Bustin Jieber app from 12-year-old programmer (Credit Thomas Suarez via Apple App Store)

In January I wondered outloud if the iPad will make us less creative.  I pointed out that there was a time when schools taught kids how to program computers but lamented that the vast majority of today’s kids are only learning to use tech devices rather than program them.

I still have this concern but after watching a Ted Talk by 12 year-old Thomas Suarez, I’m a bit more optimistic.

At the October 22 TED conference in Manhattan Beach, California, Suarez talked about a couple of iOS apps that he’s written including one called Bustin Jieber, which has become a popular wack-o-mole game for kids who are less than enthusiastic about the popular star.  He also suggested that schools need to be teaching kids not just to use technology but to help create it.

He pointed out that kids who want to learn soccer can find a team and those who want to play violin can easily find a teacher, but “not many kids know where to go to find out how to make a program.” Suarez, who already had programming experience, got his hands on Apple’s iPhone software development kit and started programming.  To get his first app published he had to persuade his parents to pay the $99 to put the app on the app store.

The video is only 4 minutes long and well worth watching.

by Larry Magid

Teachers need to think about how technology affects their relationships with students (Credit: Symantec)

A study from Symantec found that 21% of teachers had either been cyberbaited or knew a teacher who had.

Cyberbaiting, according to Symantec’s Internet safety advocate, Marian Merritt, is when students deliberately provoke a teacher into doing something stupid, then video it and post it online.  ”This of course has the net effect of embarrassing the teacher, taking a momentary lapse of judgement in a classroom and embedding it onto the web.”

As per that 21%, remember it includes teachers who know someone it happened to. Only 4% said it happened to them. Still, it’s one more thing for teachers to think about.

The study — which included interviews from kids and parents in 24 countries including the United States — also found that 62% of kids reported that they have had a negative experience online.  It also found that 95% of parents know what their kids are looking at online.

Visit my CNET Blog for a more complete report on the study and a podcast interview with Marian Merritt.

Listen to 1 minute segment

One 1-minute CBS News/CNET Tech Talk segment which includes a sound bite from Marian Merritt.

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

by Larry Magid

A study released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project had what might be surprising news about online teens. They actually listen to parental advice.

The big take-away from the report, “Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites” was that 69 percent of American teens who use social media say people their age “are mostly kind to one another on social network sites.” Deeper into the report, you’ll find that 86 percent of teens report getting advice from a parent, and 70 percent say they’ve received online safety advice from a teacher or “another adult at school. Almost half the teens say they’ve received advice from siblings and relatives and about 54 percent say they’ve gotten it from television, radio, newspapers or magazines.

The study, which interviewed 799 teens and their parents earlier this year, was sponsored by the Family Online Safety Institute and Cable in the Classroom.

Despite the fact that nearly all of the teens surveyed were wired into social media and mobile devices, just over a third said they have gotten safety advice from websites and only 21 percent from Internet and mobile phone service providers. Four out of six kids had received advice from other adults, such as youth leaders, clergy and coaches.

It was also heartening to read that younger teens are more likely to receive advice from older siblings, along with other relatives and librarians and that “for teens of all ages nd genders, parents are the most commonly mentioned source for advice about online safety.”

The survey didn’t ask whether this advice was sought out, appreciated or effective. But it did probe into whether kids looked for advice after witnessing meanness or online cruelty. More than a third who have seen others be mean or cruel on a social network site said they looked for advice on what to do. More than half the girls looked for advice compared to 20 percent of boys.

Teens who have been bullied themselves were even more likely to seek out help. Of this group, 56 percent reached out for advice compared to the 30 percent of teens who had not been bullied.

It’s encouraging to note that 92 percent of the teens who asked for advice on how to handle online cruelty said the advice was helpful.

Nearly six in 10 said parents have the greatest influence. The study found some differences based on income and ethnicity, but what I found most telling is that parents who are themselves Internet users are more likely to serve as a teen’s biggest influence. That certainly confirms advice that I’ve been giving for years — that parents need to go online and learn firsthand about the types of media their kids use.

