SafeKids.com

This sweet song,  recorded by 14 year old twins Mary & Brianna Ferraro, was written when they were 11. Take a listen (and look) and scroll below the video to read the lyrics. It’s one of many great peer initiated efforts to help combat bullying and encourage resilience.

Lyrics, music and vocals by Mary & Brianna Ferraro

“PRIZE”

They’ll put her down
In front of everyone
They won’t think twice
Cause they don’t think at all
And they enjoy it, yes they do
You’ll all go home unaffected
She’ll go home thinking she worthless
Won’t tell a soul cause now she believes it

And yes of course you won
There’s 6 of you, she’s a team of one
And what’s the prize anyway
Do you like to see a girl…

Chorus

All torn up inside
Secretly crying at night
Is that your prize, is that your prize
Just a girl wanting more in herself
Hating the hand she’s been dealt
Is that your prize, is that your prize
Verse 2
She don’t know
But she’s truly beautiful
She don’t think that
Cause she feels 2 feet tall
Isn’t that what you wanted all along
Well you knew this would come
She’s broken, finished, done
And what’s the prize anyway?
Do you like to see

Chorus
Bridge
Did you get what you wanted? (Did you get what you wanted)

Do you feel better now? (I hope you feel better now)
Yea what you did, was it worth it? (was it worth it?)
To make her feel so put down
To make her feel so…

by David Finkelhor, Heather A. Turner & Sherry Hamby

This commentary argues that it is time to make bullying less of the central concept in efforts to combat peer victimization.

Bullying has been a pivotal concept in the mobilization of effort in recent years to create safe environments for children. It has highlighted a phenomenon that seems to have universal resonance and is recognized internationally (Jimerson, Swearer, & Espelage, 2010). Prevalence for bullying has been measured in many countries, overall assessed as involving about 10% of the school aged population in its chronic form (Molcho et al., 2009). It is associated with serious outcomes (Klomeck et al., 2009) and is higher among abused children (Mohapatra et al., 2010). Public policy efforts arebeing made in many place to combat its occurrence and its effects (Howlett, 2011; Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, 2011; Salmivalli, Karna, & Poskiparta, 2011).

Much of the early pioneering work on this was done by the Norwegian psychologist Dan Olweus (Olweus, 1993). Olweus recognized that there was much peer conflict, and wished to highlight the most damaging part of the spectrum out of concern that not all of it was of equal seriousness. So he established the convention of defining bullying as incidents that involved not only aggression, but repeated aggression in a relationship where there was a power imbalance.

In Olweus’ formulation: “When we talk about bullying, these things happen repeatedly and it is difficult for the student being bullied to defend himself or herself. We also call it bullying when a student is teased repeatedly in a mean and hurtful way. But we do not call it bullying when the teasing is done in a friendly and playful way. Also, it is not bullying when two students of about the same strength or power argue or fight” (Olweus, 2007, p. 2).

This formulation has prompted a lot of useful research, and has been embraced by parents, educators and policy makers as demarcating a phenomenon of clear practical utility. Useful as this concept has been, however, it has a number of limitations that have not been resolved even though the field has been active and growing for more than 30 years.

Excludes serious peer aggression

Perhaps the biggest problem is what the formal definition of bullying excludes. So while it excludes trivial conflicts among peers, it also excludes very serious acts of aggression. A peer who whacks a schoolmate with a baseball bat and sends him to the hospital —this is not technically bullying if it occurs only once or if there was no pre-existing power differential. A student who sexually assaults another student— this is not technically bullying if it only happens once.

But the reality is that when schools adopt “bullying prevention” programs, they are trying to target and eliminate all interpersonal aggression, the bat assault and the sexual assault included, not simply the repeated aggression in unequal relationships. Teachers and peers are taught to recognize and interrupt all aggression. Why would researchers and practitioners who wish to improve child safety want to exclude or de-emphasize such serious acts?

Technical definition at odds with usage. Related to this, of course, is the fact that in colloquial usage, the technical definition of bullying has not caught on. It is used primarily among experts and researchers. When asked if they have been bullied, most students will think about the time someone was mean to them or teased them or threatened them, whether or not it was repeated and whether or not it was in an unequal relationship (Vaillancourt et al., 2008). “Jack was bullying me,” is a complaint a student might easily make about any nastiness they may experience from another child. Bullying also turns out to be a very hard concept to translate into some other languages, and may even have different meanings in different subcultures within the US (Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooge, 2002).

Even experts and researchers have not always sustained the technical definition of bullying as they have developed the field. For example, there is a rapidly growing literature and prevention effort around what has been termed “cyber-bullying” (Ybarra, Boyd, Korchmaros, & Oppenheim, n.d.). But in the case of much of the meanness and harassment that has been referred to as cyber-bullying, it is not even possible to know who the instigator is let alone whether this person is more powerful or is repeating their insults. So here again the term bullying has shucked its official definition, and come to mean any belligerence, threat or harassment that occurs online.

