A Round of Applause for the Internet Safety Technical Task Force for a Job Well Done

Headline from the New York Times
January 13, 2009
“Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown”

HISTORY: “The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force's inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users - including parents - can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.” [Quoted from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University]

REPORT: Today the task force published its final report, a comprehensive 278 page document including reports from both the Technical Advisory Board and the Research Advisory Board (of which I am a member).

COMMENTS: Several points in the report were striking and important:

1. The Research Advisory Board completed a thorough literature review (included in the report) which concluded that based on the best peer-reviewed research, using both national and regional samples, the moral panic caused by the media in general, and television shows such as NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” are completely overblown. The research showed consistently that the actual threat of adult predators enticing unsuspecting teens into sexual encounters was essentially nonexistent. When teens are approached online with a sexual solicitation, most often it is from other adolescents and not sexual offenders or trolling adults. In addition, as all of my research has shown, the report confirmed that even when teens are approached, more than 90% of the responses are appropriate.

2. In spite of the research showing that sexual predators are not roaming the Internet, the news media and other agencies continue to wave a red flag touting these dangers. In a study in progress by my research team, we are examining the mentions of various online issues such as sexual predators, cyberbullying, Internet addition, and pornography with respect to both the Internet in general and MySpace in particular. Using circulation figures, we chose the top 20 newspapers, television news shows, and general interest magazines and tallied the number of times any of these issues were mentioned between 2002 and 2008. Although the 2008 data collection has not been completed we have found a consistent, startling trend of a dramatic increase in negative media. Between 2005 – two years after the opening of MySpace and after it had begun its dramatic rise in membership – and 2008, the number of unique newspaper articles or news stories on Internet “problems” increased 1600% and stories on MySpace problems increased 1100%! The graph below shows some of these results from newspaper articles.

The complete report should be available soon.







3. The area of cyberbullying is complex since no clear definition is applied to all research studies. However, according to the report, “online harassment or cyberbullying happens to a significant minority of youth, is sometimes distressing, and is frequently correlated with other risky behaviors and disconcerting psychosocial problems.” The report also goes on to admit that “this risk is the most common risk that minors face online.”

4. A third issue, exposure to “problematic content” (read pornography) may be prevalent but one sample national study which found 42% of youth reported unwanted or wanted exposure. Two thirds of those exposed reported that they did not want to see the porn but only 9% were very or extremely upset.

5. The Technology Advisory Board reviewed 40 different submitted technologies to keep children safe online. The board concluded that no single technology could keep kids safe online and that “there is no substitute for a parent, caregiver, or other responsible adult actively guiding and supporting a child in safe Internet usage.”


Overall, I would like to commend the task force for being even handed in its balanced assessment of available technologies with research results. I also feel that, as I have said often and noted throughout my book, Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation, no technology should be used as a substitute for good parenting practices. Parents must be aware of what their children are doing online and discuss potential problems in advance whenever possible. When unanticipated problems do arise, parents should be ready to deal with those problems by establishing rules and consequences for any misbehavior online. Both proactive parenting (in advance of problems) and reactive parenting (after a problem occurs) should be dealt with using sound “Authoritative Parenting” techniques which include setting limits and consequences for behavior (or misbehavior) within a loving, caring context where children are allowed and encouraged to express their opinions about both the problems and their solutions. Authoritative Parenting has been shown to lead to positive outcomes in many areas including our latest studies of the relationship between Internet and MySpace behaviors and parenting style. Children of Authoritative Parents are more successful in school, psychologically healthier, and face fewer online behavioral problems.

MacArthur Study on Social Networking: Excellent Study but Where Should Parents Be Involved?

I read with interest the amazing three-year study funded by the MacArthur Foundation who interviewed more than 800 youth and young adults, and conducted more than 5,000 hours of online observations. The research team used a variety of techniques to collect these data including semi-structured interviews, diary studies, focus groups, informal interviews, observations of social network activities, and content examinations of thousands of social network profiles. The team most certainly did a thorough job of using qualitative methodology to solidify the notion that despite media reports to the contrary, social networking provides invaluable socialization and learning experiences that are critical for today’s youth. I congratulate the entire team for their tireless efforts.

