SafeKids/NetFamilyNews 2/10/06

  • From: Educational CyberPlayGround <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: K12NewsLetters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:55:52 -0500

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2/10

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first full week of February:

* Parents on kids' privacy
* Web News Briefs: MySpace's 13.5 million teens; Texting's power;
Teens getting Tagged(.com); Blogs & rabbits; Anti-child-porn update,
UK; PC smarts & school; Tweens' impact on music world; Phone filter
flaw in UK; Schools' blog struggles; PC security pricetag; Police help
online teens; Videogame view from N.C?.


Parents on kids' privacy

Thoughtful emails and posts to NetFamilyNews.blogspot.com,
BlogSafety.com, FamilyTechTalk.com, and me are multiplying. This week,
a comment from Kentucky on the risks of online anonymity and two
comments (from Wisconsin and North Carolina) on a forever-hot topic
among parents and teenagers ­ a subject under which the Net's newest
phase (of multiplatform, multimedia, homemade, self-published content)
has further turned up the heat.

[Please note, NetFamilyNews doesn't necessarily share these views; we
publish a spectrum of views for the sake of discussion ­ an important
public discourse in which parents have a key voice.]

1. From Al in North Carolina

"My children (15 and 10 years old) do NOT have privacy rights - they
are granted privacy privileges. While they live in my house, eat my
food, and wear the clothes I provide (I'm sounding like my dad) I have
the right to go anywhere in their room or among their possessions.  I
don't, but there is never discussion of whether I have the right.

"Children are NOT adults and do not have privacy rights in their
parents' household. I do agree that my kids have privacy rights at
school, but even this should be limited. The principal can open their
locker whenever he wants - and he should do so. This is how to teach
children responsibility and keep that small measure of fear that if
they do something wrong they just might get caught.

"My children are very happy girls with healthy self-esteems. They
respect their mother and me as they should. I (like my dad) will not
tolerate bad attitudes or backtalk, and they don't do either very
often. Both kids have fairly free roaming privileges on the computer
because I trust them. I trust them because they do not lie to me, and
they do not lie to me because the few times they did were not fun for
them. They report anything they encounter that falls below our family standard.

"Healthy children develop within a disciplined and loving house.
Believe it. It worked for thousands of years before Dr. Spock started
eroding our understanding of parenting in the '60s."

2. From Stacey, parent and co-coordinator of WASSUP (Waukesha
Allliance Supporting Strong United Parenting) in Wisconsin

"With regard to Internet monitoring of our children's activities:
Certainly reading our kids' private stuff is distasteful and
uncomfortable at best. But we did it, with a sick feeling in our guts.
Utilizing [monitoring software], we [WASSUP] occasionally found things
that were very disturbing about our teens - sexual exploits, drug
experimentation, info on criminal activity (from mooning to keg
parties to robbery) in the community, etc. that involved our children
or others.

"We were able to nip some activities in the bud by saying that we'd
'cleaned out some files and fallen upon a conversation that was very
disturbing,' or perhaps we'd 'checked into history and were shocked to
find...', or we'd 'overheard a conversation while walking in the hall
at school....' These were ways to bring up the fact that we'd
uncovered potentially dangerous activities that our children were
about to become involved in, or perhaps already were involved in?.

"Speaking as a PTA President/Girl Scout leader/Educator/community
volunteer/stay-at-home devoted mother of a musically gifted/honor
roll/varsity/intelligent/dropout drug-addicted son, when your kids are
endangering their lives - or even maybe just starting to make a few
risky decisions - I would urge parents to find out what is going on
behind the scenes. Good-hearted kids from great families do rotten,
self-destructive stuff, too. I know many, many caring parents whose
children have followed this unfortunate route. There is no one right
way to raise your kids, or to avert disaster, or to make them
'behave.' They will make decisions, good and bad, no matter how well
we've taught them ? and we cannot be with them 24/7.