Although efforts are underway by organizations such as the Center for Disease Control to develop a standard definition of bullying, it is not clear that consensus will be reached, or that the loose usage of the term will be curtailed by whatever experts do. This likely means on-going wrangling among parents, school officials, students and researchers over whether something is or is not bullying. This would be important if we were sure that it made a difference whether something was officially bullying or not (and not just an assault), but since we do not know whether it truly makes a difference (see below), such wrangling may just waste time.

Power imbalance difficult to define

A third problem with the bullying concept, and perhaps one that lies behind its squishi- ness, is the difficulty of defining clearly what a “power imbalance” is. It is often described as someone who is bigger, stronger or more popular. But these features are not always in alignment. If a stronger but less popular girl repeatedly intimidates a weaker but popular boy, is the controlling dimension popularity, gender or physical strength? Is all aggression by boys against girls eligible to be bullying, and no aggression by girls against boys?

Note that Olweus himself complicates the problem when, in his questionnaires, he translates the power imbalance concept into the phrase, “it is difficult for the student being bullied to defend himself or herself” (Olweus, 1996). Taken literally, this phrase itself does admit the possibility that we can recognize an incident in which a student was bullied, but was nonetheless still able to defend himself or herself, raising the question of why that should not also be called bullying. But in addition, a student may have difficulty defending himself for many reasons— surprise, fatigue, a commitment to non- violence, not just a power imbalance. Moreover, it is often difficult after aggression gets started to know whether there was a pre-existing power imbalance. Once someone has aggressed against you or beaten you in a fight you may be legitimately intimidated by them, but that may not mean that a power imbalance existed initially. Given these ambiguities, it is not surprising that the power imbalance component of bullying is widely ignored by parents, teachers and students and even by researchers, who do not have the leisure to fully assess the quality of the relationship (Austin & Joseph, 1996; Espelage & Holt, 2001). They simply call bullying episodes of repeated aggression. It is a disadvantage to organize a field around a concept whose definition is so difficult to pin point.

Distinctions among aggression contexts need an empirical foundation

Although all forms of aggression are worth preventing, Olweus is no doubt justified in his goal of highlighting some as more serious than others, given how common aggression is. But should power imbalance be the main dimension to attend to? It needs to be kept in mind that the bullying concept is in reality currently only a hypothesis. It is a hypothesis that peer episodes characterized by repetition and power imbalance have a special seriousness and commonality that deem them worthy of special attention. In recent writing, Olweus (2010) has re-emphasized his allegiance to this power imbalance concept, pointing to research showing that aggression combined with power imbalance can have more negative effects (Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2007). This is important research. But it does not answer the question of whether there are other equally serious types of peer aggression (demarcated by other criteria, for example, the use of a weapon or having sexual content) that should be highlighted along with power imbalance. So even evidence that power imbalance results in more harm is not an argument for limiting the definition of serious peer aggression to only such episodes.

By contrast, a more empirical and scientific approach often adopted in aggression research has been to define acts and behaviors in a broad fashion, and then to study the various contextual features that make such acts in some situations and relationships more harmful than others. Such contextual features can include the specific acts, the statuses of the actors and the type of relationship in which the aggression occurs. In the bullying field, unfortunately, whole categories of behaviors have been excluded a priori and not even studied.

It is important to note that in a number of related fields, an initially narrow, advocacy concept was expanded to allow a more empirical definition of seriousness, based on research and clinical experience. For example, the initial mobilization around rape and rape prevention gave way to the broader terms sexual assault and sexual violence, in recognition of the harmfulness of many non-penetrative forms of sex offense (Basile & Saltzman, 2002). The research has shown that pen- etration is indeed associated with increased levels of seriousness (Finkelhor, Araji, Browne, Doyle Peters, & Wyatt, 1986), but it has also shown serious impact from non-penetrative acts which led to the use of a broader term than rape. Similarly, the initial focus on wife abuse gave way to a more general emphasis on spouse abuse and intimate partner violence, which includes dating violence (Saltzman, Fanslow, McMahon, & Shelley, 2002). Women may be generally at a disadvantage in spousal aggression, but research has established that some men are harmed, and other elements as well can play a role, which again led to a broader concept.

The lesson of these fields, applicable to bullying as well, is that peer victimization should be studied intensively to understand what contributes to harm, but that an a priori attempt to demarcate the concept may be an obstacle rather than a facilitator of progress.

Bullying imposes a school environment bias

A final problem with the bullying concept is that its research tradition is almost entirely limited to the school environment. Olweus’ studies and instruments are concentrated on bullying in schools, as is almost all the other research. However, research on peer victimization shows that close to half of peer victimization episodes happen outside of school (Turner, Finkelhor, Hamby, Shattuck, & Ormrod, 2011). While the concept of bullying can in principle be generalized to apply to non-school aggression, in practice this has not happened. So the dominance of the bullying concept has also resulted in an overemphasis on schools, to the detriment of serious forms of peer aggression like dating abuse and sibling abuse that do not happen often in school. For research and advocacy to embrace this considerable problem of extra-school peer victimization, it may need to adopt another concept that is not so intrinsically linked to schools alone.

