Larry Magid’s presentation at CUE 2012 (Computer Using Educators) Annual Conference, March 17, 2012
Online Safety 3.0: From Fear to Empowerment
This post appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on February 13, 2012
by Larry Magid
I’m writing from Moscow, where I spoke at Russia’s Safer Internet Day conference last week. Safer Internet Day, which originated in Europe, is celebrated in much of the world, though there are relatively few events in the United States.
While most recent American Internet safety conferences focus on digital citizenship issues such as preventing cyberbullying, most speakers at the Russian event talked about protecting children from undesirable content. There was, however, one panel on digital literacy where my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier talked about strategies for helping kids learn to treat each other respectfully and to protect their online reputations.
Russia is behind the United States and much of Europe in Internet usage, but it’s growing quickly. In 2009, the World Bank reported Internet penetration in the Russian Federation at 42 percent but the growth curve is impressive. In 2006, it was only 18 percent. One speaker at the conference said it’s now over 50 percent, with even higher usage among youth.
Still, the Internet is new to many people in this former Soviet capitol and it’s common to be afraid of things that are unfamiliar. So my main role as a speaker was to try to put some of the safety concerns into perspective.
I reminded delegates that there was a time when people bought short-term life insurance before they got on an airplane. Those passengers were probably less worried about their car crashing on the way to the airport, even though then, as now, driving was more dangerous than flying.
It’s a bit like that with technology. Bullying, pornography and child molestation have been around forever. But because widespread Internet use is new here, I heard politicians and others worrying aloud about the increased danger of the Net, even though American and European data show that most risks to kids are actually lower online than in the “real world,” and that sexual crimes against children have actually decreased by 58 percent between 1992 and 2008, the very years that huge numbers of U.S. kids got online. I’m not saying the Internet is the reason for the decline, but it certainly didn’t usher in any increase, as some feared it would.
One reason it’s important to put the fears into perspective is because there are lots of people in Russia, and in the United States as well, who want to put limits on Internet content in the name of protecting children. In fact, there is a law on the books in Russia that’s supposed to take effect in September that would require websites to classify themselves by age ratings so Internet service providers could block kids from content that would harm their “health and development.”
It’s not clear even to Internet professionals I spoke with here how this law is supposed to be implemented and whether it will apply just to Russian-based sites, or if ISPs will be required to filter out access to international sites that aren’t rated. One of the criteria bans kids’ access to images of sexual relations between people of the opposite sex. Apparently, the drafters forgot to include images of people of the same sex.
There were also people at the conference proposing that ISPs should be required to block access to certain types of illegal content. If this sounds familiar, think back just a couple of weeks ago to our debate around a pair of U.S. bills that would have done just that for sites with alleged pirated content.
Illegal content would, of course, include child pornography, even though images of children being abused already are illegal in Russia. But it could also include sites that advocate the use of drugs or alcohol, gambling sites and sites that advocate “extremism.” That last category is particularly bothersome to one political activist I spoke with who worries it could be used to block sites that advocate demonstrations against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or some future regime.
Other countries do ban some extremist content. France and Germany, have laws that prohibit the display of Nazi memorabilia or advocacy of anti-Semitism. Depicting a swastika on an American website may be offensive to most of us, but it’s not illegal.
As I listened to simultaneous translation of the debates, I was reminded of the battles we’ve had in the United States over the past 15 years or so. In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, which would have made it a crime for anyone to post content that kids could access that was “patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards.”
That was mostly overturned by the Supreme Court, and a somewhat less restrictive follow-up attempt, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, was overturned by a federal circuit court. The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal, which effectively killed that bill as well. We do have a law, the Children’s Internet Protection Act, that requires schools and libraries that receive certain federal funding to use filters and other measures to protect children from inappropriate content. But that doesn’t prevent the posting of the content and only applies to federally subsidized schools and libraries.
One speaker at the conference suggested that sites that promote homosexuality should be blocked, but there is no such provision in the current law and this opinion was not widely shared by others I spoke with. Still, it illustrates how censorship can include value judgments that are not necessarily shared by all members of a society.
This is one of Larry Magid’s panel presentations at Russia’s Safer Internet Day conference in Moscow on February 6th. He also gave a plenary talk earlier in the day.
Online Predators – It’s commonly believed that the Internet is the perfect environment for online predators because it is easy for them to hide their identity, get access to potential victims, and there’s a huge pool of kids to target.