This research tracks with other studies about parental influence. Several studies have shown that kids, including teenagers, do listen to what their parents say and pay attention to what their parents do. Even college students, according to a 2008 study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, are influenced by parental involvement.

But in order to be effective, advice from parents or any other adults also has to be accurate and actionable. Michigan State professor Kim Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model is mostly designed to measure how people respond to fear messages, but it can also be applied to other forms of advice. What she found is that effectiveness of messaging depends on the “assessment of the threat and their perceived efficacy.” In other words, people tend to ignore warnings that don’t resonate with their perception of reality and they won’t take advice that doesn’t lead to actions likely to have an impact.

Much of this research is based on behavioral issues like smoking cessation, but it can also apply to online behavior. Giving advice that makes little sense to kids is likely to go nowhere. For example, much of the advice designed to keep kids out of the hands of Internet predators was largely ignored because the kids’ own experience correctly belied the perceived threats.

A few years ago, the media was filled with stories about teens being harmed by online strangers, even though research and the actual experience of the vast majority of teens failed to back up those fears. There is also widespread belief that putting personal information or even photos online can lead to danger, but millions of kids do that everyday and never hear about cases of kids they know having been harmed as a result.

While bullying can be extremely hurtful, 85 percent of teens questioned in this Pew study say that no one has been mean or cruel to them online in the past 12 months, and most don’t bully others. And despite some media reports of widespread “sexting,” only 2 percent of teens say they have ever sent a nude or sexually suggestive picture or video of themselves to others.

Presentation for Mediterranean Association of International Schools

Majority of kids and adults say that people online are mostly kind (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project)

A just released study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that “69% of social media-using teens think that peers are mostly kind to each other on social network sites.”

The study, which was unveiled Wednesday at the annual Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference in Washington, was conducted by Pew in partnership with FOSI and Cable in the Classroom.  The researchers interviewed 799 teens and their parents via cell phone and landline earlier this year.

Even some of the bad news isn’t necessarily bad

In addition to the good news, there was what at first looks like a disturbing finding that “88% of teens have seen someone be mean or cruel to another person on a social networking site,” but on reflection, I actually don’t find that troubling.

Earlier this week I was in New Orleans for the International Bullying Prevention Association conference.  As I walked down Bourbon Street in the famed French Quater one evening, I saw a couple of overly inebriated people yelling at each other in a mean way.  They weren’t being mean to me, I wasn’t being mean to anyone and the vast majority of people around us (including many who were equally inebriated) weren’t at all mean. Overall, it was a jovial and friendly crowd. Still, if a researcher asked me if I witnessed meanness, I’d have to say yes.

Like the ‘real world’

In an interview, the study’s lead researcher, Amanda Lenhart, said “What we’re finding is that social media is a lot like the real world. We see people being mean and cruel to other people all the time. Sometimes we intervene, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it relates to us and sometimes it doesn’t.” She added, “the truth of it is when you drill down, teens don’t actually see that type of behavior frequently, which is why we have the sense that the overall climate is positive.”

Still, there are some kids who are deeply hurt by bullying and some kids can be extremely mean on and offline, so it remains a very serious problem for a minority of youth.

Parents matter

Lenhart also pointed out that “parents matter.” The survey found that 86% get advice about how to be safe and responsible online from their parents. “Parents are an extremely important source about social responsibility online and on their cell phone.”  The study found that 58% of teens said that their parents had the most impact on them about ethical online behavior. “Parents really are quite important.”

You can read a lot more about the study on my CNET News blog.

In May, Consumer Reports revealed that there were 7.5 million kids younger than 13 using Facebook, including more than five million 10 and under. In every case these kids had to lie to get around Facebook’s rule that you must be 13 or older to join.

