Social Networking Sites, A Parent Trap?

A new web warning for families, More and more parents are getting burned with their kids spill family secrets online. Some moms and dads are even getting arrested or fired.
These websites offer kids a forum, but sometimes what they say can get their parents in serious trouble.
Teens don't often know it, but many families are getting hurt according to Internet Safety Expert Parry Aftab.
"I’ve represented a lot of parents who’ve come to me when they have been fired, they’ve been demoted or they’ve been called on the carpet because of what their kids posted online," Aftab says.
She says many teens still don't get it, that their posts on networking and blogging sites aren't private.
" I always warn kids never to post anything that parents, principal, predators can’t see. Now, I have to warn them not to post anything that their parents’ boss or anybody in their neighborhood shouldn’t be seeing either," Aftab says.
Sgt. Corey MacDonald agrees. He tours the country speaking about Internet safety and says police and employers are watching, looking for, and finding all kinds of dirt.
It look MacDonald only a matter of moments to find posts online saying "Not only do I have to live with my nagging mom, my dad does drugs" and "my parents are lazy alcoholics."
MacDonald says it's not hard for police or employers to uncover the identity of teens from the details in their profiles.
"All they have to do is narrow down who this person is that’s posting this. And then, it’s relatively easy to search their name on one of the online search sites and find out who their family is," he says.
They're also getting a lot of anonymous tips. Some posts are leading to arrests, like the case of a boy who boasted online about his mother buying a keg for his underage friends.
"This is a much bigger problem than people are aware of," Aftab says.
Even innocent-sound news can do damage.
"They may be talking about how their father is losing a job and perhaps a neighbor who’s the mortgage broker for the father isn’t aware that the father’s job is in jeopardy," she says.
Experts say it's critical for parents to talk to their teens about the repercussions of revealing family business and make sure they turn on all privacy settings.
But a note about privacy settings - even if your kids turn their's on when they send messages and pictures to friends, your have no control over whether those friends keep their page private. So the images and info may still get out there.
More than 12 million kids ages 12 to 17 used social networking sites in August 2007. That's up 15% from the same period last year. Many admit they have online friends that they've never met. Those friends could, in fact, be police officers or even their parents' employers.

The Youth Protection Roundtable experts survey

The Youth Protection Roundtable published the complete results of their European experts' survey on matters of safer Internet.The results clearly show the need for permanent co-operation as the Safer Internet Day has generated. The YPRT therefore tends to provide a comprehensive platform for stakeholders from all areas engaged in matters of youth protection.
The survey results are available as a printable brochure in PDF (2,5 MB). If you wish to receive some copies, please send a mail to Katharina Kunze, kunze@yprt.eu.To download the available survey graphics directly please refer to the menu on the left. Please find the Survey Results as a PDF brochure in English language under the link below (2,511 KB).Youth Protection Roundtable Survey 2007 Die Ergebnisse der Expertenbefragung als PDF in deutscher Sprache finden Sie unter folgendem Link (1,069 KB).

Mobile firms to block child porn

Published on: 12.02.08Source: BBC News online
The Global association for mobile firms (GSMA) has launched the Mobile Alliance, which aims to block paedophiles using phones to send or receive child sexual abuse images. With mobile firms from across the world the new alliance is essential, because web access via phones improves.Among planned measures will be a block on mobile phone access to websites which host abusive content. Moreover there will be hotlines to give account to services carrying inappropriate images.Please read the complete article under http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7238739.stm

Cyberbullying on the rise?

That was the headline on an Associated Press report <
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/related-top-news/?i=50868;_hbguid=81326910-9480-4f4e-a1e1-f0ff24952386>on a US Centers for Disease Control focus on cyberbullying <http://www.cdc.gov/Features/ElectronicAggression/>. "Electronic aggression," as the CDC prefers to call it, is "an emerging public health problem." While acknowledging the Internet's "many potential benefits," the CDC says the fact that 80% of US adolescents own at least one Net-connected device means that "increasing numbers of adolescents are becoming victims of aggression perpetrated by peers with this technology" (cellphones, PDAs, or Net-connected computers).A qualifier is needed here: Teens are not just becoming victims, they are victimizing. "Obviously," some readers might say. But it's not so obvious in the way our society has handled this issue to date. We keep thinking of our online children as potential victims when we need to think of them as (and aim our parenting and online-safety messages at) participants. They are participants on the participatory Web - in fact they're the drivers of it (see "Users' Web" <http://www.netfamilynews.org/2006/05/users-web.html>).It's not logical to aim education about problems in this highly interactive space at passive victims. They are only part of the equation - not even half, in fact - because in many bullying situations, particularly online, there are observers as well as a bully and a victim. And there is a fine line and often a very short amount of time between being victimized by a bully and becoming one (retaliating), as well as between being an observer and a participant. Take mere gossip as an example. When adolescents engage in mean gossip about one another in instant messaging or on a social-networking site, in a matter of seconds a person being "dissed" by someone can turn the tables on him or her - and entire peer groups can "pile on," augmenting the victimization.
Research now shows a correlation between behaving aggressively online and being victimized. “Youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization,” wrote University of New Hampshire researchers in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine <http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/2/138> a year ago, suggesting that online-safety messaging needs to "target the right online behaviors."Another emerging understanding is highlighted in an important article in the Journal of Adolescent Health's just-released special issue on cyberbullying <http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/electronic_aggression.htm> - that both aggression and victimization are associated with "psychosocial problems." Authors Michele Ybarra, Dorothy Espelage, and Kimberly Mitchell write that "the majority of youth are not frequently involved in Internet harassment or unwanted sexual solicitation either as victims or as perpetrators. Among those who are, however, psychosocial problems are apparent…. This is especially true for youth who are involved as perpetrators as well as victims of both Internet harassment and sexual solicitation. This small group of youth has emerged as an especially important group for adolescent health professionals to be aware of." What are psychosocial problems? The authors refer to "elevated rates of substance abuse; involvement in online victimization; perpetration of relational, physical, and sexual aggression; delinquent peers; propensity to respond to certain stimuli with anger; poor emotional bonds with caregivers; and poor caregiver monitoring." The long title of their study is "The Co-occurrence of Internet Harassment and Unwanted Sexual Solicitation Victimization and Perpetration: Associations with Psychosocial Behaviors" (it can be downloaded in pdf format here <
http://www.jahonline.org/content/suppl07>).