It was gratifying to me to see that their conclusions about social networking validate the work of myself, and my colleagues over the past several years. In a recent article published in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology entitled “The Association of Parenting Style and Child Age with Parental Limit Setting and Adolescent MySpace Behavior” we presented the results of two studies of parent and pre-teen and teen MySpace user pairs. Using anonymous, online surveys, we collected data from 607 parent-teen pairs investigating a variety of issues including MySpace usage and experiences, parenting style, limit setting, MySpace problems (cyberbullying, sexual predators, exposure to pornography), and other psychological and attitudinal issues. The research produced a strong picture showing how much pre-teens, teens, and young adults were using social networks (as well as other media and technology) and how their parents were, in many cases, not aware of their usage, underestimated their children’s experiences, overestimated online dangers, and did not set limits and boundaries on their children’s online behavior. MOST IMPORTANTLY, our research demonstrated that online behaviors, attitudes and psychological outcomes were strongly related to parenting style. Parents who adopted an Authoritative Parenting Style (using Diana Baumrind’s classification system), where they placed specific limits on their children’s behavior but did so by (1) talking with their children, (2) discussing the issues, (3) listening to their children, and (4) then jointly setting limits, raised children with better, safer, healthier online social networking experiences. Sadly, only one in three parents in our studies – and in other similar studies – used an Authoritative Parenting Style. A link to the article can be found on my website at www.Me-MySpace-and-I.com.

I am also gratified that the MacArthur research validated everything that I said in my recent book, Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation (2008, Palgrave Macmillan). The main premise of my book is that this is a whole new generation of children, adolescents, and young adults who face an entirely different world than that of their older brothers and sisters and their parents. These Net Geners were immersed in technology from birth and it has completely shaped their lives across all domains. The book talks about how parents need to be aware of the major impact technology and media has had – and will continue to have – on the Net Generation and the upcoming iGeneration born in the new millennium. The MacArthur projects reinforces these changes and parenting challenges.

I was most interested in the section of their report titled “Implications for Educators, Parents, and Policymakers” which listed four areas for consideration: (1) social and recreational new media use as a site for learning, (2) recognizing important distinctions in youth culture and literacy, (3) capitalizing on peer-based learning, and (4) new role for education. I am currently working on a new book tentatively entitled Me, My eLife, and I: Teaching and Raising the Net Generation (2009, Palgrave Macmillan) in, which I explore these issues and make strong research and psychologically-theory-based assertions about how youth are only going to become more involved in social media and how current educational models are not going to work unless they take advantage of this new generation of multitasking, media savvy children and adolescents. The thrust of the book is that our educational system, using its current models, is not suited to teaching Net Gen and iGen students due to its reliance on uni-tasking teaching methods, and its reluctance to integrate social networking and electronic communication tools into a multitasking environment that will be more enticing and pedagogically more appropriate for education. I was happy to see that the four implications of the report are all issues that I will be delineating in my book.

I was a bit confused in reading this section of implications. Even though “parents” were explicitly mentioned in the title, there were no recommendations about how parents should be involved in their children’s online activities. As we know from our studies – and dozens of previous studies of parenting styles in other domains – Authoritative Parenting is the best possible approach to keep children safe in their social networking, media-rich worlds.

Again, I want to applaud the MacArthur foundation and its researchers on a comprehensive study of social networking. I hope that the media will be able to refocus their reporting from the evils and moral panic concerning social networking to a more balanced approach about its positive benefits. I also hope that the media will recognize that these positive benefits are strongly influenced by good parenting.

I look forward to your comments. As always, feel free to e-mail me at LROSEN@CSUDH.EDU and visit my website for updates on our newest research on the Net Generation and the new iGeneration.

