age when kids started to borrow a cell phone was 8.6 years"; now it's 8.

How they use phones: 66% of tween phone owners took photos with their phones in the past year; half played pre-installed games; 40% activated the speakerphone feature; 28% filmed a video clip; 24% listened to tunes. We've already seen this reported, but "the average 13-17 year old sends more than 2,000 text messages per month."

Younger phone owners: more than half of 8-year-old owners "used their cell to send text messages in the last 12 months. "That figure soared to 81% for 12-year-old mobile users," with "the vast majority" (90%) of those texts going to friends and family."

Parental controls: More than half of cellphone users' parents don't use parental controls. Among the minority who do, "20% limit the number of calls, texts or instant messages, followed by download limits (17%), talk time or voice minute allocations (16%), mobile website access limits (15%), locator services and restricted in/outgoing number access (13% each), time of day restrictions (11%), and alerts to unauthorized texts, IMs or callers (6% each); 60% of parents "forbid downloads onto their children’s phone for financial and security reasons."

For parents' own views, see also a piece in the Washington Post about when texting becomes nagging; "When Dad banned text messaging" in a New York Times blog; and another mom's view of her kids' texting at TMCnet.com.

New tool for keeping Web searches safe

A few simple household rules can help kids at your house avoid stumbling upon inappropriate Web content: 1. If you're not absolutely sure of a URL, don't just type it into the browser window. Use a search engine. 2. Use only our family's search-engine pick (one that offers filtered search). 3. Nobody changes the settings or preferences in the search engine. We've had these rules at our house for years, and they've worked great (we're fortunate to have a pretty rule-abiding crew). But now one search engine, Google, has made family rule compliance a lot easier: It has a new feature that lets parents lock the computers kids use into the strictest SafeSearch setting (as long as Google's the search-engine pick, of course). All parents need to do is log into their Google account on any computer the kids use, click on Settings, then Search Settings in the upper right-hand corner of the page. On the page that takes you to, scroll down to SafeSearch Filtering and click "Lock SafeSearch." The rest will be clear. But here's a little 95-sec. demo. The only thing to remember is that you need to do this with any browser used on that computer – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc. This is a lighter touch with parental controls that might be a good place to start (and some parents may find it meets their household adult-content-blocking needs). We've found that tech tools are best used when layered on top of parent-child discussions about what is and isn't appropriate for our family and why. Here's Google's Help page on the locking tool.

States' report card for school innovation

The US states' report card for innovation in education wasn't all bad news: For example, "Massachusetts, Colorado, and Rhode Island got gold stars for their policies to promote extended learning time in schools." But all of those states got Ds for tech innovation. The report – "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation" – was not pretty, with "most states earning Cs, Ds, or even Fs in such key areas as technology, high school quality, and removal of ineffective teachers," Education Week reports. Sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and the American Enterprise Institute, the report used "state data and existing and original research to assign letter grades to states." Technology grades were based on criteria such as teachers' technology proficiency, student access to tech, whether there are online schools in the state, and whether the state assesses return on investments in technology. Six states got As for technology: Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia. Twelve states got Bs; 14 Cs; 18 Ds (including the District of Columbia), and one – Nevada – got an F for tech innovation. A key critic of the report was the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, which said its recommendations fit with "the factory model of education." The full report can be downloaded from the US Chamber site in PDF format, and the Tech section starts on p. 46.

Filters for classroom management?

No. Really not a good use for filters, writes instructional technologist Bud Hunt at St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado, where they've been filtering less since the beginning of the school year. Hunt's thoughtful response to requests from teachers and other staff to block resources that are distractions in the classroom is that "we will no longer use the Web filter as a classroom management tool. Blocking one distraction doesn’t solve the problem of students off task – it just encourages them to find another site to distract them. Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem." Hunt later adds that the best filters in a classroom are the people in it. I do agree. Here's why – but don't miss Bud's complete response to technological-classroom-management requests, linked to above. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with filtering, just with uncritical use of it, or any technology. [See also "Filtering critics, issues in 3 countries."]