News for the Week of August 13, 2006
The biggest news in Net safety this week was the much-anticipated "Second Youth Internet Safety Survey" (the first, much-quoted, study came out back in 2000) from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, sponsored by the US government-funded National Center for Missing & Exploited Children . Here are key take-aways for parents...
Youth Internet safety in 2006
USATODAY's coverage of the CACRC study came with a very at-a-glance sidebar with three points that sum up quite effectively what has changed in kids' online experiences over the past five years:
- Sexual solicitations are down overall (in spite of social networking's rise).
- Exposure to porn is up (despite increased use of filters).
- Peer harassment (cyberbullying) is up.
Of course some qualifying is needed. First the contact issue: Even though "a smaller proportion of youth Internet users received unwanted sexual solicitations" (13% in this study, down from 19% in 2000) and a smaller percentage are interacting with strangers (34% down from 40%), "aggressive solicitations [defined as solicitors trying to meet in person] did not decline," and 4% of young people surveyed said the solicitors asked for nude or sexually explicit photos of themselves (not surprisingly, digital photography is now showing up in the research, which means it needs to show up in Net-safety education at home and everywhere - and, parents, beware of Webcams and picture phones!).
As for increased exposure to porn despite greater use of filters, my guess is this is not so much a comment on the effectiveness of filters as on the effectiveness of relying on filters installed on home computers when the exposure increasingly happens in multiple locations on multiple devices. In other words, this finding is a comment on young people's use of the broadband, everywhere wired and wireless Web 2.0 - and on how important it is to work with our kids on self-protection and critical thinking wherever they access the Web.
Other findings of interest to parents...
- Where it's happening. Amid all the media stories about social networking, particularly noteworthy is where the "bad stuff" actually occurs: "The study notes that chat rooms and IM are the predominant 'places' on the Internet where these incidents occur," wrote Tim Lordan, executive director of the Internet Education Foundation in Washington, D.C., in an email to me about his take-aways from the study. "While a substantial number of youth in the study had used online journals or blogs [they weren't called "social networks" yet when the survey was being conducted], none of them attributed the sexual solicitations as happening in those spaces. Those interviewed did report, however, that they had been *bullied* [emphasis mine] on blogs and online journals (See Online Harassment of Youth, Page 43)."
- On cyberbullying: Peers and "offline acquaintances" (people they know in real life) are clearly a growing risk factor in sexual solicitations as well as harassment - 44% of harassment incidents involved offline acquaintances, most of them peers, and a significant portion happened "when youth were using the Internet in the company of peers" (group think and peer pressure as noted elements in cyberbullying.) Even in the 2000 study, fewer than a quarter of the sexual solicitations came from people 18+ (in 27% of the cases, the age was unknown), 3% of them were "aggressive" (defined by the authors as requesting an offline meeting), and none of the solicitations led to sexual contact or assault.
- Peer pressure. This showed up for the first time in this year's study - that "some of the unwanted incidents and risky Internet use were not solitary." Just as has always been the case, kids are "encouraged" by their peers to try risky things together and to harass other peers, and this is no different on the Internet. But the Internet can augment this behavior because of the anonymity it provides. In other words, be around when kids go online together at your house or school.
- Childhood development. The authors' statement that "normal teenage development may be an important factor" in their finding that online sexual solicitations "remain a phenomenon of the teen years" (indicating that normal teenage sexual exploration needs to be taken into consideration in the development of online-safety education and policymaking). For more insights on this, see "Net-related crimes against kids: Reality check" about a 2004 study by the same authors based on research into actual cases handled by law enforcement.
- Kids underreport. The authors highlighted their finding that kids are "still not telling parents/guardians and authorities when victimized." They don't say why, but other experts have said it's because they don't want adults to overreact and take away access - not just access to the Net, but more importantly to their friends, their social scene. It's essential not to overreact so that lines of communication are wide open and our kids don't "go underground" online when they can so easily. Too, disciplinary actions like banning certain sites or deleting blogs and profiles don't really work, at least with noncompliant kids, because of the innumerable workarounds like proxy sites and servers (see this page, for example ) and free blogging and social-networking accounts available to them in so many "places" online (see Wikipedia's list ). A parent can spend hours emailing and deleting one account at MySpace, for example, and another one can pop up in its place in minutes - if a "shadow profile" or two weren't there already.