An alternative approach

One alternative approach is to call the domain of interest peer victimization and peer aggression. Victimization can be defined as harm caused by other persons, in this case, peers, acting outside of the norms of appropriate conduct (Finkelhor,

2008). Aggression can be defined as acts intended or perceived as intended to cause harm. Most peer victimization is aggression, but some acts like the stealing of property or some sexual offenses, such as flashing, are not necessarily intended to harm, but rather are selfish and entitled acts that violate norms of appropriate conduct.

Peer victimization and aggression can also be subcategorized along 2 dimensions: the violative behavior that is involved, and the relationship context.

Type of violative behavior

This dimension can be delineated in terms of some concepts that already have a long conceptual and research history. On the one hand, there is peer violence. Violence is well defined in the literature as physical acts intended to cause pain or injury and includes hitting, punching, kicking and hitting with objects to cause harm. There is also property offense, which is the intentional destruction or damaging of property (vandalism) or the taking of property without permission and refusal to return it (theft). There is also sexual victimization, which is nonconsensual touching to certain parts of the body, as well as nonconsensual witnessing and exposure, and sexually demeaning verbal behavior (Basile & Saltzman, 2002). Then there is psychological or emotional victimization —the hardest part to define— which involves words or actions intended to cause emotional pain. These are often operationalized by phrases such as “saying you are not wanted,” “calling you names,” “making threats,” “starting rumors or telling lies about you.” In the child maltreatment literature, attempts have been made to subcategorize emotional abuse: for example, Garbarino’s rejecting, isolating, terrorizing, ignoring, and corrupting (Garbarino & Garbarino, 1986).

Among the other behavior features that are typically studied in aggression research are the use of objects and weapons, the frequency of occurrence, the resulting of physical injury and how much fear was provoked in the victim.

Relationship context

The second dimension of peer victimization and aggression is relationship context. A possibly useful distinction in this dimension may be between explicit and implicit relationship statuses. Explicit relationship statuses include sibling, dating partner, gang opponents, ethnic/racial grouping, friend, and acquaintance, all of which have been proposed as important subcategories of peer victimization and aggression. They are relatively apparent and somewhat static. Implicit relationship statuses include differences in popularity, in economic status, academic status that may be less apparent and need familiarity with the context to ascertain. A key challenge for the field is to establish some of the more harmful categories of peer victimization and aggression based on the behaviors and relationship context.

The peer victimization and aggression approach has been critiqued by Olweus, however. One problem of considerable concern to him about this approach is that minor episodes will be counted and made to seem more serious than they are. He cites as an example: “teasing. . . done in a friendly and playful way” (Olweus, 2007). But the peer victimization and aggression definitions can exclude such acts by emphasizing that to qualify as victimization the acts have to be intended to cause harm, and playful and friendly teasing is clearly not so intended. Similarly, Olweus and other bullying researchers are concerned that broader definitions like peer victimization and aggression will not exclude what that they refer to as “mere conflict.” But conflict and arguing are also not about trying to cause harm, but are disagreeing over who is right or has access to some good or privilege. They are also excluded by an intent to harm requirement.

Olweus also prefers bullying because he wants to exclude: “when two students of about the same strength or power argue or fight” (Olweus, 2007, p. 2). Physical fighting, by contrast, is about trying to cause physical harm, and it is not clear why amsafety program to prevent harm and improve interpersonal relations would not want to target physical fighting whether or not it was between those who are equally strong or powerful or equally weak and powerless.

Olweus is also concerned that defining victimization too broadly will lead to the mistaken conclusion that all aggressors are also victims (Olweus, 2010). But this is not an insurmountable difficulty. If we wish to define and identify classes of youth who are primarily aggressors and primarily victims, it is easy enough to define thresholds of frequency of victimization and aggression that identify separate groups. Note that the orthodox bullying literature too has not escaped the need to define some children simultaneous bullies and victims, who are referred to as bully-victims (Marini, Dane, Bosacki, & YLC- CURA, 2006; Schwartz, Proctor, & Chien, 2001). Moreover, the conclusion that aggressors suffer more victimization than non-aggressors may be an important lesson to learn about aggressors.

Conclusion

This commentary is not a proposal to abandon the bullying concept and the plausible hypothesis it asserts that power imbalance and repetition make for some particularly serious, enduring, and harmful kinds of peer victimization. Given its popularity and incorporation into law, such an effort would be futile. Continuing research to specify and understand the dynamics and impact of this phenomenon has great potential.

