Digital Safety

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Narratives

Chung-Hee Kim, C-H to his friends, likes to think of himself as a “normal” American teenager. He lives in a modest town in a suburb of a large midwestern city. He’s a freshman at the local high school.

His parents are nice, quiet, but a bit square. They don’t “get” him, and they really don’t get the whole online thing, but they’re OK. More important, they don’t get in the way, especially when it comes to using the computer in his bedroom.

When he’s not in school or hanging out with his friends, C-H spends most of his free time online. He’s got a MySpace page that he keeps up to date with the latest features: his favorite music plays when a visitor hits the page, they’re met with pictures of his favorite movie actresses, and his friends have posted a long list of comments every time he makes a move. He’s got a Facebook account, but fewer of his friends are on there, so he goes back only once or twice a week to look something up or check out the Wall on his page. He tries out every new service that’s hot before most of his friends do.

Mostly, Chung-Hee is into Second Life. He’s got an avatar he calls “VirtualC-H” – a young, dashing, twenty-first-century knight, who zips around in a partial suit of body armor. When he was visiting his cousins in South Korea last summer, he played around on CyWorld, and he’s had an account on There.com. Most of his friends are into World of Warcraft. But Second Life is where it’s at for C-H.

For hours every afternoon, he dives into a parallel life. His friends from school are not into Second Life as much, so he mostly chats with people he comes across in public spaces he doesn’t otherwise know. Since C-H thinks he’d like to become an architect, he hangs around with other Second Life users who build things. In Second Life, he’s constructed a post-modern home for his avatar that’s earned him a reputation as a budding talent. He’s participated in group efforts to design and build edgy-looking bridges, roads, and towers.

Today, C-H is online, as usual, in the late afternoon. The sun’s gone down, but C-H hasn’t bothered yet to turn on the lights in his bedroom. His PC throws off a blue-ish light.

He’s got a few IM windows open, chatting here and there with a few friends from the high school – mostly idle banter about who’s hot, who’s going to the freshman dance with whom, the usual. Mainly, though, he’s focused on his open web browser, where he’s in an IRC chat. He found this chat by following a few people he met through his interest in architecture. The chat is invite-only, but it turned out not to be hard to work an invite for C-H because of his design skills demonstrated in Second Life.

Most of the participants in the chat seemed to be different than the Second Life crowd. After a few witty exchanges, a participant named designboy said, “hey C-H, are you on IM? Find me at dboy1239 on [take your pick].”

Without much thought, C-H took his pick of instant messaging services – two were already opened – and sent an instant invite to dboy1239 to become his buddy. A moment later, C-H and dboy1239 had a one-on-one chat going while both continued to participate in the group IRC conversation. They got on well. C-H smiled as he signed off to head to dinner: “c u l8r, designboy.” “U2!” came the reply, and C-H shut the lid on his laptop.

Designboy and C-H became fast friends online. Designboy told C-H he lived in New York City, but that he had relatives who lived in Chicago, not far from C-H’s town. He hoped to visit them that summer, after school let out. He hoped he might get to meet C-H then. C-H said that’d be great.

In June, C-H got an e-mail from Designboy with his travel itinerary attached – showing an economy-class ticket from LaGuardia to O’Hare. “Did you get my flight info? I’d like to meet you in person. Let’s meet up when I’m in Chicago,” Designboy IMed later that day. “When’s good for you?” C-H pinged back a quick “sure, sounds good.”

But he wasn’t so sure it sounded good. He wanted to meet Designboy – they’d had a great conversation for six months running online, and his friend clearly knew his stuff when it came to architecture – but C-H was shy and he didn’t know if they’d get along in person as well as they had online. He’d have to think it through.

Problems

Cyber Bullying

[from Erin Mishkin's unpublished paper on cyber bullying (2005)] Keeping in mind the prevalence of the Internet and cell phones in teens’ lives and their dependence on digital media to maintain social ties, cyber bullying is a particularly effective means of psychological harassment. An official definition of bullying given by the National Mental Health Information Center states that bullying behavior must have the following three characteristics: 1) it must have a negative intent; 2) it must occur repeatedly over time; and 3) there must exist an imbalance of power, “with a more powerful person or group attacking a less powerful one” (National Mental Health Information Center, 2005). This “imbalance of power” is a key element of bullying, which distinguishes this behavior from other types of aggression.

