News for the Week of August 5, 2007
This week's top story is an important study of students' use of the social Web from the National School Boards Association - important because it offers parents and school administrators a credible perspective on both the opportunities and the risks involved in socializing and producing online...
Creative networking or social producing
These days US 9-to-17-year-olds are spending almost as much time on the social Web (about 9 hours/week) as they are watching TV (about 10 hours/week), and for many that online activity is "highly creative," according to a just-released survey by Grunwald Associates for the National School Boards Association. "Overall, an astonishing 96% of students with online access report that they have ever used social-networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities, such as Facebook, MySpace and services designed specifically for young children, such as Webkins and the chat sections of Nick.com," the NSBA reports. Interestingly, one of the most common topics among students in all this online communicating is education itself (about 60% of social networkers talk about this and 50% specifically about schoolwork). Students, parents, and school district leaders nationwide were surveyed for this study.
As for those highly creative online activities, the NSBA and Grunwald found 32% of online students share music; 30% videos; 24% photos (22% their own photos or artwork); 12% update/decorate their Web pages; 30% have blogs; 16% create and share virtual objects such as puzzles, houses, clothing, and games; and 10% contribute to online collaborative projects. The survey, interestingly, discovered an important interest group in the student social Web population: "nonconformists." They "are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors and skills that indicate leadership among their peers." They're "significantly heavier users of social networking sites" - 50% of them are producers and 38% are editors of online content. These students, the study found, are "significantly more likely than other students" to be "traditional influentials," "promoters," "recruiters," "organizers," and "networkers."
Fewer risks than expected
"Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown" is the headline on ArsTechnica.com's report on the NSBA study. It "suggests strongly . that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information." And there's a big discrepancy between students' actual experience with risk, as they reported it to the researchers, and school perceptions. More than half of US school districts (52%) say students providing personal information online has been "a significant problem," while "only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, screennames, or other personal info to strangers." The School Boards Association ends the report calling on schools to "reexamine their social-networking policies." It's important to have such policies the NSBA says, but students may learn online safety and responsible online expression better "while they're actually using social-networking tools." [The ArsTechnica piece includes a link to the complete study in pdf format.]
In other news...
- Congress's Net-safety push. We can expect to see some online-safety legislation coming out of Congress this fall, lawmakers themselves are saying. "Expect a new push . for laws aimed at keeping sexual predators off the likes of MySpace.com and elevating fines on Internet service providers that don't report child pornography," CNET reports, saying Democratic lawmakers are focusing particularly on anti-predator and -child pornography legislation. Meanwhile, Sens. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska and Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii introduced a bill that, among other things, "calls on the Federal Trade Commission to oversee a government-directed public awareness campaign" on Internet safety, PC Magazine reports.
- Hacks in social sites. Thousands of hackers (not malicious ones, necessarily) gathered at two conferences in Las Vegas this past week, the Associated Press reports. Here's the important part: Hackers are seeing intruders in social-networking sites who "commandeer personal Web pages and possibly inject malicious code." They look for flaws in sites' code that allows them to "inject" their own malicious code into pages. This is " a particular problem for social networking sites, where it's difficult to police the content of the millions of posts each day," according to the AP. The intruders often add links to Web pages in other sites that steal the computer "cookie" information from the computer of the social networker who clicks on the link. Particularly vulnerable are people who use older versions of Firefox, one of the AP's sources said. The source said Facebook and MySpace patch flaws they find, but there are probably hundreds of flaws like this and it's tough to keep up with what's on tens of millions of pages. So the take-away: Keep browsers up-to-date and be careful about what links they click on in profiles and blogs!
- More polite in virtual worlds? CNET asks that question. It's an interesting one - especially given a growing public discussion about cyberbullying and why some people are so nasty on the Web (see my earlier post on this). The question is: Are people more polite in online worlds and games with avatars than in, say, social-networking sites? And is it because there are avatars - visual representations of ourselves - instead of just text and the anonymity associated with it? Maybe virtual worlds (like Teen Second Life, Whyville.net, and There.com) are logical "places" to teach cybercitizenship and cyberethics, then. Parents, educators, and online-safety advocates concerned about social behavior online and cyberbullying might consider putting heads together with operators of tween and teen spaces online to consider making this a component of virtual worlds for youth.
- Jail time for a film clip? Tell your kids not to mess around with digital cameras in movie theaters. A 19-year-old in the Washington, D.C., area went to see Transformers at her local movie theater with her boyfriend. She told the Washington Post she was enjoying the movie so much she thought she'd shoot a 20-second clip to show her 13-year-old brother how good it was. While she was doing so, two police officers order the couple out of the theater confiscated the digital camera, and charged the college sophomore "with a crime: illegally recording a motion picture," the Washington Post reports. She told the Post that it was her birthday and the two had borrowed the camera from a relative to "make [birthday] memories," so she happened to have the camera when they went to see the film. She "faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 when she goes to trial this month in the July 17 incident."