But we would propose that researchers and advocates, especially those working on “bullying,” increasingly emphasize that the domain of interest is “peer victimization and aggression” or “peer victimization, aggression and bullying,” explaining that it goes beyond bullying to include peer sexual assault, dating violence, gang violence and single episode assaults. As rape has come to be understood as a subcategory of sexual assault, the more common term in recent years, so bullying would be recognized as a subcategory of the more commonly used peer victimization.

Overall, the peer victimization concept has much more openness and flexibility. It would seem to provide a more empirical and less constrained and less problematic foundation for a field that is looking for to become more systematic and evidence based.

References

Austin, S., & Joseph, S. (1996). Assessment of bully/victim problems in 8 to 11 year olds. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 66(4), 447–456.

Basile, K. C., & Saltzman, L. E. (2002). Sexual violence surveillance: Uniform definitions and recommended data elements version 1.0. Atlanta, GA: Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Espelage, D. L., & Holt, M. A. (2001). Bullying and victimization during early adolescence: Peer influences and psychosocial correlates. In R. A. Geffner, & M.

Loring (Eds.), Bullying behavior: Current issues, research, and interventions (pp. 132–142). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.

Finkelhor, D. (2008). Childhood victimization: Violence, crime, and abuse in the lives of young people. New York: Oxford University Press.

Finkelhor, D., Araji, S., Browne, A., Doyle Peters, S., & Wyatt, G. E. (1986). A sourcevook on child sexual abuse. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Garbarino, J., & Garbarino, A. C. (1986). Emotional maltreatment of children. NCJ 135931. Chicago, IL.

Howlett, K.  (2011). McGuinty gets tough on bullying with new legislation. The  globe and mail update.  Retrieved from:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mcguinty-gets-tough-on-bullying-with-new-legislation/article2254718/

Hunter, S. C., Boyle, J. M. E., & Warden, D. (2007). Perceptions and correlates of peer-victimization and bullying. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77,

797–810.

Jimerson, S. R., Swearer, S. M., & Espelage, D. L. (2010). The handbook of bullying in schools: An international perspective. New York: Routledge.

Klomeck, A. B., Sourander, A., Niemela, S., Kumpulainen, K., Piha, J., Tamminen, T., Almqvist, F., & Gould, M. S. (2009). Childhood bullying behaviors as a risk for suicide attempts and completed suicides: A population-based birth cohort study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry,

48(3), 254–261.

Marini, Z. A., Dane, A. V., Bosacki, S. L., & YLC-CURA. (2006). Direct and indirect bully-victims: Different psychosocial risk factors associated with adolescents involved in bullying and victimization. Aggressive Behavior, 32(6), 551–569.

Mohapatra, S., Irving, H., Paglia-Boak, A., Wekerle, C., Adlaf, E., & Rehm, J. (2010). History of family involvement with child protective services as a risk factor for bullying in Ontario schools. Child & Adolescent Mental Health, 15(3), 157–163.

Molcho, M., Craig, W., Due, P., Pickett, W., Harel-Fisch, Y., Overpeck, M. D., & HBSC Bullying Writing Group. (2009). Cross-national time trends in bullying behaviour 1994–2006: Findings from Europe and North America. International Journal of Public Health, 54, S225–S234.

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Oxford: Blackwell.

Olweus, D. (1996). Bullying at school: Knowledge base and an effective intervention program. In C. F. Ferris, & T. Grisso (Eds.), Understanding aggressive behavior in children: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (pp. 265–276). New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Olweus, D. (2007). The Olweus bullying questionnaire. Center City, MN: Hazelden.

Olweus, D. (2010). Foundations for understanding bullying. In S. R. Jimerson, Swearer, M. Susan, Espelage, & L. Dorothy (Eds.), The handbook of bullying in schools: An international perspective (pp. 9–33). New York: Routledge.

Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. (2011). State and federal bullying information. Retrieved from: http://olweus.org/public/bullying laws.page

Salmivalli, C., Karna, A., & Poskiparta, E. (2011). Counteracting bullying in Finland: The KiVa program and its effects on different forms of being bullied.

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 35(5), 405–411.

Saltzman, L. E., Fanslow, J. L., McMahon, P. M., & Shelley, G. A. (2002). Intimate partner violence surveillance: Uniform definitions and recommended data elements, version 1.0. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Schwartz, D., Proctor, L. J., & Chien, D. H. (2001). The aggressive victim of bullying: Emotional and behavioral dysregulation as a pathway to victimization by peers. In J. Juvonen, & S. Graham (Eds.), Peer harassment in school: The plight of the vulnerable and victimized (pp. 147–174). New York: Guilford Press. Smith, P. K., Cowie, H., Olafsson, R. F., & Liefooge, A. P. D. (2002). Definitions of bullying: A comparison of terms used, and age and gender differences, in a fourteen-country international comparison. Child Development, 73(4), 1119–1133.

Turner, H. A., Finkelhor, D., Hamby, S. L., Shattuck, A., & Ormrod, R. (2011). Specifying type and location of peer victimization in a national sample of children and youth. Journal of Youth Adolescence [Epub – March 4].