As a form of bullying, cyber bullying retains all three of these characteristics of traditional bullying, but with some significant twists. First, the Internet and other digital media allow for the bully to remain anonymous to his or her victim, which, among other things, establishes an imbalance of power, with substantial power given to the perpetrator. In addition, though studies have shown that users have lauded this trait of the Internet, citing the ability to remain anonymous as enabling them to truly express themselves (Stern, 2002), Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) noted potentially dangerous implications associated with anonymity, one being “…heightened aggression and inappropriate behaviour.” They continued, “Thus the Internet may be conducive to Internet aggression for some who feel constrained by social expectations in traditional communication, but freed from these constraints in online conversations where the user cannot be seen nor the impact of his or her words on the other person be experienced” (p. 320). Because of this inability to see the implications of his or her behavior, the bully is unlikely to experience feelings of remorse or compassion toward his or her victim (Schneier as cited by Strom & Strom, 2005). In addition, some suggest that this distancing between the bully and his or her victim leads to an “unprecedented degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent’s lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills” (Harmon, 2004). Parry Aftab, founder of WiredSafety.org explained that teens are “exploring who they are—and they role-play by being mean, horrible and hateful in ways they would never be off-line” (Chu, 2005, p. 52). He went on to recount a time when he met a clean-cut preppy 13-year old who revealed that he would regularly gather information in chat rooms and websites and use that as a means to harass the strangers as if he were an acquaintance or friend. Aftab said, “He said to me, ‘I would never do anything in real life. I’m a good kid. But I can do it online because it doesn’t matter’” (Chu, 2005, p. 52).

Another way that cyber bullying is different from traditional bullying is the manner and speed with which digital media can distribute messages. No longer must bullies rely on the slow turn of the rumor mill to berate and torment their victims. With a click of a mouse, harmful messages can be sent to a large number of people instantaneously (via list servs, group text messages, group chats, websites, etc.). And, as emphasized earlier, the anonymity that digital media provide makes behavior that publicly humiliates on such a large scale easier to engage in.

Finally, this form of bullying does not allow the victim to easily escape from the harassment because—as long as one has a cell phone or access to a computer—there are no distinct boundaries to the maltreatment. (But it should be noted that even if one “disconnects” entirely, which is not recommended, it is difficult to escape from harassment since cyber bullying and the real world almost always overlap.) Though bullying via cell phone has been a popular form of harassment among teens in England and Japan for years, it is just starting to take hold in the United States (and camera phones enable bullies to take compromising pictures or videos of their victims unbeknownst to them and then send them to a large distribution list) (Paulson, 2003). Take the experience of eighth-grader Amanda Marcuson for example. One day Amanda had had a minor disagreement at school about a stolen pencil case and when she got home, she was barraged with instant messages touting her as a tattletale, a liar, and a “stuck-up bitch” (Harmon, 2004). As a means of escape, Amanda went to a basketball game with her family, but because she had her email automatically forwarded to her cell phone, the harassment extended to the stands of the auditorium—with Amanda receiving 50 hateful emails in just the short amount of time she was at the game. Consistent with cyber bullying traits, Amanda told reporters at the New York Times that while the harassment continued online, the girls inflicting the bullying never again spoke to her in person (Harmon, 2004).

Cyber bullying: From a Developmental Perspective
One of the reasons why cyber bullying is such a dangerous problem for youth is that adolescents are still in the process of developing these social competencies and might not be capable of fully grasping the seriousness of their actions—especially in an online setting where one cannot see others’ body language or facial reactions. According to Bengtsson & Johnson (1992), “Young children tend to focus on readily observable, external characteristics of people. With increasing age, this focus is shifted to internal dimensions of the person” (p. 2). As noted earlier, the anonymity factor of many online interactions taps into this developmental challenge—if a teen cannot see the response of the person they are communicating with, chances are they will be less empathetic to their experiences and less likely to curb their actions. As Willard (2004) emphasizes, empathy is explicitly tied to the ability to see another’s perspective. She notes, “The emerging ability to take the perspectives of another person increases the probability that a growing child or young teen will have an empathic response—feeling hurt inside—upon learning that an unseen other person has been harmed or is feeling hurt” (p. 3).

