Technology and Youth Risk: A Briefing for Parents

The Concerns

There are legitimate concerns about youth involvement in these social networking communities. The concerns are grounded in three basic factors:

• Some teens, as is to be expected, are not making good choices.
• Many parents are not paying sufficient attention.
• Dangerous adults are attracted to these environments

Youth Online Risk

The concerns of youth risk in social networking environments include:

• Unsafe disclosure of personal information – providing potentially dangerous or damaging personal information, including personal contact information, sexually suggestive information or images, intimate information about concerns or troubles they are facing in life, or images or information about engagement in ill-advised, illegal, or irresponsible behaviour, such as drinking, drug abuse, sexual activities, wild parties, and the like. Many teens appear to have no understanding that what they post in these sites is public, potentially permanent, accessible by anyone in the world, and could result in damage to themselves or others.
• Cyber-bullying – being cruel to others by sending or posting harmful material online or through a cell phone or engaging in other cruel or hurtful actions. Cyber-bullying is causing significant emotional harm to others – resulting in depression, anger, school failure and avoidance, school violence, and suicide.
• Cyber-threats – posting direct threats or distressing material. Students may post material that appears to be a direct imminent threat. Students may also post distressing material that provides strong clues about the potential for violence or suicide. Some of the recent school shooters had posted concerning material online prior to the school shootings!
• Risky sexual behaviour – being seduced by a sexual predator or child pornographer, self producing child pornography, or making connections with other teens for sexual “hook-ups.” Youth, including girls and boys, who post sexually suggestive photos or information or discuss intimate personal matters are most vulnerable.
• Dangerous communities – “at risk” youth making connections with other “at risk” youth or adults to discuss and share information on suicide, anorexia or bulimia, hate group activities, gang activities, passing out games, bomb-making, hacking, and the like. Involvement in these communities results in a shared belief in the appropriateness of harmful or anti-social thoughts and activities.
• Addiction – spending an excessive amount of time online, resulting in lack of healthy engagement in major areas of life – family, friends, school, homework, work, exercise, personal interests, and sleep. Internet addiction is a behavioural addiction. For some teens, addiction to these online communities is leading to poor performance at school. Addiction to these sites also fuels efforts to circumvent the Internet filters at home/school.

Filtering

It is important to recognise how the concerns related to online social networking communities have shifted. The major concern expressed when youth started going online was youth access to pornography. Filtering software, which promised to block access to unacceptable material, was promoted as the tool that could effectively address this concern. Unfortunately, far too many parents and educators think that blocking access will make the problems go away. The false security that has been generated through reliance on these tools has undermined the establishment of effective education and supervision practices at school and home.

The issues presented by the online social networking communities are associated with what youth are publishing and with whom they are communicating. These activities are far more enticing to students than accessing pornography. It is exceptionally easy for students to create or use proxy servers to get around the filters to access these sites.

With access becoming ubiquitous, including through mobile phones, the misplaced reliance on filtering or blocking technologies will become even more dangerous. Effective education of youth and monitoring of youth online activities is essential.

The media has provided a deluge of articles and television reports concerning youth risk in online social networking communities, such as MySpace, YouTube, and the like.

This article will describe these communities, outline risks and provide guidance in addressing these risks.

Online social networking environments  

Online social networking environments are a relatively recent, and highly attractive, online phenomena. In these communities, members establish profiles that provide personal information, photos, music, and graphics about their interests. Members can establish blogs (weblogs) to post their own commentary. The members then make connections or links with other members (“friends”) who share similar interests and encourage friends to post comments in their blog. Additionally, such sites provide instant messaging capabilities and discussion groups around different areas of interest.

Many teens are safely and responsibly engaged in such communities. They are using their profiles to build and experiment with aspects of their own personal identity. They are making connections that are contributing to their social well-being and expanding their perspectives and understandings of themselves, their close friends, and other people from throughout the world. Many have developed personal standards and guidelines for safe and responsible behaviour on these sites.

Adults should not underestimate the attractiveness of these online environments – or expect that the legitimate concerns associated with these environments and a “just say no” response will make the environments or the associated concerns magically disappear. These environments are a natural progression of Internet information and communications technologies. They are attractive to teens and are here to stay.

Issues for Educators to Address

Youth involvement in online social networking environments is impacting students and the school environment. While it is reasonable for education systems to seek to block students from accessing these sites from school, given the fact that these sites do not have significant educational value, blocking access to such sites will likely not be effective, will not fully address the concerns, and can have a very damaging ramification.

These are the issues that must be addressed:

• School threat assessment and suicide prevention plans must incorporate online speech.
• Safe school personnel must be able to immediately access and review online material posted by a student in the event of a report of concern and may be prevented from doing so by the school filter.
• School officials should realize that in most cases harmful or dangerous speech posted in these sites or an underage registration is a violation of the Use Agreement. These concerns will be addressed upon the filing of a complaint. Sites will also work with law enforcement to identify anonymous users and preserve material.
• Relying solely on school’s Internet filtering service to block access to these sites will likely not prevent student involvement on these sites from the school campus. Better monitoring is necessary.
• Off-campus activities of students can have a damaging impact on the well-being of students and the school climate and could lead to school violence. Students and parents should be encouraged to report online concerns. A process must be in place to effectively respond to reports.
• Educating staff, students, and parents about safe and responsible Internet use is critically important.

In addition to the Diocese of Parramatta’s “Student Acceptable Use of ICT” policy, a set of guidelines for parents/educators is currently being developed. Information sessions and discussions groups involving parents, teachers and students are also being planned for next year.

Nancy E. Willard, Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, has degrees in special education and law. She taught “at risk” children, practiced computer law, and was an educational technology consultant before focusing her professional attention on issues of youth behaviour when using information and communication technologies. The issues discussed in this document are more fully explored in Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Cruelty, Threats, and Distress.

More information and additional resources are available at http://cyberbully.org. Willard is also writing a book for parents entitled Raising CyberSavvy Kids: Empowering Children and Teens to Make Safe and Responsible Choices Online (and Remaining “Hands-on” to Ensure They Do).

Read the full article:

 Online Social Networking Communities and Youth Risk (A Briefing for Educators)

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