Vaillancourt, T., McDougall, P., Hymel, S., Krygsman, A., Miller, J., Stiver, K., & Davis, C. (2008). Bullying: Are researchers and children/youth talking about the same thing? International Journal of Behavioral Development, 32, 486–495.

Ybarra, M., Boyd, D., Korchmaros, J., & Oppenheim, J. (n.d.). Defining and measuring cyberbullying within the larger context of bullying victimization. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry.

For the purposes of compliance with Section 507 of PL 104-208 (the “Stevens Amendment”), readers are advised that 100% of the funds for this program are derived from federal source, (this project was supported by Grant No. 2010-IJ-CX-0021 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice). The total amount of federal funding involved is $400,572. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice.

Please cite this article in press as Findelhor, D., et al. Let’s prevent peer victimization, not just bullyng. Chld Abuse & Neglect (2012) doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.12.001

∗ Corresponding author address: CCRC/UNH, 126 Horton SS Center, 20 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, USA. 0145-2134/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.12.001

by Larry Magid

Now defunct iPhone app showed images of nearby women

As far as I can tell, the app “Girls Around Me” wasn’t violating any laws. But it was high on the creepy scale when, according to reports, women’s identity, photographs and location were being revealed to strangers, even though the women never opted into the service. Although the developer, Moscow-based I-Free, hardly deserves any awards, the app’s a good wake-up call for people to use the privacy settings of legitimate social networking and location services.

The app mashed together information people posted about themselves publicly on Foursquare and Facebook and created a map showing the location and photographs of nearby women. On its website, the company brags that the app can be used to “Browse photos of lovely local ladies and tap their thumbnail to find out more about them.” It’s offered for those “In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand.” An image that resembles a radar screen with a silhouette of an apparently naked woman adorns the home page.

Late last month Foursquare cut off access to the app so that it can no longer collect the company’s publicly accessible data. In a statement, Foursquare said “This is a violation of our API (application programming interface).” Apple subsequently removed the app from its app store.

Foursquare is a location service typically used to share information about restaurants and other places people visit. It’s common for people to use Foursquare to “check-in” to a location and share that information with their friends. Restaurant-goers often use it to recommend specific meals; and it’s possible to use the service to let friends locate you in real time, perhaps to stop by to say hello or share a drink or a meal.

Foursquare users can connect their account to Facebook and, when they do, they are asked to specify who can see their information. When I checked, it was set to “Friends.” But you can also set it to Public, which means anyone can see it, or “only me,” which hides it from everyone but yourself. It’s also possible to link Foursquare with Twitter. Although it’s possible to limit who can see your tweets, the default setting — which very few Twitter users change — is for tweets to be public.

Take responsibility for your own privacy

The fracas behind the Girls Around Me app is a reminder that we all have a responsibility to protect our own privacy. I’m not condoning their tasteless and tacky service, but from everything I can tell, the company didn’t hack into any servers or tap into anyone’s private information. Everything it did was based on information people posted for public consumption.

Let this be yet another reminder for people to think about over-sharing. To me, it’s obvious that connecting your Foursquare account with Twitter is tantamount to broadcasting your whereabouts. I’ve done that, but I did so knowingly. But it never hurts to remind people to put thought into whether they really want to publicly share where they are and, by implication, where they’re not.

Aside from safety and privacy concerns, location can also be embarrassing, as I realized a few years ago when I went to a particular holiday party instead of another party that some people thought I “should” have gone to. Without thinking, I used Facebook to “check-in” to the party and then realized that my would-be hosts from the other party might see it. To save face, I quickly jumped in my car and drove 35 miles to put in an appearance at the other party.

I’m sure my wife will be pleased to know that I never used the Girls Around Me app when it was available, but I have used Foursquare and Facebook’s check-in features and, when you sign into Foursquare via Facebook, you have to go out of your way to change the default from Friends to Public. Facebook also lets you disclose your location from its own mobile app, but you don’t have to and, if you do, you get to decide who can see it each time you post. It’s very important that users know that the settings are “sticky,” so if you post something publicly, your next post will also be public unless you change it to a more limited audience. The same is true with Google+.

Benefits of location sharing

I have no problem with location services. I use several, including Glympse, which allows me to share my location with friends and family in real time so that they can track my movements and whereabouts as I drive, ride my bike or walk around. This can also be reassuring to family members, who can use it to make sure that loved ones — parents for instance — know where they are and when they’ll get to their destination.

Checking in with Facebook and Foursquare can be fun, as long as you’re in control of who knows where you are. It’s up to all of us to learn to use these services carefully and up to companies to employ its best practices to minimize the risk of unintended consequences.

This article first appeared in the Mercury News

This article first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

by Larry Magid

The Federal Trade Commission’s final report on digital privacy contains some very welcome recommendations.