"It's up to parents to decide, but beware: Letting them know that
spyware is on the computer will just make them sneakier. They will use
cell phones, will communicate in cute little codes, will find ways to
get around it. Staying a step ahead of them - and keeping this one
tool under your hat - may save their lives. Although my son has had
his trials, I do believe that our 'manipulations, concoctions,' and
deceptions saved his life.

"Before you judge any parents' techniques, think of ALL the possible
big pictures. And never, ever think, 'This won't happen to my kid'."

3. Pam, parent and elementary school tech teacher in Kentucky, on
blogging & 'anonymity'

"I would like to respond to the lead article in the 1/13/06
NetFamilyNewsletter regarding Amanda, the 18 year-old blogger

"She made one comment that really struck me: 'They are also a great
place to make friends that you can tell everything. You have times
when you just can't tell your real-life friends about the things going
on in your life.' Reading this immediately brought to my mind 'Amy's
Choice' [http://www.netsmartz.org/stories/amy.htm] in 'Real-Life
Stories' on the NetSmartz Web site. This is the true story of a
15-year-old girl who ran away with a man whom she first 'met' online.
In explaining why she developed a relationship with him, she states:
'He was a stranger. You can tell strangers, that you're never going to
meet, stuff that you wouldn't tell your friends.'

"This also reminds me of the experience of my own daughter. When she
was 16 she became convinced that a 28-year-old man she 'met' online
was her best friend, who understood her better than anyone else.

"My point is that one of the attractions of blogs and online social
networks - the ability to share intimate thoughts and feelings
'anonymously' - is the very thing that makes them so risky. Sharing
anonymously creates an illusion of trust that can easily be exploited.
Amanda may be able to detect and block the 'creepy people,' but other
more emotionally vulnerable young people may not be so quick to pick
up on those cues."



Web News Briefs

1. MySpace's 13.5 million teens

"MySpace officials" told the San Jose Mercury News
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13840568.htm> that
"75% of its members are over 18." Doing the math based on "54 million
members," MySpace.com alone surpasses the number the Pew Internet &
American Life Project gave last November (12 million) for the overall
number of US teens who "create content for the Internet"
<http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Content_Creation.pdf>. The
number is probably growing so fast, no researcher could keep up with
it and have a life. The Mercury News piece is really about something
more important, though: how kids posting on sites like MySpace, Xanga,
DeadJournal, Blurty, etc. "could do lasting damage to [their]
reputation, and now more parents and school officials are taking
action." One smart parent the Mercury News cites got her own space and
used the messaging feature "to send gentle warnings to teens who post
pictures of themselves drunk or half-naked." [A warning, though: They
might just move on to lesser-known blogging services.] It's as if that
northern California mom knew about a story this week in Michigan,
about how "15-20 students at East Grand Rapids High School face
possible disciplinary action by the school after parents reported
seeing Internet photos of them drinking alcohol at parties" (from the
Associated Press
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_fe_st/busted_by_blogs>).

Find Definitions - Folksonomy and Resources for
Podcasts,webcasts,audiocasts, Blogs, audioblogs,odeo, flicker, RSS,
wiki, and smart mobs.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/podcast.html


2. Texting's power

This isn't just about kid tech, but undoubtedly many young Muslims are
involved in this latest subject of global activism both online and
off. The Washington Post calls them "mass-mailings," but they're
really mass-messagings and -postings, via cellphone and blog that have
"helped turn an incident in tiny Denmark into a uniting cause for
protesters around the world in days or even hours"
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR200
6020802293.html>. The incident referred to, of course, is the
publication five months ago in a Danish newspaper of cartoons
depicting the Prophet Mohammed. And the timing, in launching
individual protests and boycotts online and in locations around the
world, has in many cases been less than "hours," according to the
Post. For example, a rumor (that the Koran might be burned), started
by Mohammad Fouad Barazi, a prominent Muslim cleric in Denmark
(unintentionally, he said), spread so fast that Danish Prime Minister
held a press conference and said that authorities don't have time to
"correct misinformation" before it's acted on. And the Post cites a
moderate Muslim lawmaker as saying that Barazi's mere mention of the
possibility concerning the Koran "encouraged attacks on the Danish
Embassy in Syria on Saturday." Another amazing example of the power
and reach of electronic communications, for good and bad.

