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A lot has been written about “Facebook addiction.” Indeed some press coverage of a recent study from the University of Chicago suggests that “Facebook and Twitter are more addictive than cigarettes or alcohol.”  But a new study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking puts a positive spin on the issue. Could it be that, just like eating chocolate, Facebook and Twitter are simply fun and pleasurable?

The word “addictive” doesn’t appear once in the report, Why Is Facebook So Successful? Psychophysiological Measures Describe a Core Flow State While Using Facebook,” (PDF) but it does point out that “ the successful spread of SNSs (social networking services)  might be associated with a specific positive affective state experienced by users when they use their SNSs account.”

The researchers analyzed users’ skin conductance, blood volume pulse, electroencephalogram (brain waves), respiratory activity and pupil dilation in 30 healthy subjects “during a 3-minute exposure to a slide show of natural panoramas (relaxation condition),” and “the subject’s personal Facebook account” and found that Facebook use correlated with responses from people who are in a positive emoitonal state.  The technical term, surprisingly, is “flow,” which according to the researchers occurs when “people in free-time activities that did not seem to follow the utility-centered motivational theories of the time” experienced “intense engagement and enjoyment.”

So, is this a bad thing? I suppose some people could interpret anthing positive that people return to often as addictive, but if “intense engagement and emotional enjoyment” is a bad, thing than we have to worry more than just Facebook, Twitter and chocolate. We would also have to include great works of art, beautiful music, great toys, award-winning movies, attractive people and anything else that brings us pleasure.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook and other Internet companies.

Everyone has a story to tell about safe and respectful use of technology, and those who tell it via video could win a $10,000 prize from Internet security company Trend Micro.

The What’s Your Story? contest, now in its third year, will award one $10,000 grand prize and six other cash category prizes to individuals and schools that submit winning videos.

Videos should be short (30 seconds to 2 minutes) and, as you create your video, you’re encouraged to “keep in mind that these videos will be used to help educate kids and families and promoted by members of the judging panel.” In other words, you’re not just entering a contest, you’re creating a video that could be used by some of the leading non-profit Internet safety organizations and media companies (including Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo) to educate other Internet users all over the world.

Categories for this year’s contest are:

• Take action against bullying
• Keep a good rep online
• Be cell smart

Eligibility

The contest is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada (except Quebec) age 13 or older.  Youth are especially encouraged to submit a video and teachers can enter classroom video projects. The deadline is April 3rd, 2012. Contest rules are more details are here.

Judges this year will include representatives from several non-profit organizations and social media companies including ConnectSafely.org where I serve as co-director.

You can view all of last year’s winners here or just scroll down for last year’s grand prize winner.

Talk by Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org at Russia’s Safer Internet Day – Moscow, February 6, 2012

It is a great pleasure to be here.  Even though I grew up during the cold war, I have always been an admirer of the Russian people and the many accomplishments of this great society. Ironically, the Cold War may have been an important reason why the United States is as prominent as it is in technology. Your successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 was the inspiration behind our own space program which led to many technological achievements in both countries.

Internet a Product of the cold war

Even the Internet was a byproduct of the cold war. Created by an agency of the United States military in the late 1960’s, it was designed as a decentralized network so that it would be invulnerable to a Soviet attack.

That decentralization is one of the reasons we enjoy such diversity and freedom. No one country owns the Internet and while Americans no longer have to worry about a Soviet attack, freedom loving people around the world do have to worry about those who seek to censor the Internet.

Regulation and freedom

I’ve only been in Russia a few days, but already I see some similarities between our two peoples.  Even though our histories are very different, we seem to have arrived at a similar place. We are both tech savvy nations that love our freedom and love our gadgets. There are entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts among us both, as well as some who are a bit less exuberant about all the benefits of technology.  And, in both the U.S. and Russia there are those who err on the side of caution and those who like to – as we say in America – push the envelope.  And though we come from very different traditions, both of our nations have a bit of tension between government and industry.