The recently released report, title “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change,” looks at challenges consumers face in “today’s world of smart phones, smart grids, and smart cars,” as “companies are collecting, storing, and sharing more information about consumers than ever before.” It sets out a framework that would allow consumers to control whether they are tracked online, have better visibility into how information is used by mobile apps and have access to their information being held by data brokers.

The commission isn’t calling for “do not track” legislation similar to the “do not call” law that, in theory, protects us against unwanted marketing calls. Rather, it calls for voluntary industry compliance, which it says is starting to happen through browser-based tools and cooperation from the Digital Advertising Alliance and other players.

Ironically, this voluntary approach may actually work better than the “do not call” law, which makes it a crime for businesses to cold call phone numbers registered at DoNotCall.gov. I’ve registered all my phone numbers, but I still get annoying robocalls trying to sell me carpet cleaning, car insurance and a new mortgage.

The commission’s focus on mobile apps is right on target. Between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS there are now about a million smartphone apps capable of doing virtually anything with your phone, including tracking who you know (your contact list), where you go (your geolocation) and even who you’re calling and what you’re texting. There have already been several reported cases of both deliberate and accidental disclosure, so government attention to this is certainly warranted.

One area where the commission did call for “targeted legislation” is to address consumers’ lack of control over how data brokers collect and use our information. The amount of information floating around about each of us is staggering. Anyone with a phone, a bank account or a “loyalty” card, such as the one I use to get fairer prices when I shop at Safeway, is giving up information every time they shop, make a call or get on an airplane.

Many years ago — even before the explosion of the Internet — I made a quick and unexpected trip to Los Angeles and realized that I hadn’t told anyone, not even my wife, where I was. But I realized that my cellular company, the car rental company, my credit card companies and the airline knew exactly where I was, as did all the networks and clearinghouses that transmitted and stored data. My credit and debit card companies even knew what I bought and where I was staying and my bank and the bank whose ATM I used had a pretty good idea of how much cash I had in my wallet.

Much of the information from our lives is stored in computers, and some of that is for sale to marketers, insurance companies, employers and even law enforcement — anyone with the money.

The FTC wants Congress to pass a law that would “provide consumers with access to information about them held by a data broker.” The agency is calling for a “centralized website where data brokers could identify themselves to consumers and describe how they collect and use consumer data,” as well as to “detail the access rights and other choices they provide with respect to the consumer data they maintain.”

That strikes me as more than reasonable. Some data brokers (along with all credit bureaus) will sell you access to your own information, but that feels a bit like extortion to me. If it’s my information, it should be available to me at any time, as often as I want, for no cost and without any strings, gimmicks or sales pitches.

I hope the law is more consumer friendly than the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), which gives consumers the right to an annual free copy of their credit reports from the three major bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. It’s a great law but when you ask for your annual report, you’re likely to get a sales pitch, such as the one I got with my free TransUnion report. It offered me “instant access to my FREE credit score” that would cost me $29.95 a month after my “free trial.”

It seems to me that a government mandated program should be devoid of any commercial offers, especially deceptive ones that claim to be “free” but actually cost money if you fail to cancel in time. And why should I have to pay for my “credit score,” which in some ways is more important than the report itself? It’s about me, so it should be completely free and available at any time — not just one report per year per bureau.

So, thank you FTC for outlining a broad approach to transparency when it comes to accessing our own data. Now it’s time for Congress to enact legislation that truly benefits consumers, not just those who profit from our information.

From Google’s Good to Know campaign

by Larry Magid

Facebook is more than a social network. It’s also a platform that allows independent developers to create applications, or “apps” that greatly expand what the service can offer. Games, including social games like  Words with Friends, are very popular, but there are also education apps, photo sharing apps, apps to share interesting reading material, music apps and much more.

To operate properly, many of these apps need information from your profile and some need (or at least want) the ability to post on your behalf. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because, by accessing or sharing information, these apps can enhance your social experience. But, it’s important to understand and exercise control over what information apps can use and how using apps can impact your experience on Facebook.  Fortunately Facebook does give users a lot of control, and has ways to limit what apps can do, and ways to remove apps you don’t like or no longer find useful.  And, parents, please heed the advice of my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier by not only advising kids on how to control their own apps, but serving as a role model by showing them you’re doing it too.

What apps can do

What an app can do and what information it needs depends on the app’s purpose. If it’s an app that sends out birthday greetings to your friends, for example, it makes sense for it to know who your friends are and their birthdates and, of course to be able to send out a greeting. Other apps have different functions and different default permissions, which can include, among other things, access to your basic information, the ability to post to your timeline and newsfeed on your behalf, your location, and access to information people share with you.

Controlling apps permissions

As you install an app you can control what information it can access and what it can do, but you can also edit that information (i.e. take away permissions) at any time as follows:

• Click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of any page
• Select Privacy Settings
• Scroll down to Apps and Websites and click Edit Settings
• That will display your most recently used apps but not necessarily all your apps.