THE IMPACT OF TEXTISMS ON ENGLISH LITERACY

A recent Associated Press article entitled "Not all :) as informal writing creeps into teen assignments" discussed another fascinating study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that included the following findings:

• Nearly two thirds of teens 12- to 17-years-old admitted to using some informal writing styles ("textisms") in school writing assignments.
• Half of the teens said they sometimes use improper capitalization and punctuation in school assignments.
  
• More than one third use acronyms such as LOL in their school writing.
• 86% of teens believe that good writing is important to success in life.
  

My colleagues and I have been studying the impact of "textisms" on writing. In a study completed in late 2007, we asked a sample of 678 pre-teens, teens, and young adults to tell us how much they use certain textisms in their daily written “online communication” and then asked them to write a formal letter to a fictitious company complaining about a product and asking the company to take care of the problem. We then used a standard scoring rubric used to assess writing quality (and did not deduct points for using textisms in their letter unless it affected the rated quality) and found some staggering results:

• The use of “contextual textisms” such as smilies, using special characters to indicate feelings (e.g., *hugs*), or using all capital letters to suggest strong emotions WERE NOT RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF THEIR FORMAL LETTER.

• HOWEVER, the use of “language-based textisms” such as acronyms (LOL), shortened words (tht instead of that), and removing apostrophes (wont instead of won’t) WERE NEGATIVELY RELATED TO THE QUALITY OF THEIR WRITING. In particular, those who used more of those textisms produced worse writing samples than those who your fewer even after controlling for gender and age [removing any effects of age and gender]!

NOTE: A recent conference presentation PowerPoint slide show presenting these results can be found by clicking here.

Our results are particularly troubling given a recent study by the College Board which found that the SAT Writing Test to be the best predictor of freshman grades.

We had predicted that textism use was not going to be negatively related to writing ability based on data from England suggesting the opposite. We are now exploring these findings further with a larger sample of subjects and two writing samples – a formal one and an informal one – in the hopes of gaining more clarity on the impact of textisms in online communication on writing in the classroom.

I believe strongly that writing is an important activity, regardless of one's age. As a university professor I am finding that more of my students "produce" writing, whether it be the kind of writing that marks proper English; short communication bursts replete with LOLs, wonts, :-) and missing characters; web sites; MySpace pages; blogs; or commentary on what they read about other peoples' writings. I firmly believe that our job -- as parents, teachers, or bosses -- is to take advantage of the writing experiences of these Net Generation and Generation X pre-teens, adolescents, and young adults and weave them into daily life. For example, on the college level, there are numerous tools to allow students to produce online commentary on course material. I, myself, am finding more uses of my campuses online system called BlackBoard to provide writing experiences for my students. For example, I may pose a question online concerning a recent study or something that we have discussed in class, and have students post their own thoughts plus respond to the comments of other, fellow students. I insist that they simply write, in any way that makes them comfortable, which often includes a myriad of textisms. The result is that I get some fascinating discussions of the type I would never see in a large class or in a class with students who are not comfortable speaking in front of their fellow students. In fact, often the most prolific commentators are precisely those students who are shy in the real world. Our research bears that out.

Research shows that a vast majority of Net Geners and Gen Xers feel more comfortable sharing their feelings and opinions in their screen life rather than their real life. It becomes our challenge to figure out ways to take advantage of this sense of disinhibition that many of these younger generation members feel from their years of living anonymously "behind the screen." For example, rather than rave about the negative aspects of teen MySpace or Facebook pages, take advantage of the ease of creating these representations of the self and discussion groups and encourage -- no require -- students to move some of their classroom work to the virtual world. We should recognize that these tools are here to stay and that pre-teens, adolescents, and young adults have grown up sharing ore of their feelings and opinions in virtual worlds than in their real worlds. I expect the younger generation to be even more so with Club Penguin, WebKidz and literally dozens of other online social networks being populated by children as young as late elementary school. We can make this proliferation of technology and media use work toward helping students write and produce their thoughts in a way that is comfortable for them. Given this base, I believe that we can then use these tools to move their more formal, school based writing to a higher level while allowing them and encouraging them to use their online language as a way to this teaching experience.

Return to Dr. Rosen's website for more information on his research, books, and commentaries.