One might assume that these kids are also deceiving their parents, but that’s often not the case. As I point out in my CNET blog, many parents are not only aware their kids are on Facebook but actually helped them set up the account.

Most parents know

A new study, Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act‘, points out that:

• 95% of the parents whose 10-year-old was on Facebook knew about it
• 78% of them helped the kid signup. Of all kids under 13
• 68% of parents helped their child create the account
• 78% of  parents think it is OK for their child to violate minimum age restrictions on services

Overall, said the survey, “Almost three-quarters (74%) of parents whose child is on Facebook and who reported a minimum age knew that their child was on Facebook below what they believed the minimum age to be.”

COPPA to Blame?

The primary reason that Facebook doesn’t allow kids under 13 is because of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The law doesn’t force companies like Facebook that collect personal information about users to block kids under 13, but it sets up a lot of road blocks including a requirement that the company get “verifiable parental consent.” The process is expensive for companies and time consuming for parents so, most companies that allow users to enter personal information, simply don’t allow kids under 13.

COPPA was written back in 1998 — long before Facebook — to protect kids from revealing information to be used for marketing purposes and also to reduce their risk of exploitation. But, as the study’s co-author danah boyd (her legal name is all lower case) pointed out in my CBS News / CNET interview (click to listen to MP3) , “If you want to participate in social media, it’s not that you can participate without giving over information, that simply is not possible.” The whole purpose of Facebook is to share and you need to provide at least some personal information to use the service.  The solution, said boyd, “is not to make it harder for them to lie.”

In June, I blogged that Facebook ought to allow children under 13, because I think that it would be a lot safer to let them on in an age appropriate manner than to collectively bury our heads in the sand and pretend that they’re not there. If this were the case, it should be accompanied by all sorts of parental controls as well as greatly increased privacy settings. I would also argue that the children to given an ad-free environment and that, of course, no information be used to market to them now or in the future. There should be a limit on who they can communicate with, but they should be allowed to use the service to interact with family members and others approved by their parents. As my ConnectSafely.org colleague Anne Collier pointed out in a NetFamilyNews post, there are plenty of good reasons why we should close the “communications gap,” by allowing kids under 13 to communicate via popular social networking sites.

Facebook has indicated that it has no immediate plans to challenge COPPA and has no announced plans for finding a COPPA compliant way to welcome pre-teens. So, in the mean time, it will continue to block those who enter a date of birth that indicates they’re below 13 and continue to remove the account of those who they catch after the account has been established.

The Federal Trade Commission is currently reviewing COPPA and is seeking comments from the public about proposed rule changes which, currently, do not include removing  the under-13 restriction.

For more, see danah boyd’s post Why Parents Help Tweens Violate Facebook’s 13+ Rule and Anne Collier’s Kids lying to Facebook, not their parents: Study.

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

by Larry Magid

As I previously wrote, cyberbullying is a serious problem, but not an epidemic.  Yet, there continue to be widespread reports that bullying has reached epidemic proportions. This misinformation can actually have the unintended consequence of increasing bullying.

One study, from the Crimes Against Children Research Center, showed that bullying has actually decreased in recent years, and no credible studies have shown a significant recent increase.  The recent EU Kids Online (PDF) study from the London School of Economics found that “across Europe, 6% of 9 to 16-year-old Internet users have been bullied online, and 3% confess to having bullied others.” In the U.S., the Cyberbullying Research Center found that 20% of  ”randomly selected 11 to 18 year old students in 2010 indicated they had been a victim at some point in their life.”

Even the most optimistic numbers indicate a problem but, I wouldn’t call this an “epidemic” of either bullying or cyberbullying as some articles and TV shows  have suggested.

Some well-meaning advocacy groups have contributed to the misinformation by releasing data suggesting that the majority (in some cases the vast majority) of youth have been bullied or have bullied others, though most surveys have put the percentages much lower — typically around 20%. One reason for the discrepancy in the research results is the lack of a uniformly agreed upon definition of bullying. Some studies ask whether “anyone has ever been mean to you” or has “hurt your feelings.” Based on this definition, I am surprised that the rate isn’t near 100%.