Click Edit Settings from this screen to control all your apps

• To see and edit all your apps, click Edit Settings in the gray box to the right of where it says how many apps you’re using.
• Find the app you want to control and click Edit (to the right).

For example, this app from SoundCloud has permission to post on my behalf to my timeline, newsfeed or ticker,  but I can take away that permission by clicking on the X to the right of any permission I wish to remove. It’s also possible to limit who can see the posts it makes on my behalf by clicking on the current setting (Friends, in this illustration) and changing it. You can even select “Only me,” which still lets the app post (so you have a record of its history) but only you can see it.

Facebook lets you edit apps' permissions at any time

For more on Facebook privacy see A Parents’ Guide to Facebook from ConnectSafely.org.

This short video, prepared by Facebook, demonstrates how to control app privacy.

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

Larry Magid’s presentation at CUE 2012 (Computer Using Educators) Annual Conference, March 17, 2012

It seems that just about everyone is talking about the Kony 2012 video that’s received more than 70 million views since it was posted last week.  It’s part of a campaign by the non-profit group Invisible Children to bring awareness to the evil deeds of rebel leader Joseph Kony who’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing Ugandans and people in Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan since the 1980s. “Kony stands accused of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of countless African children,” goes the film’s narration, “brainwashing the boys into fighting for him, turning the girls into sex slaves and killing those who don’t comply.”

The video, which features the group’s co-founder Jason Russell trying to find ways to explain Kony’s atrocities in an age-appropriate way to his very young son, is compelling and moving. It ends with a three point call to action: 1. “Sign the Pledge to Show Your Support;” 2. “Get the Bracelet and the Action Kit” (for $30); and 3. “Sign Up to Donate a Few Dollars a Month.”

The group is appealing to young people and, from what I can see on Facebook and Twitter, it seems to have garnered quite a bit of support from youth.  In some ways I’m pleased. It’s great to see young people engaging with issues beyond their immediate lives and thinking about the plight of other youth thousands of miles away.  But, as has been pointed out in numerous articles and videos, the group has many critics. As the Washington Post reported, some experts argue that the crimes of the LRA “have been exaggerated and the attention they are receiving is disproportionate,” while others say that Kony and his group are indeed despicable international criminals but that there are many more effective campaigns to stop him, including some that have been working on the ground for many years. Others argue that the video and the campaign represent a “white savior” approach to the problems of Africa as the New York Times reported.

I’m not going to repeat what’s in the countless number of articles about this film (you can find them by searching Google News for Kony), but after reading several of them, it’s pretty clear that the issue is not as simple as depicted in the film and that Invisible Children — while deservedly getting credit for raising awareness — is not necessarily the best place to donate if you want to help the children of Africa. If you scroll down, you’ll see a video of Ugandan blogger Rosebell Kagumire who has major problems with Russell’s video. “He plays so much that this war has been going on because millions of Americans are ignorant about it, but this is not entirely true.” She also says that “the situation has improved in Northern Uganda and that it’s about conflict recovery right now.” And, she reminds us, “this is another video where you see an outsider trying to be a hero rescuing African children … it does not end the problem.”

Lessons for kids and parents

Which leads to the issue of critical thinking and media literacy.  As an Internet safety advocate, I’ve been saying for years that one of the most important skills that young people (and older ones too) need is the ability to think critically about what they see online. Whether that’s a pitch from a company, an invitation to meet up with an appealing stranger or even a news items or an opinion piece from a pundit like me, it’s important to look beyond the page — or in Kony’s case the video. Use a search engine and whatever other tools you have to learn more about anything that you’re on the verge of buying into. Ask your online friends but also consult as many expert sources as you can.  There is often more than one side to a story and even well intentioned campaigns by decent people can have nuances worth exploring.

Parents can use this as an opportunity to talk with their child about a variety of things ranging from how great it is to get involved in issues to how important it is to do your homework before signing an online (or printed) petition, donating money, showing up at a demonstration or supporting a politician who’s rhetoric may be initially appealing.  For a thoughtful parent’s reaction, see this post from my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier who viewed the video with her 14-year-old son.

Investigating charities

One way to check out a charity is at Charity Navigator, which rates charities on a variety of criteria. The site often shows data from the group’s Form 990 tax return which shows that Invisible Children raised more than $10 million from the general public between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011.  Charity Navigator gives Invisible Children a 3 (out of 4) Stars for as an overall rating but only 2 stars for Accountability and Transparency with a score of 45, compared to 70 for the American Red Cross and 59 for the American Heart Association, just to give two examples. Its founders salaries were between $84,000 and $89,000 which is not at all high for an organization of its size and impact, but it’s not clear if they received other compensation (such as speaking fees or payment for services) besides their salaries.