More on Campus Shootings and Communication

Last week I wrote about university campus shootings and how college campuses need to be aware that different people have different communication modality preferences. One point that I made was that younger students in the Net Generation have a preference for text messaging and that campuses are not taking that into consideration when they send out mass e-mailings to alert students about emergencies. An article from the Associated Press presents some interesting but troubling data concerning creating a campus-wide text messaging database. Omnilert, a company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 university campuses, reports that the average campus obtains only 39% enrollment. Another company reports even more dismal findings for its 300 campuses – 28%! One campus even offered a drawing for an iPod Nano to increase enrollment in the system and only got 15% of the students to sign up. Even Virginia Tech, the scene of the worst campus shooting, only got 60% of its students to sign on to the system. Interestingly, according to the article, some universities require their students to participate and others require students to either enroll or decline enrollment to make sure that each one is offered that emergency option.

This is clearly a new issue for many campuses and it is at least gratifying to see that progress is being made. I don’t think that the campus needs 100% participation because word-of-mouth should reach additional students. However, I fear that it is going to take several more incidents for colleges and students to realize that emergency communication is critical and the type of communication preference is also vital. As I said in my earlier comments, no single type of communication system will fit everyone so an effort must be made to try to use the tools that we have to reach the most people. It makes sense to me that campuses need to ask “In case of an emergency, how would you like to be contacted?” or “What is the best way to contact you in case of an emergency?” or perhaps, in the interest of the best overall coverage, ask the students to list any and all preferred communication modalities for alerts.

We are in a major transition period in communication where we are seeing more people choosing to communicate via newer technological devices, rather than “older” technology choices like the telephone which has traditionally been used as an emergency contact on campus application forms.

In a recent study, we asked more than 1,300 people from 11- to 60-years-old how they would prefer to communicate with a variety of people including their best friend, a good friend, an acquaintance, boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, asking for school or work help, a teacher or boss, parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, doctors, dentists, to make a date, to break a date, and to break up with someone. In every situation except one (relatives such as grandparents, aunts, or uncles) there were statistically significant age differences. The table below shows two examples of these patterns of communication. There is no doubt that preferences differ across the generations. If you combine texting, IMing and E-Mailing into one “electronic communication” category you can see an even clearer pattern. When communicating with a good friend, for example, 11- to 17-year olds (22%), 18- to 25-year olds (26%), and 26- to 39-year olds (22%) prefer more of these tools than those who are older than 39 (15%). These differences become magnified as you move from good friends to acquaintances: 11-17 (45%), 18-25 (60%), 26-39 (54%), and 40 and older (35%). One other interesting difference is preference for an electronic communication modality for breaking a date: 11-17 (25%), 18-25 (29%), 26-39 (15%), and 40 and older (7%).

	Face-to-face	Telephone	Text Message	IM	E-Mail	Postal Letter
COMMUNICATING WITH BEST FRIEND
11 – 17 year olds	71%	16%	8%	5%	1%	0%
18-25	66%	18%	11%	3%	1%	0%
26-39	57%	32%	6%	1%	4%	0%
40 or older	60%	35%	1%	1%	4%	0%
COMMUNICATING WITH A GOOD FRIEND
11 – 17 year olds	59%	20%	12%	8%	1%	0%
18-25	46%	28%	20%	4%	3%	0%
26-39	41%	37%	12%	1%	9%	0%
40 or older	42%	43%	2%	2%	11%	0%

Although we did not ask about communicating with the campus in an emergency (the study was done before the Virginia Tech shootings), I am sure that the pattern would be the same. It is clear from these data that communication modalities differ by age. We are currently looking further into this issue in an ongoing study. The implications are clear: in a campus emergency you need to provide a range of communication modalities to reach everyone. Just sending an e-mail is not sufficient.

Campus Shootings and Communication Across Generations

Last week my university had an incident where someone was seen carrying an assault rifle on campus. Police were called, sherrifs converged on the campus and people feared another Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois University. Luckily, it was a false alarm. A flurry of e-mails sent to the entire campus followed for the next few hours as the campus was locked down. Local news (and even some national news outlets) carried the story and reported that campus was closed. However, most students had no idea that anything was happening so they came to campus unprepared for the lockdown.