Bulling defined

A more widely accepted definition of bullying comes from the Olweus Bullying Prevention program which says that bullying has “three important components:”

1. Bullying is aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions.
2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength.

Olweus is a widely respected bullying prevention program

When these components are used to determine incidents, the rate of bullying is substantially lower. Of course, you can argue with the definition, especially when it comes to online or so-called “cyberbullying,” because – online — a single act of bullying can be repeated over time and it’s harder to agree on the definition of an “imbalance of power,” where a person’s online “power,” influence or presence may have little or nothing to do with traditional means of obtaining power such as physical strength, appearance or popularity.

Social norms research shows  accurate reporting makes kids safer

Putting the bullying problem into its proper perspective doesn’t minimize it, but actually helps prevent it from getting worse. I know that may seem counterintuitive, but there is a lot of solid research that shows that if people overestimate anti-social or harmful behavior, they are more likely to engage in it themselves. In other words, reporting accurately about the rate of bullying actually makes kids  less likely to bully others. Besides, as my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier wrote in NetFamilyNews, “Kids deserve the truth about cyberbullying.”

Much of this research focuses on health related activities such as smoking, alcohol abuse and overeating, but there is also data on the impact of peer perceptions on bullying.

Overestimating contributes to the problem

A paper (PDF) published in the April, 2011 edition of Group Processes Intergroup Relations, by H. Wesley Perkins, David W. Craig and Jessica M. Perkins,  shows that “variation in perceptions of the peer norm for bullying was significantly associated with personal bullying perpetration and attitudes.” As the authors pointed out, “decades of research in social psychology … have demonstrated the strong tendency of people to conform to peer norms as they look to others in their midst to help define the situation and give guidance on expected behaviors in the group or cultural setting.”

The authors also observed that “adolescents and young adults (incorrectly) tend to believe that risky or problem behaviors and attitudes are most common among peers and think protective responsible action is rare,” and that “these misperceptions then contribute to or exacerbate the problem behavior as more youth begin to support and engage in the behavior than would otherwise be the case if norms were accurately perceived.”

Source: Perkins, H. Wesley, David W. Craig, and Jessica M. Perkins. "Using Social Norms to Reduce Bullying: A Research Intervention in Five Middle Schools." Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2011.

Big gap between perceived bullying vs. actual bullying Source: Perkins, H. Wesley, David W. Craig, and Jessica M. Perkins. "Using Social Norms to Reduce Bullying: A Research Intervention in Five Middle Schools." Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2011

Bullying is not normal and it’s not OK

To put it simply, over-estimating bullying makes it seem like it’s common. And, so the reasoning goes, if it’s common, it must be normal and if it’s normal, it must be OK. Well, it’s not OK and, fortunately, it’s not normal.  And that’s exactly what anti-bullying programs need to emphasize.

Norms awareness campaigns

The authors of the study recommend that schools engage in awareness campaigns that emphasize that most kids don’t bully. In their paper, they give examples of positive media campaigns to help reinforce behaviors that are both positive and normal.

Social norms campaign emphasizes positive behavior (Source: Perkins, H. Wesley, David W. Craig, and Jessica M. Perkins. "Using Social Norms to Reduce Bullying: A Research Intervention in Five Middle Schools." Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2011

Responsible media coverage

While media coverage about bullying can help raise awareness and lead to positive results, it’s important that it be accurate and reasonable. Coverage that exaggerates either the size of the problem or the likely outcomes does little to help and can actually hurt. It’s also important to realize that the impact of bullying can range from mildly annoying to extremely serious. And while it is true that bullying can be a contributing factor to some suicides, it’s also true that it’s rarely the only factor. What’s more, the vast majority of youth who are bullied are able to handle it without extreme reactions.

