The survey, which was done by Harris Interactive, asked 655 13 to 18 year olds about their online and cell phone behavior, specifically addressing issues of cyberbullying and sexting. The study was in partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and America’s Most Wanted Host, John Walsh.

(Credit: Cox Communications Teen Online & Wireless Survey)

For the purposes of the study, cyberbullying was defined as “harassment, embarrassment or threats online or by text message” while sexting referred to “sending sexually suggestive text or emails with nude or nearly-nude photos.”

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of teens (72%) have a social networking profile while 73% use cell phones and 91% have an email address.

What they “know” vs. what they do

The study raises an interesting contradiction. 59% of the teens say that posting personal information or photos on public blogs or social networking sites is either “somewhat unsafe” or “very unsafe.” Only 7% say it’s “very safe” while 34% say it’s “somewhat safe.” Yet, when asked about their own behavior, 62% of the kids post photos of themselves, 50% share their real age, 45% the name of their school and 41% the city where they live. When it comes to more private information, only 4% post their address, 9% “places where you typically go” and 14% post their cell phone number.

The study’s executive summary explains, “Though they are aware of the risks, many teens expose personal information about themselves online anyway.”

That revelation appears alarming but after looking at other research about teen online risk, I actually find it reassuring.

What kids say they “know” about online risks appears to be what adults have been telling them for years. But when you look the real risk factors, their behavior isn’t nearly as dangerous as even teens say they think it is.

An in-depth and academically rigorous 2005 study from the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center found that posting personal information online does not, by itself, correlate with risk. As all of the studies show, millions of kids engage in this practice and very few encounter any serious problem as a result. Let’s face it, the whole premise behind sites like Facebook and MySpace is to share that type of information and despite some of the hysteria, there have been very few reported problems of young people being victimized as a result of them putting this type of information online.

Of course, nothing – including attending school – is 100% safe but the 34% who said that posting personal information online is “somewhat safe” are getting it right.

Cyberbullying and sexting numbers not as bad as thought

The cyberbullying numbers are also quite reassuring, especially when you compare them to some earlier studies.

The summary points out that “Cyberbullying is widespread among today’s teens, with over one-third having experienced it, engaged in it, or know of friends who have who have done either.” But that one-third is cumulative of bullies, people who have been bullied and even people who know someone who’s been bullied.

The survey found that approximately 19% of teens say they’ve been cyberbullied online or via text message and that 10% say they’ve cyberbullied someone else. The largest group, 27% say they have “seen or heard of a friend who was bullied” online and while 16% say they’ve “seen or heard of a friend who’s bullied others online or by cell phone.

Of course any amount of bullying is unacceptable but the numbers from this survey are lower than several previous studies.

There is also good news about sexting. The most widely quoted study on sexting from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reported (pdf) that 20% of teens “say they have sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.” But the data from the Cox survey showed that while 20% of teens “have engaged in sexting” that number, too, is cumulative. Only 9% “sent a sext” while 17% received one and 3% forwarded a “sext.” Again, that 9% number is too high but it’s less than half the 20% figure commonly used. And 90% of the kids who sent sexts said that nothing bad happened, even though 74% of the kids agreed that sexting is “wrong.” 23% felt that it’s OK if both parties are OK with it and only 3% said “there is nothing wrong with it.”

This survey, said Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use Executive Director, Nancy Willard, “clearly demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of young people have not engaged in risk-taking online behavior or been harmed online. Also, it appears that teens are sensitive to the potentially damaging implications of the material they post online.

Like technology itself, Internet safety has to evolve. Back in 1994, when I wrote the first widely disseminated Internet safety publication, I advised parents not to let kids put personal information or photos online and — because of what turned out to be an exaggerated fear of predators — I urged them to avoid online conversations with strangers. Back then, along with trying to keep kids away from porn, Internet safety was mostly about protecting children from dangerous adults.

But starting around 2005, a new phase of the Web — often referred to as “Web 2.0″ — prompted some Internet safety advocates to focus on ways kids could get in trouble for what they post on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. It was in that year that Anne Collier and I founded BlogSafety.org (later renamed ConnnectSafely.org) so we could provide a forum for discussing safety issues on the Web. It was also around that time that politicians and the media, especially the TV show “To Catch a Predator,” started whipping up fears of predators trolling the Web for vulnerable children.

But after carefully reviewing available research, statistics show that the likelihood of a young person being harmed by an online stranger is quite rare, and sexual solicitations and harassment are most often from peers. And to the extent it has occurred, it affects teens, not young children. Based on studies by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, the overwhelming majority of crimes against youths continue to take place in the “real world,” mostly by adults known to the child.