It’s by no means unusual for elected officials to be concerned about young people’s use of technology and to draft legislation to help protect our youth.  But as you consider such legislation, remember that everything has its consequences. Sometimes the best meaning laws can actually do more harm than good. We know that in the United States because we have had a long history of regulation and industry self-regulation including some laws that have been overturned by our Supreme Court because they violated our precious First Amendment that guarantees all Americans freedom of speech.

Internet’s impact

The Internet has an enormous impact on all aspects of life including commerce, journalism and education and no single group has been more adaptive to technology than our youth. They have not just joined the technology revolution – they are leading it.

 Young entrepreneurs

Just last week Facebook announced that it would float shares on the public stock market and is expected to raise between $5 and 10 billion to become possibly a $100 billion company. It was founded 8 years ago by Mark Zuckerberg while he was still a teenager. He is now only 27. Soon there may be as many as  a thousand new millionaires in my community, bidding up the price of housing. Most of them are under 30.

Both Google and Yahoo were started by Stanford University students and even Apple – which is now the world’s most valuable company — was started by a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when they were in their 20s

Innovation comes from freedom

It’s hard to know what sparks technological revolutions, but it’s no coincidence that they came from a country that values freedom of speech. Silicon Valley – where much of this innovation is taking place – is especially strong when it comes to freedom and tolerance.

Evolution of Internet Safety

I spent most of career as a technology journalist but around 1994, I turned my attention to Internet safety by writing the first popular Internet safety educational booklet on behalf of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). There was no research at the time. I guess I can be forgiven for basing my advice on what I thought to be the situation. Now, thanks to a great deal of research, we can base advice on actual risks and a real understanding of how young people use technology and social media. For the past several years I have been a member of the board of directors of NCMEC which works very closely with industry in the United States to assure compliance with the law requiring them to report child sexual abuse issues and other online sexual crimes against children to the National Center which, in turn, sends the worst cases to law enforcement.

ConnectSafely

In 2006 I joined with Anne Collier, who you will hear from later, to form an NGO called ConnectSafely.org.  Our NGO works very closely with the leading youth risk experts in the United States and other countries, including the federally funded Crimes Against Children Research Center and the E.U. Kids Online researchers, who work out of the London School of Economics.

Three have been phases of Internet safety

1. During the 90’s and early 21 century we focused almost exclusively on pornography and predators
2. Later we focused on things kids do to harm themselves and each other
3. In 2009 we developed Online Safety 3.0 – to engage and empower youth and base our programs on actual research – not just guesses.

Education works

We now know that the vast majority of youth are using the Internet safely. The number of problems, relative to the number of users, is quite low. It’s certainly lower than problems associated with life in the physical world. For example we hear a lot of about cyberbullying, but physical bullying in school is actually more common.  We hear about predators, but 80% of all sex crimes against children involve adults and children who know each other in the real world. The perpetrators of these crimes could be teachers, clergy, police officers, doctors, child care workers who anyone else including, sadly the child’s parents or friends of their parents.  Cases where a child is exploited based on an initial contact via the Internet are rare and almost always involve the child taking an extreme risk. Still, one exploited child is one too many which is why we must develop programs that target at-risk youth.

Despite what some people say, research from the best scholars in the U.S. and Europe have found that predators very rarely find victims online. They find them the old fashioned way – in their local communities.

Child rights

It is popular to quote the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child when we talk about protecting children, but we must not ignore article 13 which says “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”

Child porn is a serious and special problem

It is important not to confuse child pornography or child abuse images with Internet safety. While the distribution of these terrible and illegal images may take place online, the crime always begins offline with an adult who has physical access to a child – often a child they know, and frequently their own children or children of family members.

The creation and distribution of child abuse images is a horrible crime, but it’s very rare for children to actually find these images unless they are being sent these images by someone they know or someone who is grooming them. It is important not to confuse child pornography – which is illegal in most countries including the U.S. and Russia, with adult sexually explicit material which, generally, is not prohibited by law.