It is during adolescence that the development of one’s personal identity takes place (Erickson, 1963 as cited by Willard, 2004), where we begin developing our “internalized moral codes” Willard (2004, p. 2). According to Willard, we feel guilty when we act in a way that goes against our internal moral code—unless we can rationalize the action. This rationalization becomes easier in an online setting, where our actions might not seem real or we cannot see the reactions of the person who we have just harmed. Willard (2004, p. 5) gives the following examples of rationalizations that exist in both the real world and an online setting (but tend to be more prevalent in an online atmosphere): 1) “I won’t get caught”; 2) “It didn’t really hurt”; 3) “It is not a real person”; and 4) “Everyone does it.”

Online Victimization

When you think of an Internet connection as a portal into the private domain, it can bring to mind alarming images – that of the classic male predator, situated in a dark room and lit only by his computer screen as he preys upon innocent children. But what we’re learning (especially as a result of the studies conducted by the Center for Crimes Against Children, whose 2006 report (pdf) is the basis for this entry) is that it’s more complicated an issue.

Online victimization can be defined in any number of ways. The Center for Crimes Against Children defines online victimization as any of the following: 1. Exposure to unwanted sexual material 2. Sexual solicitations 3. Harassment

Exposure to unwanted sexual material
What are the means by which youth are inadvertently accessing unwanted sexual material? Everything from being sent links to pornographic sites through IM or email to coming across sexual material when doing innocuous searches online. One in three youth have experienced exposure to unwanted sexual material. Since 2000, there has been an increase in the number of youth exposed to unwanted sexual material; reasons for this, according to the CCAC; could include increased number of youth with Internet access, increased time spent online; technological advances (image capturing media more ubiquitous, computers more capable of storing and downloading large files more efficiently); and “aggressive marketing” of sexual material through pop-up ads and adware.

Sexual solicitations
According to the Center for Crimes Against Children, sexual solicitations can take two forms: non-aggressive and aggressive (where the aggressive entails some kind of offline encounter – either by phone, mail, or in-person contact).

Harassment
Harassment entails threats or other offensive behavior that could not be categorized as sexual solicitation.

Out of this report, there were some very positive findings about online victimization. From the time they did their first survey in 2000 to 2005, there had been a decline in the number of youth who communicate online with people they don’t know in person. There was also a decline in the number of youth who form close online relationships with people they met online and in the number of those receiving unwanted sexual solicitations. What this means, perhaps, is that youth are becoming more aware about the potential risks involved in talking to strangers online. This was further validated by a recent report issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project; through a series of questions about social networking sites, Pew discovered that young people are very aware about what information they post to their profiles and that females, especially, typically avoid including any information that could lead someone they don’t know to track them down in an offline setting. But what the CCAC emphasizes is that it is not those youth who share private information with strangers who are most at risk of online victimization, but those youth who willingly engage in conversations about sexuality online or who engage in risky online behavior such as visiting porn sites or frequenting chat rooms.

Despite the good news that youth have developed an awareness about what information they're sharing online, the CCAC also found that the number of aggressive sexual solicitations has remained about the same since 2000. In addition, they noted an emerging trend of youth being asked to send sexual images of themselves to online solicitors (again, thanks to the advent of inexpensive tools like web cams and digital cameras).

Debunking Myths: Some important pieces of information to highlight that also came out of CCAC’s reports:

  • Victims are typically teens, not young children.
  • Offenders typically do not lie about their age or their intent.
  • Offenders develop a relationship with their victim; often times youth will meet up with the offender on multiple occasions and engage in sexual acts.
  • Youth are more likely to engage in risky online behavior when surrounded by a group of their peers.