But that doesn’t mean that the Internet is a risk-free zone. It’s just that young people are far more likely to be harmed by other youth or the consequences of their own online behavior than by adult criminals.

Their interactions are largely with people they know from the real world. As danah boyd (she prefers a lower case d & b) observed in her doctoral dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (PDF), “teen participation in social network sites is driven by their desire to socialize with peers. Their participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer culture; teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize almost exclusively with people they know.”

This understanding of youth risk led to a whole new phase of Internet safety education focusing on such things as cyberbullying and urging youth to avoid posting material that could be embarrassing or get them into trouble with authorities and potential future employers. Recently, the focus has turned to the emotional and legal consequences of “sexting,” — kids sending nude pictures of themselves via cell phones or the Web. But Anne Collier observed in NetFamilyNews.org, we run the risk of “technopanics” over sexting and bullying.

What we’ve learned from observing how kids use the Net, mobile phones, gaming devices and other interactive technology is that there is really no distinction between online and offline behaviors. Technology is woven into their lives. They don’t go online, they ARE online. So it’s really about youth safety — not Internet safety.

It’s about helping young people make wise choices not just in how they use technology but in how they live their lives. Internet safety is more than just the absence of danger. It also includes finding ways to use technology for learning, collaboration, community building, political activism, self-help and reaching out to others.

These are not just philosophical arguments. They’re pragmatic because preaching about safety or trying lock down the Internet doesn’t protect kid. Trying to instill fear — especially based on myths — actually increases danger because it causes kids to tune out good advice.

Sure, there are technologies that can keep kids from using social networking services or visiting inappropriate Web sites. But, like fences around swimming pools, the use of filters at home and school can’t protect them forever. That’s why we teach kids to swim. Not only does knowing how to swim help prevent drowning, it empowers them to thrive in the water instead of fearing it. The same is true with technology. As kids mature into teens, we must pull back on the technological controls in favor of self-control.

In an email interview,  Dr. Larry Rosen, Professor of Psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills and author of Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation observed, “sadly, too many parents think that using technology to track their children’s keystrokes or restrict access to certain websites is sufficient parenting.  It is not.  Parents must be involved with their children’s virtual lifestyles developing trust, being aware of any potential problems, learning about the technologies they use, and communicating often.”

The group, which reports to the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is totally unfunded. The government wasn’t even able to buy us lunch, let alone plane tickets to Washington. But I’m not complaining. It’s an honor to have even a small role in helping to shape national Internet safety policy.

To be honest, I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about the working group, wondering why we needed yet another committee to look at this topic. In 2000, the “COPA Commission,” created by the Children’s Online Protection Act of 1998, issued a very comprehensive report, and last year I was privileged to serve on the Internet Safety Technical Task Force — created by attorneys general of nearly every state.

The task force issued a report debunking myths about Internet safety, concluding that kids are more at risk from other kids than from so-called Internet predators. That finding was rejected by several of the state attorneys general who received it. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said the report’s findings were “as disturbing as they are wrong,” adding that “the conclusions in this report create a troubling false sense of security on the issue of child Internet safety.”

But I think the report was both accurate and insightful. It recognized that Internet safety is too complicated to be reduced to sound bites and sensationalist TV shows, and that most of the kids who get in trouble online also get in trouble offline. The Internet may amplify dangers, but it doesn’t create them.

I’m not aware of any federal Internet safety commissions that met during the Bush administration. From what I can tell, that administration paid very little attention to Internet safety other than to add to the exaggerations and fear-mongering about so-called Internet predators.

So is there any point in taking yet another look at Internet safety? Yes, if only because things have changed dramatically over the past few months. To begin with, we have a new administration led by a president who actually understands the Internet as well as the constitutional issues that arise whenever government tries to control online speech, access or even safety.

When the new working group convened Thursday, our first speaker was Susan Crawford, who works at the White House as special assistant to the president for science, technology and innovation policy. A law professor and founder of OneWebDay, Crawford brings a refreshing understanding of the government’s need to balance safety and security with civil liberties, privacy and even the First Amendment rights of minors.

Her opening remarks helped set the tone for the group by admonishing us to “avoid overheated rhetoric about risks to kids online,” pointing out that “risks kids face online may not be significantly different than the risks they face offline.”

She also reminded us that “the risks are more subtle than the press would have us believe,” and that we need to avoid trying to find “silver bullets” and recommending policy based on “anecdotes.” Finally she pointed out that we need to be careful to avoid “tech mandates.” While the working group will research the efficacy of technology tools to help protect kids, Crawford repeated something that I have been saying for 12 years: “The best software (to protect kids) is between the ears,” not on a device.