Sexual exploitation is at an all-time low

While we talk about protecting children online it is important to know that during the very years that the Internet has grown, from 1992 to 2008, child sexual abuse in United States has decreased by 58%, according the Crimes Against Children Research Center.

Partnership

At this conference we will be discussing partnerships between industry, government and civil society, but there is one very important group that often doesn’t get to go to conferences and that is the hundreds of millions of young people who use the Internet. They MUST have a voice and they must have the freedom to use the Net to express themselves, and move us all forward into what we hope becomes truly the golden century of international cooperation.

There are problems and we are all aware of them: pornography, bullying, adults who would harm children, but we must not let these problems take our attention away from the power and potential of the Internet and we must not exaggerate the problems. As we will show in our workshops, the Internet is a reflection of life and simply amplifies issues that we have been dealing for centuries

Later today, Anne Collier, myself, Daniel Kent and other experts will discuss filtering, laws, digital literacy educational programs and other efforts to help ensure that all of our children are not just safe from bad things but engaged in productive and healthy use of technology.

Thank you very much.

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.

Pseudoscience sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin (Photo by Larry Magid)

There’s an amazing group of sculptures in a park near the Kremlin in Moscow, called “Children are victims of adult vices” by Mihail Chemiakin.

This particular sculpture is “pseudoscience,” which is relevant for the talks that I (along with my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier) will deliver this week at the Safer Internet Day forum here in Moscow. Some adults have perpetuated myths both about dangers to young people online and the way youth treat each other in social media. Panicking over cyberbullying, sexting, predation and other risks is a form of pseudoscience that hurts young people. That’s not to say that these risks don’t exist, but that kids are far more resilient that many of us give them credit for. To ignore the growing research about youth risk is, indeed, an example of of pseudoscience. Scroll down for links to articles about real science on youth risk.

The other vices depicted in sculpture are drug addiction, prostitution, theft, alcoholism, ignorance, indifference, violence, sadism, lack of memory, exploitation of child labor, poverty and war.  For more, see this on Wikipedia.

Mihail Chemiakin's "Children are victims of adult vices" taken by Lvova Anastasiya & downloaded from Wikipedia Commons

For more

Internet fact sheet from the Crimes against Children Research Center

Predator panic making a comeback

Let’s not create a cyberbullying panic

With new data we can stop the teen sexting panic

Why technopanics are bad (Anne Collier)

Why do we always sell the next generation short (Adam Thierer)

When Google launched Google+ in June, 2010, it was for adults only. Now it’s open to anyone 13 or older.  The reason Google kept teens off the service at first is not because the social network was ever about what we euphemistically call “adult content,” but because Google wanted to take extra time to get it right before opening the doors to people under 18.  After several months of testing, Google thinks it’s reached a good balance. In rolling out the teen welcome mat, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s Product VP for Google+ said, “We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we’re doing both, for everyone who’s old enough for a Google Account (13+ in most countries).”

Before opening Google+ for teens, Google consulted with child safety and teen safety experts including ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization where I serve as co-director along with Anne Collier.  And to help parents better understand Google+, Anne Collier and I wrote A Parents Guide to Google Plusand helped Google with its new Google+ Teen Safety Guide.

For the most part, teens’ experience on Google+ will be just like adults, but there are some special safeguards for users under 18. Google didn’t put any major breaks on teens — it’s giving them plenty of freedom to express themselves to their friends or even to the world, but it did make some of the default settings for teens more restrictive than for adults. If teens (or adults) decide to change them, they can, but how a service sets its defaults is very important. It’s a type of recommendation — the company’s way of saying “this is how we think most people should use our service,” and — besides — most people never get around to changing defaults.

Circular logic

Everyone on Google+ is encouraged to create circles where they group their friends and other contacts. You could have a circle of just family members, another circle of schoomates and another  circle of people on your soccer team. You can have as many circles as you want and you can call the circles whatever you want to call them. People in your circles are notified, but don’t know the name of the circle(s) you’ve put them in.  And it’s asyncronous. You can be one of my circles, but you don’t have to put me in any of yours. In that case, you’d see what I post to circles you’re in but I’d only see what you post to the public, unless you added me to one of your circles.