Videos

The first video is critique from Ugandan blogger Rosebell Kagumire, Scroll down (or click next page) for a general response from the CEO of Invisible Children

Thank you, KONY 2012 Supporters from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

All Aboard the Dinosaur Train is a new iPad app from PBS Kids

Just about every parent in America knows about PBS Kids. They’re the folks who bring shows like Sesame Street, Curious George and Arthur to TV sets.  But PBS also has smart phone, tablet and web apps for kids 2-8.

At  the giant South by Southwest Interactive (SxSw) geekfest in Austin on Friday, the non-profit media organization released two new titles:   All Aboard the Dinosaur Train! for iPad and Dinosaur Train Camera Catch! for iPhone.

All About the Dinosaur Train teaches math and spacial awareness. “The problem,” as it says in the download page on the Apple app store, “is that dinosaurs come in different sizes, so your child needs to match your passengers with the right train cars, challenging them to problem-solve by estimating dinosaur sizes and comparing them with the train cars’ capacity.”

When playing Dinosaur Train Camera Catch! (for iPhone), kids have to snap pictures of flying dinosaurs in a designated pattern, which build pattern recognition skills, not to menton hand-eye coordination.

Dinosaur Train Camera Catch! for iPhone teaches pattern recognition

Although many PBS Kids apps are free, the two new ones cost $1.99, but PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) are making them available for free to Head Start centers, local PBS stations, and other organizations in low-income communities.

An October, 2011 study  from Common Sense Media, predictably, found an “app gap” based on socio-economic status. The study found that 27%  of lower-income families have a parent with a smartphone, compared to 57% for higher-income children with similar gaps for tablets and hand-held media players like the iPod Touch. Of course, providing free software doesn’t put hardware in kids’ hands but, increasingly schools and Head Start programs are providing tablets and other devices for kids to use.

Also, many PBS Kids games can be played (for free) via the web both at home and at schools equipped with smart boards.

I’m in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar for a two-day conference where representatives of government, non-profits and businesses from throughout the Middle East will join their counterparts from other regions to discuss “Promoting Online Safety and Cyber Ethics in the Middle East.” The conference is run by the Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) along with ICTQatar. Sponsors includeGoogle, Microsoft and Vodaone.

Social media and Arab Spring

I came to moderate a panel on the impact of social networking where speakers from Facebook, Yahoo, Aljazeera and OfokSystem talked about the role social networks like Facebook and Twitter played in Arab spring. Although conditions on the ground in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries were responsible for the unrest, social networking provided a vehicle for protestors to spread the word and organize protests.  There was a general consensus among the speakers that the best path for governments going forward is to encourage openness and a free flow of information lest other leaders risk following in the footsteps of ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

The conference’s opening sessions featured a discussion between FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam and  former U.S. ambassador David A. Gross, who took delegates on a walk down memory lane about the history of Internet regulation in the U.S. and Europe.

Balkam asked Gross to comment on the tension between the tendencies to want to protect children via Internet regulation and government imposed filtering vs. wanting to promote free speech.

“Every parent naturally as a matter of biology as well as intellect wants to protect children,” said Gross. “A lot of these issues are variations of an old theme with each country wanting to make its decisions in their own way based on their own culture.”

But what’s different is that kids are often more tech savvy than adults. “The extraordinary and maybe unprecedented twist is that technology and Internet related technology seems to be more intuitive for young people than the adults who are making the rules.”

Gross said that the Internet does not lend itself to being heavily regulated by government but instead “a more organic multi-stakeholder approach that includes government but also schools, parents, non-governmental organizations and corporations “coming together to field their way through it.”

Changes over time

Gross pointed out that the difference between the nineties and now “is that the issues are more complex,” thanks in part to cloud computing and the rise of international companies like Google andMicrosoft.  Also, the discussion, which used to be between Europe and the U.S. is now “a conversation that is truly global which means that the complexities have gone up enormously. Instead of two players you now have 100+ players,” he said.

Recognizing cultural differences among countries, Gross does not advocate a one-size-fits all policy.  “Ultimately there are going to have to be accommodations and how these things get resolved will fundamentally determine the economic well being of many countries.” While this may seem daunting, he’s optimistic that it can be worked out. “With technology and clever policy making everyone will be able to live within their own set of rules.”

In the past, said Gross, “what your future would turn out to be depended mostly on who your parents were and where you were born but, because of the Internet, that is no longer the case.” Access is truly global and truly open, but the danger, he added,”is from those who will shut that down.”

The conference is being held in conjunction Qitcom 2012, a technology exhibition and conference that features technology companies from around the world seeking business opportunities in Qatar and neighboring states.  Forbes lists Qatar as the world’s richest country while the CIA World Fact book estimates Qatar’s per capita GDP at $102,700.

While Internet safety advocates and tech professionals were meeting at the FOSI and Qitcom events in one part of the city, eight heads of state from the Arab region, government ministers and Arab tech industry leaders were participating in the Connect Arab Summit to talk about expanding technology opportunities in the region.