The working group will be divided into four subcommittees: child pornography reporting, data retention, protection technology and education. I will chair the education subcommittee and look forward to hearing from companies, educators, nonprofits and anyone else who has ideas about how to educate America’s youth to keep on using the Internet productively and safely. If you have ideas, please feel free to share them.

Even if you are comfortable with the person receiving the image, you never know for sure where else it might land. Digital images are easy to copy and forward and, even if you trust your friend’s discretion, it can be accidentally forwarded or seen by others with access to your friend’s phone or computer. It’s not uncommon for such images to find their way to other people’s cell phones and even Web pages, where they can be seen by anyone, copied, searched for and redistributed, perhaps forever.

For minors, there’s another risk — serious legal consequences. Creating, transmitting and even possessing a nude, semi-nude or sexually explicit image of a minor can be considered child pornography. It can be prosecuted as a state or federal felony and can even lead to having to register as a sex offender.

Crazy as it seems, some prosecutors have gone after kids for taking and sending pictures of themselves. There was a case in Florida a couple of years ago where a teenage boy and girl photographed themselves nude and engaged in “unspecified sexual behavior.” One kid sent the picture to the other and somehow the police got involved. They were tried and convicted for production and distribution of child porn and the teen who received the image had the additional charge of possession. An appeals court upheld the convictions.

In January this year, three teenage girls from Pennsylvania were charged for creating child porn and the three boys who received the images were charged for possessing it. And, according to CBS News, a Texas eighth-grader in October spent a night in jail after a coach found a nude picture on his cell phone, sent by another student.

It’s sadly ironic that the very child porn laws that were written to protect children from being exploited by adults could wind up having a devastating impact on the lives of children who, while acting stupid, have no criminal intent. For some perspective on whether this issue is or isn’t overblown, see Anne Collier’s piece in NetFamily News.

It’s hard to know how prevalent the practice is. But if you believe the results of an online survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, about 22 percent of teenage girls and 18 percent of boys admit to having “electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.” I’m not completely confident about the results of this study, which was carried out by a market research firm and not subject to academic peer review. But I think it’s fair to assume that a significant number of kids are doing this.

Perhaps more interesting than the survey’s overall number is the breakdown of why teens take and send these pictures. Of those who reportedly sent such pictures, 71 percent of girls and 67 percent of boys said they sent or posted content to a boyfriend or girlfriend, while 21 percent of the girls and 39 percent of the boys say they sent it to someone they wanted to date.

As you might expect, peer pressure plays a role. Of those who sent such content, 51 percent of teen girls cited “pressure from a guy,” while 18 percent of teen boys blamed pressure from girls.

While sexting is troubling, I think it’s important for us all to take a deep breath and refrain from passing new laws or using child pornography laws that were designed to protect children from exploitation by adults.

I suspect that sexting will diminish over time. Kids aren’t stupid and, faced with the facts, most will wise up. We also know that kids who get in trouble online are the same kids who get in trouble offline, so when teens repeatedly do sexting or other stupid or risky things online, it’s important to intervene early and often.

The best thing for a parent to do is to have a non-confrontational conversation — perhaps over dinner — to ask your kids if they’ve heard about sexting and what they think about it. You might not get a straight answer but you’ll open up a dialog that can go a long way toward helping your kids understand how to minimize legal, social and reputation risks. There are more tips on ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety site I help operate.

Boy, am I glad the Internet and camera phones weren’t around when I was a kid.

These settings can be modified, but most of them can only be tightened. With a few exceptions, you don’t even have the option to make a lot of your information available to the public at large. One exception is media files such as photos and videos, which, by default, can be viewed by “everyone.” But you can use privacy settings to restrict who can see your photos all the way down to specific friends or even “only me.”

Video – How to configure settings

Mouse over to privacy settings

Start by hovering your mouse over the “Settings” tab near the upper-right corner and select Privacy Settings. There you’ll find options to control who can see your profile as well as other information about you, such as your “personal info,” status updates, photos, videos tagged of you, and who your friends are. You can control who can see your profile within Facebook and you can turn off access to public search engines such as Google. There are plenty of other settings, including ones to control who can write on your wall and who can comment on notes, photos, or other elements of your site.
Settings vary according to what you’re trying to control and, because of the confusing user interface, you might have to hunt around a bit. For example, to change the privacy settings on your own photo albums within the Privacy Settings area you would have to find the fine print under Photos Tagged of You that says “Edit Photo Albums Privacy Settings” or navigate from the Applications tray at the bottom left corner of your browser. That “privacy wizard” they’re working on can’t come a moment too soon.