Parents, educators, government leaders, non-profits, the media, religious organizations and, of course, young people themselves need to step up our efforts to create a positive social climate but we must do so without resorting to histeria  and exaggeration. For more on bullying, visit the International Bullying Prevention Association.

P.S.

One of the responses to this article came from the mother of someone who works for a company that provides moderation services for “kids websites, online games, chat rooms, role play game groups, etc.” She pointed out that her daughter’s company deals with a lot of cases of bullying which prompted my ConnectSafely co-director, Anne Collier, to interview one of the leading authorities on child site moderation.  Anne concluded “not all the negative behavior we see in kids’ online games and virtual worlds is cyberbullying. In fact, very little of it is.” This post is worth a read.

Slide show:

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

by Larry Magid

As far as I can tell, Google engineer Steve Yegge never intended to become famous for criticizing the company he works for. But if you use his company’s search engine to google his name, you’ll find plenty of references to his recent Google+ post in which he called the company’s new social media service a “pathetic afterthought,” a “knee-jerk reaction” and a “study in short-term thinking.”

Those are harsh words for someone to write about his employer, but in a follow-up post, Yegge said that he had never meant for it to be public. He intended it to be “visible to everybody at Google, but not externally.”

Yegge, who referred to himself as “not what you might call an experienced Google+ user,” posted his rant at midnight and made it public by mistake.

I’m not sure what he did wrong. In his follow-up post he said “by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts.” But one thing is for sure, if a Google engineer can mess up on his Google+ privacy settings, so can the rest of us.

Whenever you post something on Google+ you have the option to post it to the public or restrict it to specific people that you enter by name. Or, you can select a group or groups of people called “circles.” Directly below the text box is an area where you can “add circles or people to share with.” Once you make a selection and click “share,” your post is seen only by those people.

There’s a catch to in-line privacy settings

But there’s a catch. Whatever option you select will remain the default until you change it. So if you generally post only to specific circles but decide you have something to say to the public, you had better remember to go back and change the setting the next time you post.

To be fair, the icons that represent your choice are big, bold and in plain English. But that wouldn’t necessarily prevent someone from forgetting to check their last setting. If you found that you have made a mistake, Google+ lets you delete or edit the post and change the audience but — as has been said many times before — once something is “out there,” it’s out there.

Facebook recently adopted similar “in-line” privacy settings. It now lets you decide each time you post whether it should be seen by the public or only by Friends, specific people you specify or a list of people. Lists can be ones you’ve set up (like Google+ circles) or “smart lists,” which Facebook generates based on things you may have in common, such as work or school.

With Facebook, you need to look for a small indicator just below the update box that might say “Public,” or “Friends” or perhaps the name of the list of people you’re sending to. As with Google+, anytime you make a change it remains in place until you change it again, so it’s very important to glance down at that indicator to avoid sending something to the wrong people.

But even if you’re very careful in how you use your social network’s privacy settings, I still urge caution when posting something that could cause problems if seen by the wrong people. There is nothing to stop someone from copying and pasting what you post. You can delete something from your profile but you can’t prevent others from posting it to theirs or sharing it via email or other means.

Email too

It’s also important to be cautious when sending email.

Several years ago, when I was writing for the Los Angeles Times, I got a worrisome email from my editor about a column I had submitted. Upset, I forwarded it to my wife with the comment “I don’t think he likes my work,” but instead of pressing “forward,” I clicked “reply.” The good news is that he wrote back saying that he loved my work but just had a small problem with that particular column.

And when you do forward, be careful about the “thread” of messages you’re sending on. A couple of years ago my wife forwarded an innocuous Gmail message to my daughter but she didn’t realize that the message was part of a longer conversation that included a plan for my daughter’s surprise birthday party.

Also be careful when you type names in the “to” box. Some email programs and Web services (including Gmail) have an auto-complete function that saves keystrokes but makes it easy to select the wrong person. If President Barack Obama were using Gmail to write a message to his wife Michelle Obama, he could easily direct it instead to Michele Bachman.