At a recent panel discussion on online victimization presented to Congress, David Finkelhor explained a bit about these findings, “So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who are considerably older than themselves.” He continues, “…it’s not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. It’s not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.”

Solutions

Education and Awareness: Making a "Real World" Connection

Because being connected is such an integral part of teens’ lives, some youth may hesitate telling their parents about the harassment they encounter for fear that their online privileges will be taken away. The best way to combat cyber bullying or other forms of harassment is not to reign in or limit a teen’s use of technology, but to make sure adults keep the lines of communication open. In addition to keeping the computer in a public space, parents should also become more aware of what their children are doing online. They should consider the Internet as an opportunity to engage in conversation with their children about their interests, talents, and network of friends.

It is important to emphasize with youth that there is a distinct connection between what happens online and in the "real world." Adults should communicate to youth that their actions have implications in a real world setting. Regarding cyber bullying in particular, adults must also relay traditional techniques of combating bullying, among them being to report incidents, keep records, and not to engage the bully. “It’s not new bullying, it’s just a vehicle,” says Nancy Mullin-Rindler, director of the Project on Teasing and Bullying at Wellesley College (Paulson, 2003). In addition, because research has shown that the majority of cyber bullies have been victims of traditional bullying, this approach—-combating the behavior versus limiting the technology—-would ultimately help in preventing both cyber and conventional bullying.

Cyber bullying poses a stickier problem for schools that are finding themselves in the middle of First Amendment debates. Despite the fact that whatever happens online (no matter where the location) typically spreads to the school environment, inevitably impacting students’ learning, does a school principal have the right to punish someone for what they say outside of school parameters? Because of this legal quagmire, schools’ best bet might be educating parents and teens alike on both the potentially harmful uses of and also the many opportunities presented by digital media. In addition, schools should also provide peer groups - perhaps even online - where students can seek advice and compare experiences.

Curriculum

Access the Keeping It Real Curriculum on cyber bullying.

Additional tips for parents

Taken verbatim from an interview with Henry Jenkins and danah boyd:

1. Communication with your daughter or son is key. Build a trusting relationship through dialogue. It is important to talk with them about your concerns; it is even more important to listen to what they have to say about their online experiences and why these sites are such an important part of their interactions with their peers. You need to recognize that some unfamiliar experiences look scarier from the outside than they are. Take time to understand what you are seeing and what it means to participants.

2. Create an account to understand how the site works, but not to stalk your kids. They need room to explore, but if you are familiar with the media and technology that they consume, you can provide valuable guidance and suggestions. Surveillance, while possible, damages a trusting parent/child relationship.

3. Ask your kids how they choose to represent themselves and why. Use MySpace as a resource to start a conversation about contemporary fashion, ideals, and media images.

4. Talk about private/ public issues with your kids. Help them to understand the consequences of making certain information publicly accessible. Get them to think through all of the possible audiences who might come into contact with their online information. Teens often imagine MySpace as a youth-only world. It isn't and they need to consider what the consequences would be if their grandparents, their teachers, admissions officers or a future employer read what they said about themselves. Helping your children learn how to negotiate such public environments is a great educational opportunity.

5. Talk through what kids should do if they receive unwanted attention online or if they find themselves the victims of cyberbullying. A growing number of sites provide useful information about how to confront such problems, including Net Family News , NetSmartz and SafeTeens. The “Safety Tips” section of MySpace also provides information for both parents and teens, including MySpace policies.

Relevant Research and Articles

Internet and the Public at Large (2002), p. 41 et seq.

Eurobarometer: Safer Internet (EU)(2006)

Livingstone: UK Children Go Online (UK) (2005), p. 22 et seq.