Another relatively unknown feature is the ability to create multiple friends lists and assign different privileges to people on different lists. For example, if you want only certain people to know your cell phone number you can create a list like “good friends” and another called “colleagues” to make that information available only to people on those lists. You can create lists by clicking on the Friends tab on the blue navigation bar and then clicking on “Make a New List” in the left column.

Third party applications

Be especially careful when it comes to third-party applications. For example, I use an application from Eye-Fi that automatically syncs my photos to Facebook and Flickr through my Wi-Fi network. When I review cameras, I often take ugly and stupid test pictures and, if I’m not careful, those pictures can be automatically loaded to my Facebook page for everyone to see. But my most embarrassing moment was about a year ago, when I tried out the New York Times Quiz on a day I hadn’t read the paper, only to have my low score posted for all my Facebook friends to see, including my editor at The New York Times.

Regardless of how you configure your privacy settings, there is a reality of the social Web that can’t be configured away. Any digital information that is posted can be copied, captured, cached, forwarded, and reposted by anyone who has access to it. Even if some embarrassing photo or information is up for only a few minutes, there is the possibility that someone might copy it and send it around. And–as many people are painfully aware–friends can become ex-friends. So even if you’re reasonably careful about who you let on your page, you never know what they might do with the information you post.

Facebook was smart to go back to its previous terms of use while it conducts this terms-of-use-updating experiment in a spotlighted Petrie dish in what seems like the middle of Mumbai’s Victoria Station at rush hour (see CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “Update on Terms”). And this is indeed a giant (global) societal experiment, as we the people (the content producers and distributors) and they the companies (the content co-distributors and hosts) – not to mention policymakers and other overseers and observers – figure out who is responsible and to what degree for protecting the content producer, aka user. Because the social Web is largely a user-produced and user-controlled medium, clearly (to me, anyway) the responsibility is shared. Educating users about that is a challenge all by itself, witness the general lack of close attention to privacy options (see “10 privacy settings every Facebook user should know”), but factor in developing teenage brains learning impulse control and shared responsibility at the same time, and the user-protection challenge grows significantly (see PBS Frontline’s “The Teenage Brain”).

I said Facebook’s smart in my lead up there because, in going back to its previous terms-of-use version, it’s buying time for the process of folding user input into the new terms’ development process and this giant experiment is also about user (and societal) education. It needs time. There are factors involved that only a few of the privacy bloggers are writing about (e.g., author Daniel Solove), including the tension between consumer privacy pressures and those from law enforcement to hand over as well as retain user data after users have closed their accounts. But time is short, too. Though this social and media experiment – and consensus-building in general – take time, Facebook doesn’t have a whole lot, given the climate outside the Petrie dish. The predator panic recently brought into perspective by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force is a good illustration of how worst-case scenarios and fears tend to eclipse the public discussion about the social Web – to the detriment of child safety (see the New York Times and my post on that). Why to the detriment? Because kids usually want to get far away from scared, worked-up parents; they go “underground” online, where parents aren’t in the mix. Never the best scenario. [Thanks to UK privacy researcher Tara Taubman for pointing out a few of the links below.]

Here are other reports and commentaries worth reading

Audio interview with both Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly by CNET/CBS tech analyst Larry Magid (Larry is also my co-director at ConnectSafely.org)
A lawyer’s view on Facebook’s 180 and how enforceable terms of use are anyway (Maxwell S. Kennerly in Philadelphia)
University of Wisconsin information studies Prof. Michael Zimmer’s very critical view of Facebook’s process
Internet consultant and blogger David Silversmith on the technical and monetary realities and then “plain old reality”
The Guardian on how people definitely do read the “fine print” in social sites (vs. grocery store loyalty cards)
Coverage at the Washington Post and New York Times.
The Internet Safety Technical Task Force report

I’ve been an Internet safety advocate since 1993 and right now I’m discouraged and angry about what’s going on in this field.

I’m angry because people who ought to know better are trying to mislead the public with false information about online risks, which is diverting attention away from real risks. And I’m not alone.

Many respected online safety organizations and leading youth-risk researchers are trying to shift the discussion away from mostly predator danger to youth behavior risk. Thanks to some politicians, it’s an uphill battle.

Online safety groups and public officials should be spending our time educating families on how to avoid real risks that affect most kids – like bullying, harassment and unwanted exposure to inappropriate material. We also need to do a better job of identifying and reaching the small minority of “at risk” kids who are putting themselves at greater risk by the way they behave online.