--> Computer Trends - Smart Mobs and Swarming - for Good and Evil <--
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/trends.html

Fear on the Phone: When Children Get Threatening Texts: within the
next year or two nearly all mobile phones will have interent access.
Parents should be aware of this and no longer assume that internet
safety applies only to the home computer.

LEARN THE INTERNET RULES - 10 Tips for Safe Surfing
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/morestuff4.html
where kids go and get in trouble
where you should go with the kids
how the filters work
privacy protection
what kind of keyboard is good for little kids
how to handle technology and your kids.


3. Teens getting Tagged(.com)

Watch out, MySpace (I'm sure they are watching)! Tagged.com, a
social-networking site specifically targeting people 13-19 got its
second million members in just three months. Is this a sign that
early-adopter teens are moving on from the more general
social-networking sites to more "vertical" ones (by "vertical," I mean
narrower in terms of age, interests, or location)? I'm thinking of
sites like Dallas's Buzz-Oven.com, St. Louis's STLPUNK.com, and the
poised-for-launch YFly.com (see People.com
<http://people.aol.com/people/articles/0,19736,1155215,00.html>).
Here's a press release about the $7 million the company just received
in venture-capital funding
<http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/stor
y/02-08-2006/0004277319&EDATE=>, showing how seriously the business
community is taking young Net users, and here are Tagged.com's own
site stats <http://corp.tagged.com/statistics.html>. Another, newer up
'n' comer: TagWorld.com, launched in November and
now with "viral video," it says. The site, which already boasts
"nearly half a million registered users" is all about user-produced
media (photos, music, video, etc.), was recently mentioned in a PC
World blog <http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/001130.html>.

4. Blogs: Multiplying like rabbits

A new blog is born every second, the San Jose Mercury News's "Good
Morning Silicon Valley" blog reports in "Please spay your blog"
<http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/02/please_spay_you.html>.
It's citing these just-released numbers from Technorati, which tracks
blog activity: There are now 27.2 million blogs (60 times the number
three years ago), and they're doubling about every 5.5 months. That
means 75,000 new blogs a day. Thus the "State of the Blogosphere"
<http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000419.html>, which does not
report, for example, specifically on teen blogger numbers. But
InformationWeek
<http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1
79100780> does say that "the blogosphere is comprised of entries on
just about every subject?. They feature political viewpoints,
discussions of major news events, observations of bored teenagers and
children, talents and experience of job-seekers, complaints from
disgruntled employees and
self-praise from corporate marketing and public relations departments."

5. Anti-child-porn update: UK

Timed to the EU's Safer Internet Day, marked in a number of countries
today, UK Internet Service provider BT announced its Web servers are
blocking 35,000 attempts to view child-porn Web pages every day, the
BBC reports <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4689386.stm>. It
adds that only .3%, or 20 out of every 6,000 such pages are hosted in
the UK ­ the rest are on servers in many other countries. Here's how
the system works: "People who discover a site that harbours suspicious
content are invited to report the site to the Internet Watch
Foundation," which has a report-illegal-content button on its home
page. The IWF passes the reports on to the UK's National Crime Squad
for analysis. "Any UK-based site hosting child pornography can be
traced quickly and easily, despite elaborate attempts to hide the
unique Internet addresses, known as IP addresses, which identify each
site. Once traced, the ISP hosting the site is notified and the site
taken down," according to the BBC.
If the content's not hosted in the UK, the IWF passes the info along
to Interpol for cooperation with police in other countries.
Foreign-based child-porn pages also go into the IWF's database of
black-listed pages. ISP filters like BT's "Cleanfeed" check page
requests against that black list, so that child-porn pages are blocked
for home Internet users. According to The Guardian
<http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1704342,00.html>, BT ­
which provides Internet service for one-third of British home Net
users ­ says the number of attempts to view child porn has tripled in
the past 18 months. Here's coverage of Safer Internet Day at
ElectricNews.net in Dublin <http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9667943>.

