News for the Week of April 30, 2006
Everybody knows have been scratching angry and off-color comments on locker doors and bathroom walls for eons, but lately some of that venting has been occurring in much more public places: their profiles and blogs in social-networking sites. How does this affect schools, and what are students' free-speech rights are questions increasingly in kid-tech news...
Online students & free speech
If it's illegal offline, it's illegal on the Web, says law professor Anita Ramasastry at the University of Washington in a thorough commentary at FindLaw.com. She refers to threats, harassment, defamation, libel. In fact, blogging and social-networking sites actually help law enforcement gather evidence on illegal activity and can prevent dangerous situations from playing out. An example, of course, is the recent case in Kansas in which teens appear to have been prevented by police from carrying out an attack on their school (see "Shooting rampage avoided due to MySpace" in arstechnica.com).
But what about postings that aren't illegal but may be upsetting to faculty and administrators? That's the tougher question, but Professor Ramasastry writes, "In such cases . the First Amendment will protect many student postings, as long as they do not 'materially disrupt' school activities - and as long as the students attend public, not private, schools." She looks at cyberbullying and defamation, as well as cases where postings or pictures can be "instrumentality of crime" (as when a pedophile grooms a child with his posts), evidence of violating the law (such as the posted video of the fire-bombing of an old Air Force hangar by two California teenagers), or crimes themselves (e.g., comments that constitute criminal threats). She also comments on student rights in private vs. public schools, cites specific cases involving just about all the above, and reviews the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "The Student Blogger's Legal FAQ."
An issue in process
But it's tough to be definitive legally when the Supreme Court has never actually ruled on an issue, as the Associated Press points out in "Legal questions rise as schools punish students for using MySpace." One complicated case involved 20 middle school students in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in California. They "were suspended in February for viewing a MySpace posting made by one child that contained graphic threats against another. Police are investigating the boy's comments about his classmate as a possible hate crime, and the district is trying to expel him," the AP reports.
Accentuating the positive
What complicates things even further for schools is students' superior tech literacy, CNET points out, but that can be good. Some educators feel that kids' cybersavvy is channeled in constructive directions when teachers acknowledge it and let the tables be turned. "Why not let tech-savvy kids turn the tables and teach the teachers? Everyone wins, believe educators like Scott Parker, a teacher at Megan's school. Students learn career skills like collaboration and meeting deadlines, and teachers get on-the-job training in technology for the classroom," CNET reports.
In Other News...
- Mobile social-networking. Earthlink and Korea-based SK Telecom launched a joint-venture mobile service called Helio, the Associated Press reports. Targeting "young, connected consumers," the service includes text, photo, and video messaging; a "presence" feature that lets MySpacers know when friends are online; multiple personalization options like "Animated Screens and Rings from major music labels"; the ability to post directly to their MySpace profiles; and - for fashion-conscious users (e.g., "sleek, black Hero, or pearlescent") - the option to sync their address book over the air from phone to phone if they're going for a different look every day. All that and 1,000 anytime minutes for $85/month (the cheapest package). The phones themselves "will cost $275 and $250, respectively," the AP says. Downloads are additional - games $5.99 each, music videos $2.49. Gives new meaning to the message, "talk is cheap."
- 'People power' & privacy. As the Village Voice describes HollaBackNYC.com - designed to empower New Yorkers to "holla back at street harassers" - it's grassroots surveillance. The site is a photo moblog, a blog to which people can upload pictures of sexual or any other kind of harasser on the spot with their camera cellphones, and it can get pretty graphic, as is the Village Voice's coverage. But it's not much different from what can be found among the zillions of innocent profiles, blogs, photos, and videos on the social-networking and media-hosting sites. Maybe some harassers deserve the spotlight they're getting. But the Village Voice cites the view of the Electronic Privacy Information Center that "sites like Holla Back may open a door to misuse or defamation." What they mean is, these sites can be used not only to "holla back" at bullies, but also to bully, defame, or threaten just about anybody, a terrible misuse of digital people power.
- The wrong kind of support. Buried in a CNET article under the apt heading "Scarier than MySpace," writer Stephanie Olsen reports there are some 500 discussion boards on the Web about self-mutilation (up from 400 a year ago). Young people who cut themselves "are increasingly turning to the Internet to vent and commiserate with others about their secret affliction, according to a new study from Cornell University psychologists." These boards tend to support the behavior by making it seem "normal," Olsen cites the Cornell researchers as saying. In the same category are pro-anorexia sites (see this Associated Press piece).
- Online vigilantism? It seems all those NBC Dateline sting operations against online sexual predators have caused a lot of people to want to "help." The problem, some law-enforcement people point out, is that "sloppy civilian investigations will push predators further underground, and that civilians may be endangering their own safety," the Associated Press reports. Perverted Justice, "an organization that's dedicated to outing online predators [and helps Dateline with its stings], expects to double its volunteer corps, to 100, by year's end," according to the AP.
- Your child as co-marketer. Advertisers are planning their own social-networking sites to harness kid-marketing power, USATODAY reports. The article's referring to the power of word-of-mouth or viral marketing a reality - an exciting prospect for marketers, because young influencers (e.g., "popular kids," gearheads, music fans, etc.) do the marketing for corporations in a way that's hugely more influential than a 30-second TV spot designed for the ultra-impersonal, very blah lowest-common-denominator.