At issue is the constant drumbeat of predator panic coming from state attorneys general, including Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who are co-chairs of the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, which represents attorneys general from 49 states. Although their rhetoric is purported to help protect young people from harm, the actual impact of their campaign to rid social networks of predators may be inadvertently putting young people at greater risk.

In addition to shifting attention away from more common online dangers, they have proposed the use of age-verification and parental controls which could actually increase risk by driving teens “underground,” possibly to overseas sites that are far more dangerous than sites like MySpace and Facebook.

What’s more, all the hoopla is disrupting the work of several of the most respected non-profit Internet safety organizations which, ironically, have to spend resources countering this misleading information at the cost of focusing on how to help young people use the Internet more safely.

A bit of background

For more than two years, these and other elected officials have been talking about predator dangers on MySpace and other social networking sites and calling for the use of age-verification technology to help separate minors from adults. A year ago, the working group of attorneys general entered an agreement with MySpace to form a task force to study the issue.

After months of careful consideration, including a review of all research, the task force came back with a report that questioned the prevalence of predator danger and also questioned both the desirability and effectiveness of using any single technology to verity the age of users. Instead of carefully considering the report, it was rejected out of hand.

The justice officers’ reaction to the report was best summed up by Blumenthal, who recently said it was, “based on outdated and incomplete data – falsely downplaying the threat of predators on social networking sites.”

I have a great deal of respect for much of the work that Blumenthal, Cooper and other attorneys general do for public safety and to protect consumers, but when it comes to Internet safety, they continue to rely on anecdotal evidence rather than available peer-reviewed academic research (PDF).

Disclosure: I served on the task force as co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from several Internet and social networking companies including MySpace and Facebook. I also served as a member of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force and am the founder of SafeKids.com.

Now there’s a new argument based on the disclosure last week that MySpace has evicted 90,000 registered sex offenders from its roles. In a press release, Blumenthal said, “This shocking revelation – resulting from our subpoena – provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators.”

But what Blumenthal failed to point out is that 90,000 is not the number of currently or recently evicted registered sex offenders (RSOs) on MySpace, but a cumulative number based on all the RSO’s MySpace has ejected since two years ago when it adopted technology to identify and remove them from its roles.

Facebook, too

In the meantime, Facebook has been under attack for its own reported predator problem. Tech Crunch ran a story last week with the headline “Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook.” It reportedly got the information from John Cardillo, CEO of Sentinel, the security company that helps MySpace and other social networking sites identify registered sex offenders so they can be removed.

Facebook is not one of Sentinel’s customers, but says that it employs other methods to attempt to identify registered sex offenders and others who might endanger its members. This includes relying on Facebook members and working directly with state databases and state attorneys general, according to Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.

But, the attorneys general who are screaming about predators don’t seem to have information about specific individuals harming children. Facebook, according to Schnitt, “is not aware of a single case where a registered sex offender has contacted a minor through Facebook.”

The same is true on MySpace. According to MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam, “not one of the deleted MySpace offenders has ever been prosecuted for criminal misconduct with a teen on MySpace.”

Based on surveys with teens, I suspect that this is largely because the vast majority of teens are savvy enough to avoid these creeps. As you would expect, officials from both Facebook and MySpace say that they are doing all they can to rid their sites of registered sex offenders.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll be 100% successful. Short of shutting down their services, I can’t think of anything that can be done to completely eliminate even registered sex offenders, let alone the much larger number of offenders who haven’t been caught and convicted.

They’re everywhere

At the risk of contributing to the paranoia, it’s important to point out sex offenders are also in the real world. Unless we decide to keep them in jail forever, they are going to be among us. They go to malls, they shop at grocery stores, they live in neighborhoods and many have jobs. I know for a fact that there are registered sex offenders living within walking distance from my house and I have no doubt that my children have encountered them in the real world.

And then there are the ones who haven’t been caught. It’s a known fact that some of them teach in our schools, patrol our streets, preach in our places of worship, work in our hospitals and clinics, and coach our kids.

What’s worse, family members, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, account for “a quarter to a third of offenders.” Strangers make up the smallest group with estimates ranging between 7 and 25 percent.

Strangers who meet their victims on the Internet represent an extremely small percentage of all cases, especially compared to family members. It’s analogous to worrying about being killed in a plane crash instead of focusing on driving safely. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is one of several safety organizations that no longer condone the use of the phrase “stranger danger.”

As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, researchers who study sexual assault cases have found very few actual cases of children being sexually molested as a result of a contact they made on the Internet. It happens, but it happens in far fewer numbers than other forms of sexual abuse. And when it does happen, it is almost always a case of a teenager who is taking extraordinary risks online, including – in most cases – engaging in sexual conversation with a person known to be an adult.