6. PC smarts, school performance linked

"Regular computer users perform better in key school subjects,"
according to a new report by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD). The No. 1 "key subject," cited in
the OECD's press release
<http://www.oecd.org/document/17/0,2340,en_2649_201185_35992849_1_1_1_
1,00.html >, was math. "The study, 'Are students ready for a
technology-rich world?' [which compared 15-year-old students'
performance in multiple countries], provides the first internationally
comparative data in this area," the presser states. In other findings,
almost 75% of students in OECD countries "use computers at home
several times each week" (90% in Canada, Iceland, and Sweden). At
school, the figure is 44%. The discrepancy between home and school use
is especially marked in Germany. "Germany has the lowest percentage of
frequent computer users at school among OECD countries (23%) but a
high proportion of frequent users at home?. The number of students
needing to share a
computer in a school in Germany ? is three times higher than in
Australia, Korea, and the US." The study also found that "Greece,
Mexico, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Turkey are among the OECD
countries where 15-year-olds have the lowest access to computers at
home." [Thanks to TechLEARNING.com for pointing this news out.]

7. Tweens' impact on music world

It's significant and growing. The soundtrack for a made-for-TV movie
targeting people under 15 ­ Disney's "High School Musical" ­ is the
No. 1 album in iTunes and has the No. 1 song ("Breaking Free"),
Reuters reports
<http://news.com.com/Tweens+use+iPods%2C+iTunes+to+storm+the+charts/21
00-1025_3-6035902.html>. But tweens' clout goes beyond online sales:
Nine of the soundtrack's songs are on the Billboard Hot 100 singles
chart, without any airtime on radio, which is usually a big influence
on the Hot 100. The soundtrack's popularity has remained steady since
the movie first aired on the Disney Channel January 20, Reuters adds.
Since then some 20 million people have seen it. According to Reuters,
the soundtrack's phenomenal sales are due partly to all the iPods
tweens received as holiday gifts. Clearly, electronic gadgets instead
of toys in kids' hands is great news for producers of all forms of
media. "Music targeting kids age 14 and under is emerging as a growth
segment for
labels," Reuters reports. Here's more on changes in the music world
from the Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR200
6020702051.html> - including how singles, "which were on the music
industry's endangered-species list at the turn of the 21st century,
have come roaring back to life in the digital age."

Ear Health
What is happening to children who are using earbuds - are they losing
their ears to music? Are they going deaf?
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/ears.html


8. Phone filter flaw in UK

Which?, the UK's "Consumer Reports," found a loophole in mobile-phone
parental controls offered in that country. The filtering system does
block adult content sent directly to phones, but kids can buy access
codes over the phone (for 1.5 pounds or about $2.60 per code) to get
into "Web sites showing hardcore sex films" on their computers, the
BBC reports <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4671334.stm>. "The consumer
group said the number of pay-per-view Internet sites accepting payment
by premium-rate text messages had increased over the past few years."
O2, the phone company whose service Which? used for its test, and the
trade group for cellphone billing services said they were working on
closing the loophole.

9. Schools' blog struggles

The school scene is a huge part of teen blogging ­ not just because a
lot of teen members' posts and profiles revolve around school but also
because users are searchable by school. That's certainly true at
MySpace (where anyone can type a local high school into the search box
and find hundreds of students there, searchable by age and distance ­
e.g., within a 5-mile radius). The hugely popular Facebook.com, now at
more than 2,600 colleges and universities, is now available to many
high school students. Xanga.com isn't overtly school-oriented, but it
can be searched geographically, and large portions of student bodies
will use it just because their peers do. So, like parents, schools are
scrambling to catch up with this looming presence in their
environments. "Many outlaw use of the sites on school computers," the
Christian Science Monitor reports
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0202/p01s04-stct.html>, "though kids
find ways to get past the filters. Schools have a harder time
controlling what gets posted at home, even if it has a tangible effect
within school walls." Schools in the UK are struggling with
online-safety and cyberbullying issues too, a new UK government study
found <http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/4490>.