Circles work the same for teens as they do for adults, but there are some special safeguards consisting of warnings and different default settings.

Safeguards for teens

• If teens post something directed to extended circles or the public, they’ll get a warning reminding them that “when you share to your extended circles, people you haven’t added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment.”
• All  Google+ users can control “who can notify me.” For adults, the default is “anyone,” but for teens the default is people in their circles. Adults can make their settings more restrictive and teens can make theirs more open, but the default for teens is designed to limit who can contact them.
• By default, anyone can comment on an adult’s public posts,  but for teens it’s only people in their circles.
• There are also some differences in the profile defaults. Your profile is where others can see a bit about who you are and who you interact with on Google+.  By default, employment and Education can be seen by anyone (Public) if you’re an adult, but for teens, the default is “just your circles.”
• Adults’ “Relationship Status” can be seen by people in their extended circles, but only in “your circles” for teens.
• In the hang-out feature,  up to 10 people can have a video chat. For teens if  someone outside anyof their circles joins in, the teen is temporarily pulled out of the hangout and asked if they want to continue. It’ a way of pausing the action for a second and encouraging the teen to think about whether he or she wants to remain in this hangout.

Teens are temporarily pulled out of a video hangout if someone outside their circles enters

The precautions that Google put into place will help remind teens about safe and appropriate use of Google+ but, as my ConnectSafely co-director Anne Collier pointed out in a blog post, “Just as with most protections and any services on the social Web, these are not about control. Users choose to go with the defaults – or not.” And even services that have strict controls can’t always enforce them. “There’s always a workaround even for the strictest safeguards any parent or site might impose,” said Collier, “including software that disallows social networking sites altogether.”

Disclosure: Larry Magid serves as co-director of ConnectSafely.org which receives financial support from Google, Facebook and other social media companies.

When Google launched Google+ in June, 2010 it was for adults only. Now it’s open to anyone 13 or older.  The reason Google kept teens off the service at first is not because the social network was ever about what we euphemistically call “adult content,” but because Google wanted to take extra time to get it right before opening the doors to people under 18.  After several months of testing, Google thinks it’s reached a good balance. In announcing the teen welcome mat, Bradley Horowiz, Google’s Product VP for Google+ said, “We want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we’re doing both, for everyone who’s old enough for a Google Account (13+ in most countries).”

Safeguards for teens

For the most part, teens’ experience on Google+ will be just like adults, but there are some special safeguards for users under 18. Google didn’t put any major breaks on teens — it’s giving them plenty of freedom to express themselves to their friends or even to the world, but it did make some of the default settings for teens more restrictive than for adults. If teens (or adults) decide to change them, they can, but how a service sets its defaults is very important. It’s a type of recommendation — the company’s way of saying “this is how we think most people should use our service,” and — besides — most people never get around to changing defaults.

For example, all Google+ users can control “who can notify me.” For adults, the default is “anyone,” but for teens the default is people in their circles. Adults can make their settings more restrictive and teens can make theirs more open, but the default for teens is designed to limit who can contact them. The same is true with commenting on their public posts. By default, it’s anyone for adults but for teens it’s only people in their circles.

There are also some differences in the profile defaults, where others can see a bit about who you are and who you interact with on Google+.  By default, Employment and Education can be seen by anyone (Public) if you’re an adult, but for teens, the default is “just your circles.”  Adults’s ‘Relationship Status” can be seen by people in their “extended circles,” but only “your circles” for teens.

There are also some differences in the hang-out feature where you can invite up to 10 people to have a video chat. For teens if  someone outside anyof their circles joins in, the teen is temporarily pulled out of the hangout and asked if they want to continue. It’ a way of pausing the action for a second and forcing the teen to think about whether he or she wants to remain in this hangout.

Teens are temporarily pulled out of a video hangout if someone outside their circles enters