I’m not saying this to place blame on the victims or excuse illegal behavior of some adults, but rather to point out that how young people behave online affects their risk.

It’s time that all of us – politicians too – start looking for real solutions and talking with real experts, not just relying on anecdotal data and provocative sound bites.

For more perspective, check out CNET News’ Caroline McArthy’s post on this subject.

]]> http://www.safeteens.com/2009/02/11/predator-panic-a-risky-distraction/feed/ 0 http://www.safeteens.com/2009/01/13/net-safety-task-force-says-predation-risk-exagerated/ http://www.safeteens.com/2009/01/13/net-safety-task-force-says-predation-risk-exagerated/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:33:06 +0000 larrymagid http://safekids.com/?p=171

by Larry Magid

A long awaited report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force concludes that children and teens are less vulnerable to sexual predation than many have feared. The report also questions the efficacy and necessity of some commonly prescribed remedies designed to protect young people.

The task force was formed as a result of a joint agreement between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general.

Over the past couple of years, several state AGs have been looking into potential dangers to youth, and some have called for social-network sites to use age verification technology to confirm the ages of users in an attempt to prevent adults from or interacting online with minors. The task force includes representatives of Internet and social-networking companies, security and identity authentication vendors, and nonprofit advocacy organizations. It’s chaired by John Palfrey of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Disclosure: I served as a member of the task force, representing ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit internet safety organization I co-founded along with Anne Collier. ConnectSafely receives financial support from MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and other Internet and social-networking companies. I am also founder of SafeKids.com and am on the board of directors of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is represented on the task force.

Based on data analyzed by its Research Advisory Board, the task force concluded that “actual threats that youth may face appear to be different than the threats most people imagine” and that “the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated offline encounters.”

While the task force found that youth risk from predators is a concern, the overwhelming majority of youth are not in danger of being harmed by an adult predator they meet online. To the extent that young people have received an unwanted online sexual solicitation, data from a 2000 study and a 2006 follow-up from the Crimes Against Children Research Center concludes that “youth identify most sexual solicitors as being other adolescents (48 percent in 2000; 43 percent in 2006) or young adults between the ages of 18 and 21 (20 percent; 30 percent), with few (4 percent; 9 percent) coming from older adults, and the remaining being of unknown age.”

What the task force did find is that “bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most salient threats that minors face, both online and offline.” Partially because researchers can’t agree on a definition of bullying and harassment, the actual risk is hard to quantify, but it is clearly much higher than the risk of being harmed by a predator. Some studies suggest that as many as 49 percent of youth have experienced some type of bullying or harassment. In many cases no serious emotional or physical harm occurred. However, a study by Michelle Ybarra and Janice Wolak found that “39 percent of victims reported emotional distress over being harassed online.”

There is also a widespread belief that deception is often involved where adults pose as teens to engage with young people, but research shows that that’s rarely the case. The report found that “although identity deception may occur online, it does not appear to play a large role in criminal cases in which adult sex offenders have been arrested for sex crimes in which they met victims online.” Interviews with police show that “most victims are underage adolescents who know they are going to meet adults for sexual encounters.” This does not imply that such relationships are healthy or safe, nor that we should blame the victims or tolerate the actions of adults who engage in sex with minors. But it does suggest that child safety advocates need to take a more proactive role in helping teens understand the risk of seeking engaging in relationships with adults.

Importantly, the task force found that online risks “are not radically different in nature or scope than the risks minors have long faced offline, and minors who are most at risk in the offline world continue to be most at risk online.” For example, “a poor home environment full of conflict and poor parent-child relationships is correlated with a host of online risks.”

The attorneys general who called for the task force were anxious for us to study the efficacy of using age verification to help limit inappropriate contact between adults and children online. To help in that job, the task force formed a technical advisory board (TAB) composed of technology experts from Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts, University of Utah, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Bank of America. This board looked at a wide range of technologies including age verification and identity authentication, filtering and auditing, text analysis, and biometrics.

What the TAB found was that age verification technology can be used to identify adults and therefore help prevent minors from engaging in adult-only activities such as accessing adult content or purchasing alcohol or tobacco. There were several technologies submitted by companies that could identify adults based on accessible records such as credit reports, criminal history, and real estate transactions, but these relatively automated systems cannot reliably identify or verify the age of minors because, as the TAB concluded, “public records of minors range from quite limited to nonexistent.” Documentation about young people such as birth certificates, passports, and school records are restricted by federal law for some very good privacy and security reasons.