Filters and How To Protect Kids Privacy and respect their Rights.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/filtering.html



10. Microsoft's PC-security price tag

Next June Microsoft will start charging $49.95 a year for Windows
OneCare Live, the Associated Press reports
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13813306.htm>, and
that price will cover up to three PCs. "Anyone who signs up for the
test by April 30 can buy the paid service for just $19.95 per year."
OneCare Live <http://windowsonecare.com> is free right now because
it's still in beta testing. Some 200,000 PC owners are trying it out,
according to the AP. Microsoft says it's not trying to run the likes
of McAfee and Trend Micro out of business, it just wants to meet the
security needs of the 70% of Windows users who don't have those
security services ­ or anything besides what comes with Windows XP and
2000. Meanwhile, speaking of security, Microsoft warned of new Windows
security flaws yesterday, ZDNET reports
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6036476.html> (Washington Post
security writer Brian Krebs
<http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/02/microsoft_anoth.h
tml> says a patch is probably coming in Microsoft's regular monthly
security update due next week), and in a separate article, ZDNET also
reports that Firefox users need to make sure they have the latest
version of that browser <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6036771.html>.

11. Police helping online teens

Sometimes it helps to have a disinterested 3rd party in a parent-teen
discussion - at least the town of Murrysville, Pa., appears to see it
this way. The town will hold its "first in a series of parent/teen
discussions with the police department" at the community center next
week to talk about Internet safety, the Murrysville Star reports
<http://www.gatewaynewspapers.com/murrysvillestar/57981/>. Police say
there haven't been any teen-predator face-to-face meetings in
Murrysville, but the town wants to head any such possibility off at
the pass ­ for example, what happened in the Tampa, Fla., area
recently. A 42-year-old Seminole High School teacher tried to meet in
person with a 14-year-old Tampa girl he found and contacted in
MySpace.com, the St. Petersburg Times reports
<http://www.sptimes.com/2005/12/22/Tampabay/Pinellas_teacher_accu.shtm
l>. Some online-safety experts tell kids not to respond to messages
like this, to just tell their parents. This girl did both, which
worked fine in this case. She replied to the man saying "she thought
it was strange that he would want to be friends with her since he was
so much older than she, and then informed her mother about [his]
message, investigators said." The mom called the police, who, it turns
out, had been corresponding online with the man for four months posing
as naïve teenage girls. They arrested the man in a sting operation.

12. Videogames: The view from N.C.

Check with your child's teacher "before purchasing any computer games
or programs to see if [they're] relevant to the child?s current stage
of development," is some advice cited by the Jacksonville [N.C.] Daily
News in "Videogame technology more than just recreation"
<http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Det
ails.cfm&StoryID=38632&Section=News>. For this 4th piece of a
five-part series on videogames' evolution, the Daily News talked to
Jenita Shephard, coordinator of instruction technology for Onslow
County Schools, who said the "critical difference between a game and
learning" is assessment ­ educational software, though it can be
plenty fun, assesses "at what level a child may be performing
academically, helps the child excel in a subject, and then evaluates
what the child has learned." The other parts in the series: "As the
audience grew up, so did their videogames," Part 1
<http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Det
ails.cfm&StoryID=38557&Section=News>; "Gamers inhabit a virtual world
of reality," Part 2
<http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Det
ails.cfm&StoryID=38580&Section=News>; "Industry numbers show she's got
game, too," Part 3
<http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Det
ails.cfm&StoryID=38610&Section=News>; and "Games molding military
minds," Part 5
<http://www.jdnews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Det
ails.cfm&StoryID=38657&Section=News>. [On that last subject, see also
"America's Army' morphs" in NetFamilyNews
<http://www.netfamilynews.org/nl051223.html#12>.]


Anne Collier Editor Net Family News <www.netfamilynews.org> and The Online Safety Project <www.safekids.com>

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