Another common error is responding to people on lists. I’m part of a Google Group listserv and when someone posts to the list, the “from” field shows their name. So if you want to respond privately, it’s natural to just click “reply.” But if you do that, the reply goes to the entire list as several of us have discovered when we accidentally broadcast what was meant to be a private response.

In 1968, Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The future is here, but with the wrong click, that could easily turn into 15 minutes of infamy.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit Internet safety organization that receives support from Google and Facebook. 

by Larry Magid
(this article is a work in progress and subject to editing and revision)

My inbox is full of pitches for products and services that claim to prevent bullying.  Most use some type of word recognition to either block offensive messages or report them to parents.  But even if you add the word “cyber” to bullying, it’s still bullying. Bullying isn’t caused by technology and it’s not cured by it either. It’s about relationships.

While I have no doubt that monitoring software that runs on phones, computers or the web can be used to focus in on offensive words, I don’t think it’s the solution to offensive behavior.  At best it can block a message from getting through or inform parents that a kid is either being bullied or bullying others. While that might have some value, it does nothing to stop the underlying attitudes that foster and motivate the behavior and it does little to equip the person being bullied with the skills needed to survive unscathed.

Subtle meanings

And even if technology can identify offensive words, it’s not all that good at understanding the subtle meaning behind the words. Words must be considered in context and context can only be ascertained if you understand the relationship between the people involved.  Even racial, ethnic, sexist and homophobic  epitaphs have their context. The same word that’s used as part of a vicious attack can sometimes be a term of endearment. Among friends, it can be used affectionately or humorously or perhaps in a teasing and maybe even annoying  but not necessarily harmful manner. In other contexts it can be mean or hateful. The same can be true of other “hurtful words,” which sometimes hurt a lot, sometimes hurt a little and sometimes don’t actually hurt at all. Humans are a lot better than machines at distinguishing between an inside joke and a vitriolic attack.

Even if we can agree that something is negative, it’s close to impossible for a machine to know how someone will respond. Reactions can range from laughing it off, mild annoyance to anger and depression. And how someone reacts often has more to do with their own resilience or other things going on in their life than the words themselves. The same comment that one person might laugh at or get over quickly could be extremely hurtful to someone else.

Not really a solution

The biggest problem with a technical “solution,” is that it’s not really a solution.  If a person is thinking mean thoughts, then simply muzzling them does nothing to modify those thoughts. Combating bullying, hatred, bigotry and cruelty is more than just suppressing mean speech, it’s also helping people think differently about others.

And, finally, blocking or reporting negative speech doesn’t build the resilience that young people need to thrive even in the face of negative behavior. While we must seek to end bullying and harassment and limit meanness, we must also learn to cope with it. That’s not to say it’s ever acceptable, but we can’t let bullies ruin our lives and we must teach our children to stand up to bullies and realize that it’s not their fault if someone else is mean.

Might help some children

I’m not saying there is never a role for monitoring software.  There are some children who need a bit of help either because they can’t control their impulses to say inappropriate things or because they are particularly vulnerable to bullying.  Clearly, parents must make their own decisions as to whether monitoring software is appropriate for their children.  But such products are not for everyone. Most kids don’t bully and most kids that do receive an occasional mean or annoying message are able to handle them without horrendous consequences. As always, your first response should be to talk with your kids and find out what they need before trying to find a technical solution to a problem that may or may not exist. Technology can sometimes support parenting but it can never replace it.

It takes a village, not an algorithm

Combatting bullying — which typically takes place at school — isn’t a one-off task. It involves encouraging a culture of respect and a set of commonly understood norms that celebrate diversity and discourage mean and hateful behavior.  That takes everyone — students, teachers, administrators, parents, police officers, janitors and everyone in the community.  It’s a job for people, not software.

Resources

It’s time to take the ‘cyber’ out of cyberbullying

Clicks, cliques and cyberbullying: Whole school response is the key (NetFamilyNews)