Age verification options presented by some companies would allow parents to request that their child’s school verify his or her identity and age, but these proposals have their own critics including those who worry about the cost, the possibility of privacy or security leaks, and the financial model presented in some cases that includes providing marketers with information about kids.

The TAB also looked at “peer-based” verification schemes that “allow peers in a community to vote, recommend, or rate whether a person is in an appropriate age group based on relationships and personal knowledge established offline” but worried that with these methods “users can vote as many times as they wish to artificially raise or lower a peer rating.” There were concerns that “minors might organize against another minor in their ratings or recommendations in an online form of bullying.”

At one task force meeting, a company presented technology that tries to distinguish between an adult and a child by analyzing the bone density of the person’s hand. Another tool attempts to identify an individual through facial recognition to match that person against a database of registered sex offenders.

Although the TAB expressed “cautious optimism” about the possibility of using technology to protect kids, it concluded that “every technology has its problems” and that “no single technology reviewed could solve every aspect of online safety for minors, or even one aspect of it one hundred percent of the time.” The bottom line was that “technology can play a role but cannot be the sole input to improved safety for minors online” and that “the most effective technology solution is likely to be a combination of technologies.”

But even if these technologies can be employed effectively, there remains the question of whether they are necessary or helpful. Using technology to separate kids from grown-ups doesn’t address the fact that kids are far more at risk from other kids than from adult predators.

Another danger is that age verification or new rules could be used to keep kids off of social networks or require parental consent. But before issuing rules about this, authorities should explore possible unintended consequences such as isolating kids, causing them to go underground, failing to serve kids from dysfunctional families, and preventing kids from accessing vital services such as the Suicide Prevention Hotline or one of the many online self-help groups.

The task force report will have its critics, including possibly some attorneys general and others who feel that it underestimates the risk of online predators. Indeed, sting operations from law enforcement (as well as the TV show To Catch a Predator) demonstrate that there are plenty of adults who, if given the chance, would engage in sex with youth they meet online. But, based on the research presented to the task force, it appears that the vast majority of young people are savvy enough to avoid such encounters.

Still, there remains a minority of youth who–for a variety of psychological and social reasons–are vulnerable both online and offline. More research needs to be done to identify these young people and provide them with resources and protective services. The fact that most kids are safe is reassuring but it’s not sufficient. If even one child is in danger, then there is work to be done, and that is one thing everyone who cares about this issue can agree on.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and your teen is all decked out and ready for a big party. She’s got her iPhone, BlackBerry, or some other cell phone with a camera in her pocketbook. And she’s ready to roll. You’re glad she’s got these gadgets so you can get in touch with her. You tell her to call to check in, to let you know she got there safely, to ask for permission to stay later. She agrees. You give her a quick hug and run upstairs to get ready for your own party to celebrate the arrival of a new beginning. You even remember to put the new digital camera you got for Christmas by your purse so you don’t forget it.

Of course, you talked to your teen about not drinking, not driving too fast, and not staying out past curfew.

Did you chat with her about all the photos that she and her friends will take with those gadgets? Photos that might have her kissing another girl on a dare, doing a shot with her best (boy)friend, flashing for the camera as the new year rings in.

Did you chat with her about all the photos that she or her friends might want to put up on their MySpace or Facebook page?

Myspace, Facebook? That’s all that techie stuff the kids do … what will you say, what can you say?

Too often it seems too complicated to talk to your teens about online safety. After all, it’s the online world and they know it better than you do. But is it? Did you know how a car engine works, what the transmission does, or how an airbag gets deployed when the car bumps something at 30 mph? Yet, you got right in there and taught your teen how to drive. Correction, you taught your teen how to drive safely.

And that is exactly what we’re talking about – teaching your teen how to drive online safely. You’ve done it all your life – these lessons on safety. “Look before you cross, don’t talk to strangers, respect your friends and neighbors, don’t go anywhere alone”.

The world may have changed, but the lessons are still the same. Don’t stop the dialogue.

Here’s a way to start an online safety dialogue:

1. Start a Conversation

Talk to your kids about why they use MySpace, how they communicate with others, and how they represent themselves online. Recognize the importance of social networking in their daily lives, similar to that of cell phones, email, or instant messenger, and express an interest in understanding the role it plays.

2. Talk About MySpace and the Internet

* MySpace, like the rest of the online world, is a public space. Members shouldn’t post anything they wouldn’t want the world to know (e.g., phone number, address, IM screen name, or specific whereabouts).
* Remind them not to post any photos that could embarrass them in the future or expose them to danger. Although MySpace is public, teens sometimes forget that the information and photos they post are accessible to others. A good way to explain it — tell your teens they should avoid posting anything they wouldn’t be willing to share in front of a school assembly.