Safety Awareness Fact Tools: Public Report (2004)

Most teens say they've met strangers online (2006)

Children talking to childLine about the internet (2005)

The Appropriation of New Media by Youth (2006) [childrens' safety depends largely on their own actions]

NZZ Artikel: Im Gruselkabinett der Phisher, Script-Kiddies und PC-Zombies (2006)

MySpace Developing Parental Notification, Anick Jesdanun, AP (2007)

Say Everything, New York Magazine (2007)

Online freedom and safety for children (S. Livingstone, 2001)

A Rape in Cyberspace (J. Dibbell, 1993)

A Rape in Second Life ("Virtual Rape is Traumatic, But is it a Crime?,") WIRED, 2007

The Bad Boys of Cyberspace: Deviant Behavior in Online Multimedia Communities and Strategies for Managing It (Suler, 1998)

YOUNG PEOPLES USE OF CHAT ROOMS: Implications for policy strategies and programs of education. (2001)

Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Survey (2000)

Beijing opens boot camp for Net addicts (CNN, 2007)

Choosing Not to Go Down the Not-so-good Cyberstreets (Willard, 2000)

Challenging Online Behaviors of Youth: Findings from a Comparative Analysis of Young People and New Zealand (Berson, 2005)

Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions (Thierer, 2007)

Why MySpace Is SafeSpace (Forbes, 2007)

Pew 2007: Teens, Privacy & Online Social Networks

Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace (Wired, 2007)

Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? (boyd, 2007)

Stranger Danger? Online Safety (Willard, 2007)

Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying: An old problem in a new guise? (2005)

Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar (NY Times, 2004)

Emerging risks of violence in the digital age: lessons for educators from an online study of adolescent girls in the United States (2002)

I can’t see you—you can’t see me: How the use of information and communication technologies can impact responsible behavior (2004)

Cyberbullying Article on StaySafe.org (2007)

For teen daters, a cellphone can be an abusive leash (2007)

Website that gives tips to parents, teachers, students on cyber bullying

Technology Magnifies Teen Dating Abuse, According To Survey (2007)

Getting to Know You: Using Hostility to Reduce Anonymity in Online Communication (Lange, 2006)

States Seek Laws to Curb Online Bullying (2007)

You Wanna Take This Online? (Time article, 2005)

NPR story with Clemson researcher Robin Kowalski

Cyber-Bullying: Developing Policy to Direct Responses that are Equitable and Effective in Addressing this Special Form of Bullying (2006)

Cyberbullying Research Report (ppt), National Crime Prevention Council 2006

Cyberbullying: An Emerging Threat to the Always On Generation (Belsey, 2005)

Cyberbullying Legislation and School Policies: Where are the Boundaries of the “Schoolhouse Gate” in the New Virtual World? (Willard, 2007)

Cyberbullying and Online Teens (Pew, 2007)

Online Pornography

Kids at Greater Risk of Seeing Internet Porn than Ever (2007)

Kid Receives New Computer with Porn (2006)

Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography (2007)

US Kids subjected to more online porn (2006)

Australian Filtering Scheme, 2006 Press Release

"Politics of Fear"

The Moral Panic over Social-Networking Sites (Technology Review, 2006)

Wikipedia page on Deleting Online Predators Act

Flickr + Libraries = Scary, Scary, Scary to Some Folks (2006 - focuses on the positives of using Flickr)

News Corp., MySpace Sued in Assault Cases, CNet (2007)

Parents Sue MySpace Over Child Assaults, MarketingVOX (2007)

Judge dismisses suit against MySpace stemming from alleged sex assault (2007)

John Bracken on the AGs threatening MySpace

Safety Tips

FTC website - Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens

Polly Klaas: Internet Safety: Realistic Strategies & Messages for Kids Taking more Risks Online (undated)

Website - Tips for Teens and Parents on How to Use MySpace.com Safely and Responsibly

Microsoft Parent's Guide to Online Safety: Ages and Stages

NetSmartz

NetSmartz411

Internet Safety Tips

Kidz Privacy (FTC)

Safe Kids Worldwide

Blogsafety.org - site for teens, parents, educators

Anti-Bullying Alliance

Kidscape.org - Advice for parents, youth, and educators on bullying

Bullying. No way! - Website created by Australian educational communities

Be Web Aware - Canadian website/tips for parents

Cyber Tipline (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)

Childnet International

Checklist for Parents for Mobile Phone Use (Childnet International)

Social Networking Sites: A Guide for Teens (from YALSA)