As someone who studies technology, media, and communication I have always maintained that since you are dealing with multiple generations who have different communication styles and choices, you need to communicate in a way that has the highest likelihood of getting through to all students. My university is the most multicultural university west of the Mississippi and has students ranging from 18 to 80 (I believe our average age is around 28). Given this diversity, a campus-wide email is a totally ineffective way of reaching younger students. Live television news is also worthless as these students view their news online (or get it from The Daily Show). You must match the communication modality of the student and that depends on their age and techno-savvy. Here are some of my suggestions. No one option will cover all students (or faculty and staff for that matter) but using all of them will provide the greatest communication coverage:

1. Have each student supply his/her cell phone and send a mass text message. This has been done at other universities where they ask students to voluntarily go to a website and input this information in case of emergency. In my most recent research, Net Geners prefer text messaging to any other communication modality.
2. Post information on the campus website
3. Post a notice on any MySpace groups that involve campus students since many students check their MySpace page often during the day.
4. Post a notice on any Facebook groups that are frequented by campus students for the same reason as #3.
5. Use the reverse 911 to supply a telephone alert.
6. Post information on BlackBoard -- a campus-wide system where each course has a separate page for information, grades, etc. -- where many students visit before classes for updated information.

The problem is that Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Net Generation all have different preferred communication modalities. Baby Boomers tend to prefer phone and email. Generation Xers tend to prefer email while Net Geners prefer text messaging and social networking communication. My 6 options would provide the greatest possibility of reaching the most students.

I did quite a few media interviews on this topic after both recent shootings and this is what I always tell the reporter. You have to communicate by matching modalities with each person. Everyone has a different preferred modality which they check often. My six suggestions should reach the maximal number of students (and faculty).

Internet Safety Task Force

February 28, 2008

THE BERKMAN CENTER ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF INTERNET SAFETY TASK FORCE TO IDENTIFY AND DEVELOP ONLINE SAFETY TOOLS

This press release can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/newsroom/pressreleases/the_berkman_center_announces_formation_of_internet_safety_task_force

When I originally read the press release I had to stifle hysterical laughter. I'm sure that they have finally figured it out!!! An electronic solution! Wow! That is sure to stop those young kids from being online.... Yep .. that's right. Let's provide parents and social networks with more unusable electronic leashes. What happened to providing "parenting" instruction to these parents so that there is no reason for the kids to do anything bad without being aware of the consequences? I don't know what the task force costs but it is a band aid solution at best. Do they really think that better electronic solutions are going to do anything at all to this generation of techno-savvy kids? You may as well try to hold up your hands to stop a tsunami. Within a few minutes of instituting any electronic barriers, the kids will have “work-arounds” posted on their MySpace pages and on a variety of websites that already have work-arounds for other electronic “solutions.”

MySpace and Attorneys General Announce Join Effort to Promote Industry-Wide Safety Principles

On January 14^th, MySpace and Attorneys General from 49 states and the District of Columbia released a joint statement that can be found at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080114/20080114005546.html?.v=1.

The “Principles of Safe Social Networking” were partitioned into four categories:

1. Site Design and Functionality
• Reviewing every image and video uploaded to MySpace
• Reviewing the content of MySpace discussion groups
• Making the profiles of 14- and 15-year-old users automatically private
• Deleting registered sex offenders from MySpace
• Defaulting 16- and 17-year-old users’ profiles to private
• Improve technology to enforce the minimum age of 14
2. Education and Tools for Parents, Educators and Children
• Online safety public service announcements
• Free parental software (underdevelopment) so parents can prevent their children from having access to any social networking site
• Increase communication when consumers report inappropriate material or activities on MySpace
3. Law Enforcement Cooperation
• 24-hour hotline
4. Online Safety Task Force
• Develop online safety tools to authenticate identity and verify age
• Explore new technology to “help make users more safe and secure”

My Thoughts:

At first glance, this sounds like law enforcement and MySpace are sure working hard to keep our children safe out there in cyberspace. However, no “technological tool” solution is going to keep children safe. Net Generation children, pre-teens, and adolescents are far too technologically savvy to be thwarted by technology if they truly want to social network. OK, so you are going to try to develop technology to keep young children (under 14) off MySpace. How is that going to happen? When you create a MySpace profile you are asked to state your age. No verification is required. How do they plan to verify if you are truly 16, 18 or even 99 as many underage kids indicate? Interestingly, in my studies of MySpacers, when asked their age in an anonymous online survey, and allowed to type it into a box rather than check their age from a list, 15% of the participants VOLUNTARILY told me that they were under 14. The youngest was 9!

Reviewing all photos, videos, and discussion group conversations is quite admirable and an unfathomable task. With more than 200,000,000 profiles, most with multiple photos and videos being uploaded daily, it would take years to check each one. Now, consider their plan to monitor MySpace groups. Below is a list of MySpace groups as of January 17, 2008:

By my rough calculation, there are 4,086,000 groups! How they plan to monitor group conversations is a mystery to me. Perhaps they will use software that identifies key nasty words. Oh, yeh, the kids will simply create new words to replace the old ones or use starts between letters, or something even more clever to hide these conversational no-nos.

Educating parents is an excellent idea and public service announcements are a nice start. But MySpace needs to do much more than that to alert parents to the ways they can keep tabs on their children. In fact, MySpace already has a complete section with colorful, informative tabs of all types of MySpace safety information. Didn’t you know that? Where is it you ask? Well, scroll all the way down to the bottom of any MySpace page – where you typically find links to matters that are more legal than informative – and hidden between their privacy statement link and how to contact MySpace is a link to “Safety Tips.” I think that MySpace might be better served by figuring out ways to get these sources into the hands of parents without making them search all over the place. For example, why not develop software to determine who is a parent and who is not by simply identifying profiles that answer the question about whether or not they have children in the affirmative? Having done that, Tom can send each parent a message alerting them to the available safety tips. How about posting messages about safety resources on the 49,323 groups dealing with “Family and Home”? Or, in a completely self-serving comment, Tom could buy a copy of my book for every MySpace parent!

The final two principles, Law Enforcement Cooperation and Online Safety Task Force are typically vague and without any real solutions to aid child safety.

Finally, you may have noticed that I ignored the goal of “Deleting registered sex offenders from MySpace.” Creating a MySpace page does not require anyone to use their real name nor does it ask if the person is a sex offender. What is to stop a registered sex offender from creating a profile without indicating that they are a danger to the safety of children? That one is really ludicrous. My first entry on this blog discusses just how unnecessary it is for MySpace and parents to work themselves into a frenzy about so-called sexual predators roaming cyberspace. Sure there are some people on MySpace who have ulterior motives and send kids messages containing foul language or pornographic pictures. However, my data as well as the data collected by the Research Center for Crimes Against Children (supported by the Department of Justice), show that when MySpacers do receive these sexually-tinged communications nearly all react appropriately by blocking the person, ignoring the message or telling an adult. Further, according to the research, most of these “sexual predators” are actually kids themselves simply fooling around.

One final thought: Giving parents software to prevent their children from going on any social network is a ridiculous idea and terrible parenting. With 80% of all 11- to 17-year-olds on MySpace, many kids experience the majority of their social lives online. With working parents, where nobody is home when school is over, many teens must go directly home after school. Instead of hanging out with friends at after-school activities or at the mall, they congregate on MySpace. Pulling the plug is tantamount to making your child a social outcast by limiting a major part of his/her social life.

My research has shown that parenting style is critical in determining online safety. The best solution is to teach parents how to use “Authoritative Parenting” to establish rules and set limits for their children while allowing the children to have input in the discussion. My extensive research, which you can read on my website, shows convincingly that having an authoritative parenting style is by far the best solution to keeping your children safe and healthy while letting them enjoy an online social life. Good parenting is the answer, not technological tools.