3. Remind Teens to Be Cautious

* Just as in the offline world, people aren’t always who they say they are. Remind your teens to be careful about adding strangers to their friends list. It’s fun to connect with new MySpace friends from all over the world, but members should be cautious when communicating with people they don’t know.
* Encourage teens to be themselves, but to exercise the same basic safety principles they do in the physical world. They wouldn’t chat with a stranger at the mall or give someone they don’t know their cell phone number. Remind them that reckless online behavior can be just as dangerous.
* They should talk to you if they want to meet an online friend in person, and if you think its safe, any meeting should take place in public, with friends or a trusted adult present.

Remember, you’re the parent in the offline and online worlds. You can do it.

by Larry Magid

What Lori Drew allegedly did to Megan Meier was despicable, but it doesn’t justify her conviction late last month for violating federal laws designed to keep hackers from invading computer networks.
Two years ago, Megan, a 13-year-old Missouri girl, hanged herself after her online friend “Josh Evans,” who had befriended her on MySpace, reportedly told her that he didn’t want to be friends with her and that the world would be better off without her. But Josh was in fact Drew, a 49-year-old mother of one of Megan’s former friends.

According to published reports, Megan had been mean to Drew’s daughter and Josh’s fake online relationship with Megan was a way for Drew to retaliate.

During the trial in Los Angeles, it was revealed that some entries made by Josh were typed by Ashley Grills, a then-18-year-old employee of Drew who was a witness for the prosecution and was not prosecuted.

The case has widely been characterized as a legal assault on cyberbullying, though it is extremely unusual for an adult to bully a teen. There is no reason to believe that Drew intended for Megan to kill herself, but the case against Drew is frequently cited as a warning to would-be bullies that their actions could bring severe consequences to both their victims and themselves.

From what I can gather, this is a case of a squabble between two 13-year-old girls and a mother who intervened in a terribly immature and inappropriate way. Adults are supposed to help young people peacefully resolve problems, not exacerbate them. This is not so much a case of cyberbullying as a case of bad parental intervention that had tragic consequences.

We need to fight against rude, deceitful and cruel behavior on and off the Internet. But that doesn’t justify a reinterpretation of anti-hacking laws to jail people who misuse Internet services.
The legal theory behind the prosecutor’s case is that Drew violated MySpace’s terms of service that prohibit misrepresenting your identity and harassing others. MySpace rules, which Drew says she hadn’t read, require that “all information you submit is truthful and accurate.” Clearly Drew lied. But so have a lot of other people.

She was prosecuted under Section 1030 of the U.S. Code, which was crafted to protect against unauthorized access to computer networks to cause damage, steal information or money or jeopardize national security. As far as I can tell, the law was not designed to prevent people from lying about their identity or otherwise violating rules on a publicly available online service. But that didn’t stop the jury from convicting Drew of misdemeanor violations. The jury refused to go along with the prosecution’s felony charges.

Based on this case, I’m one of millions of people who might also be guilty of a federal crime. I didn’t harass anyone, but I did violate MySpace’s terms of service by creating several fake identities with a variety of ages to test privacy features for teenagers while I was researching a book about MySpace in 2006.

And what about police officers who pose as teenagers to lure would-be predators? Should they have to request immunity from federal prosecution each time they engage in such a sting operation? I’ve even heard cases of law enforcement people advising kids to lie on their profiles to protect their privacy. Should they be indicted for conspiracy?

There are plenty of adults who lie online about their age. I have a friend who set up a profile on an online dating service using a false age, an old photograph and the exaggerated claim that he was “athletic.” A date might have cause to be disappointed or angry at him, but should she have the right to demand a federal prosecution?

Even Megan, with her mom’s knowledge, lied about her age. She was 13 and, at the time, MySpace required users to be at least 14. MySpace recently started allowing 13-year-olds to sign up.
The usual penalty for violating terms of service is to be kicked off the service. Had MySpace decided to go after Drew in court, it could have done so as a civil matter. But it’s not up to federal prosecutors to take it upon themselves to enforce a company’s online agreement with its members, especially if that company never asked for federal intervention.

I can understand why a jury wanted to punish Drew for what happened to Megan. But it’s not clear to me that putting Drew in prison on a hacking charge will help prevent cyberbullying or future tragedies.

What is needed is an educational campaign that makes bullying or harassing just as unacceptable as racial epithets or subjecting others to secondhand smoke. Cyberbullying is a real problem but it requires serious long-term solutions, not quick fixes and prosecutorial hijinks.