An online predator is a criminal who generally targets teens with the goal of manipulating them into meeting for sex. Online predators typically “groom” their victims by building trust with the child through lying, the use of blackmail and guilt, creating different personas, and then attempting to engage the child in more intimate forms of communication, and eventual in-person meetings.
On social networking sites, online predators can use all these techniques to become friends with your children and try to engage with them. Online predators will also use information from your child’s profile to try and locate them in person. This is why it is critical for you and your kids to talk about appropriate online behavior and what type of information is okay to post online.
If your child becomes a victim of a cyberstalker or an online predator, here are some steps to follow:
1. Take immediate action
• Ignore contact from the bully or online predator or do not log on to the site where it occurred
• Block the offender’s screen name and email address to prevent them from contacting your child
• Change your child’s online information or, if necessary, delete the account
• Contact the site where this occurred to have your child’s information removed, and report the perpetrator
• Report this to your Internet service provider (ISP) and the offender’s ISP.
2. Report the incident to the authorities
3. Save the evidence
• Keep a log of all communications from the perpetrator
• Keep track of the offender’s screen name, email address, and ISP, if available
4. Learn as much as you can about your children’s use
of the Internet
• Find out which services they use and what they like to do online
• Find out about the security features on their favorite websites
• Talk to your children about protecting themselves and being safe online
McAfee Social Networking Guide is avaiable at: http://mcaf.ee/xzq1p
When Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced plans last week for soliciting a developer to build Hawaii’s tallest building — a 650-foot residential tower that would be 50 percent higher than the current record holder in Honolulu — he was talking about just one building.
Staradvertiser Headlines
Larry Magid’s presentation at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Nairobi, Kenya. Ahead of IGF, Larry visited Nairobi National Park which inspired the following presentation based, in part, on photos he took that day.
Although it’s not our most pressing issue, SafeKids.com and sister site ConnectSafely.org have always supported efforts to educate children and teens on the importance of respecting other people’s digital property rights. Indeed, one of the points in SafeKids’ Teen Pledge for Being Smart Online is “I will respect other people’s digital property and space. I won’t steal, hack, break into anyone else’s accounts or use other’s content without permission.”
Practicing what we preach
We’ve also encouraged children and teens to protect their own intellectual property. In today’s Web 2.0 world, just about everyone is a content producer as well as consumer and we all have rights when it comes to what we create.
Over the years there have been plenty of cases where someone reposts an article or two from SafeKids.com and, generally, we let that pass. It’s still wrong and illegal, but life’s too short to stress over every minor injustice we encounter.
But a website calling itself Safety Village with the memorable URL SafetyVillage.com, seems to be stealing all of our content. To add to the injury, they are selling ads around our content.
Automated or human?
The reason I’m writing about this is twofold. First, I’m curious to see if it’s an automated process or if a person is actually doing it manually. If it’s automated there’s a good chance that this article will show up on their site which would be kind of ironic justice. But whether or not it’s automated, my hope is that the people who run the site will notice this post and do the right thing by removing the content and writing an apology (you can reach me here).
Reputation management
Because SafeKids.com has a fairly high Google ranking, this article is eventually likely to show up near the top when people do a search for Safety Village. And that brings up another thing we teach kids. We have said many times that what you do on the Internet can affect your reputation for a long time and, unless I take this post down, it will remain on the net for a long time and will show up when people search for this site. My goal isn’t to be vindictive. If the folks at Safety Village take down the content and apologize, I will either remove this post or append a note to the top saying that they have done the right thing. But in the mean time, their reputation will suffer.
SafeKids.com does allow some websites to re-post our material, but only with permission. We do encourage people to link to the site and have no objection to short quotations which are considered ”fair use.” What Safety Village is doing is unfair use.
Screen shot from SafetyVillage.com taken on Sept 18, 2011. All content is from SafeKids.com
Have your kids ever woken up on a school-day looking like they didn’t get a full-night’s sleep? Mine have. Have you worried that they’ve been distracted with text messaging when it was homework or study time? I have. Have any of your kids had their phone taken away at school…
Social Networking and Internet Safety Information for Parents
Per-pupil money schools receive will be cut by nearly million, and direct funding to popular programs such as learning centers and adult education will be eliminated as part of the state Department of Education’s plan to tackle a .8 million budget reduction over the next two fiscal years.
Staradvertiser Headlines