For years the attendance at those events was quite sparse but interest started to pick up about three years ago after all the publicity of supposed predators on MySpace. Even though that “predator panic” turned out to be greatly exaggerated, there remains a fairly strong interest by parents wanting to know how to keep their kids safe online.

Of course, I’m all in favor of kids being safe and delighted that parents are expressing an interest in their children’s well being, but I think it may be time to put an end to school Internet safety nights. What we need instead are parent workshops dedicated to how kids are using interactive technology.

Call it Tech Parenting 2.0 or perhaps just “get a clue.” Whatever you call it, it’s time to put Internet safety into a larger context. And instead of mostly using police officers (as is often the case) or even “Internet safety experts” like me as presenters, they should get the kids involved. Almost every time I’ve listened to teens talk about how they use technology, I come away impressed and informed.

And we certainly don’t need an expert to read off a list of dos and don’t. Parents should instead be encouraged to understand how their kids are using technology – not to block it or control it — but to embrace it and explore it with them so that they can better engage in a family conversation about the use and misuse of technology.

Internet safety can’t be taught in a vacuum anymore than you can teach “book safety” or “pencil safety,” though I’m willing to bet that more people have been injured by sharp pencils than by the Internet.

What keeps young people safe online is not so much learning to regurgitate a set of adult prescribed rules, but empowering them to protect themselves by teaching critical thinking, media literacy and online ethics.

Critical thinking can also go a long way towards helping kids avoid risky or aggressive behavior by helping them think through the implications of their actions. Whether it’s posting something that could embarrass them later or saying something hurtful to a peer.

Media literacy includes knowing how to take advantage of good information that is coming at you while learning how to use the filter in your brain to avoid that which is incorrect, incomplete, irrelevant, harmful or just plain stupid. It can be as complex as teaching kids to evaluate the credibility of sources or as simple as learning how to distinguish between truth and those all-too-common “urban myths” that float around the Internet.

When it comes to digital ethics, we need to work with kids to treat themselves and others with respect. That means treating others as they want to be treated which obviously includes avoiding bullying and harassing others.

by Larry Magid

The Internet and the way young people use technology are constantly evolving, but the safety messages change very slowly, if at all.

Like technology itself, Internet safety has to evolve. Back in 1994, when I wrote the first widely disseminated Internet safety publication, I advised parents not to let kids put personal information or photos online and — because of what turned out to be an exaggerated fear of predators — I urged them to avoid online conversations with strangers. Back then, along with trying to keep kids away from porn, Internet safety was mostly about protecting children from dangerous adults.

But starting around 2005, a new phase of the Web — often referred to as “Web 2.0″ — prompted some Internet safety advocates to focus on ways kids could get in trouble for what they post on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. It was in that year that Anne Collier and I founded BlogSafety.org (later renamed ConnnectSafely.org) so we could provide a forum for discussing safety issues on the Web. It was also around that time that politicians and the media, especially the TV show “To Catch a Predator,” started whipping up fears of predators trolling the Web for vulnerable children.

But after carefully reviewing available research, statistics show that the likelihood of a young person being harmed by an online stranger is quite rare, and sexual solicitations and harassment are most often from peers. And to the extent it has occurred, it affects teens, not young children. Based on studies by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, the overwhelming majority of crimes against youths continue to take place in the “real world,” mostly by adults known to the child.

But that doesn’t mean that the Internet is a risk-free zone. It’s just that young people are far more likely to be harmed by other youth or the consequences of their own online behavior than by adult criminals.

Their interactions are largely with people they know from the real world. As danah boyd (she prefers a lower case d & b) observed in her doctoral dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (PDF), “teen participation in social network sites is driven by their desire to socialize with peers. Their participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer culture; teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize almost exclusively with people they know.”

This understanding of youth risk led to a whole new phase of Internet safety education focusing on such things as cyberbullying and urging youth to avoid posting material that could be embarrassing or get them into trouble with authorities and potential future employers. Recently, the focus has turned to the emotional and legal consequences of “sexting,” — kids sending nude pictures of themselves via cell phones or the Web. But Anne Collier observed in NetFamilyNews.org, we run the risk of “technopanics” over sexting and bullying.

What we’ve learned from observing how kids use the Net, mobile phones, gaming devices and other interactive technology is that there is really no distinction between online and offline behaviors. Technology is woven into their lives. They don’t go online, they ARE online. So it’s really about youth safety — not Internet safety.

It’s about helping young people make wise choices not just in how they use technology but in how they live their lives. Internet safety is more than just the absence of danger. It also includes finding ways to use technology for learning, collaboration, community building, political activism, self-help and reaching out to others.

These are not just philosophical arguments. They’re pragmatic because preaching about safety or trying lock down the Internet doesn’t protect kid. Trying to instill fear — especially based on myths — actually increases danger because it causes kids to tune out good advice.

Sure, there are technologies that can keep kids from using social networking services or visiting inappropriate Web sites. But, like fences around swimming pools, the use of filters at home and school can’t protect them forever. That’s why we teach kids to swim. Not only does knowing how to swim help prevent drowning, it empowers them to thrive in the water instead of fearing it. The same is true with technology. As kids mature into teens, we must pull back on the technological controls in favor of self-control.

In an email interview, Dr. Larry Rosen, Professor of Psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills and author of Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation observed, “sadly, too many parents think that using technology to track their children’s keystrokes or restrict access to certain websites is sufficient parenting. It is not. Parents must be involved with their children’s virtual lifestyles developing trust, being aware of any potential problems, learning about the technologies they use, and communicating often.”