Pandora’s Blog

Great article. I agree with everything 100%. I just wish parents would listen, learn and act…

Happy Friday!

November 1, 2009
A Better Safety Net: It’s time to get smart about online safety
It’s time to get smart about online safety
By Anne Collier, School Library Journal

Online safety as we know it is obsolete. A concept little changed since the 1990s, it’s one size fits all, emphasizing fear instead of facts, with young people stereotyped as potential victims in a hostile media environment. While kids and the better informed may simply roll their eyes at the notion, the fear generated by what we’ve heard about online safety has affected technology funding and access in our schools, and from a student’s perspective, keeps them from the media that they find so compelling (not that they don’t have workarounds). It’s past time for Online Safety 3.0.

Why 3.0? Previous versions—let’s call them 1.0 and 2.0—focused on inappropriate content, adult-to-child crime, and flat-out misinformation about youth risk and social media. While more recently the concept began to factor in peer-to-peer safety issues such as cyberbullying, we still failed to recognize youth agency: young people as stakeholders in their own welfare as well as the community’s.

Online safety must be relevant to youth, or we’re talking to ourselves. It must accommodate the growing body of research on youth risk and what kids themselves say about how they use digital media, and it must be respectful—of both young people and the new media conditions they’re ably exploiting.

Version 3.0’s main components, new media literacy and digital citizenship, are empowering as well as protective. This is intuitive to librarians, but not so much to online-safety advocates and law enforcement officials, whose expertise in crime and the law (rather than education, adolescent development, and new media) has dominated the Net-safety discussion thus far.

What we know about youth risk online
In January 2009, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), created by 49 state attorneys general and MySpace, wrapped up a year’s work with a report that summarized all the online safety research to date—a major contribution to the public discussion. It concluded that cyberbullying and harassment are the biggest hazards youth face; all children are not equally at risk; and children’s psychosocial makeup and environment are better predictors of risk than the technology they use.

Predation
Let’s take on the issue that gets the most attention: predators. Online predation cases, according to ISTTF, never involve prepubescent children and almost never involve abduction and assault, the scenario long associated with “stranger danger.” “These are not violent sex crimes,” explains David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) at the University of New Hampshire. “They are criminal seductions that take advantage of common teenage vulnerabilities. The offenders play on teens’ desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, and understanding” (see “Profile of a teen online victim”). In fact, most sexual solicitations of teens online are by peers.

The overwhelming majority of crimes against youth continue to take place in the “real world,” mostly by adults known to the children. The best protection against this type of manipulation and exploitation is critical thinking, engaged parenting, and mentoring.

Online, young people are far more likely to suffer from their peers or the consequences of their own online behavior. Consider an important finding published in 2007: “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” (Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine). Aggressive behavior increases risk, while kindness, empathy, and good citizenship reduce it. See how important critical thinking skills have become?

Social networking
As for the risk inherent in social network sites, CCRC released a significant report in March 2008. It concluded “there was no evidence that online predators were stalking or abducting unsuspecting victims based on information they posted at social networking sites.”

One size does not fit all
ISTTF’s summary additionally found that “not all youth are equally at risk” and that “those experiencing difficulties offline, such as physical and sexual abuse, and those with other psychosocial problems are most at risk online.” To be effective, the Internet safety community must find ways to tailor its message based on specific risk factors.

When online-safety advocates gather at conferences, the room is typically filled with public policy professionals, technology experts, lawyers, and law enforcement people. Online Safety 3.0 needs to adopt other perspectives, including those of librarians, tech educators, counselors, school administrators, and young people themselves. To help youth who are at risk—of sexual exploitation, domestic violence, eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicide—mental health professionals and social workers must also be brought into the circle.

The Net effect
The Internet is not “the problem,” but there are certainly ways it can affect the equation for all of us, regardless of age. I call this “the Net effect.” It’s based on a set of characteristics unique to online networking as identified by social media researcher danah boyd in her doctoral dissertation, “Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics.” These traits include persistence and searchability (the Net as a permanent, searchable archive), replicability (the ability to copy and paste from and to anywhere on the Net), scalability (potential visibility beyond the audience you have in mind), invisible audiences (never really knowing who’s seeing/reading/watching what you post), and blurring of public and private (private from whom?).

Important, too, is disinhibition: what happens when you’re unable to see or hear the other party online. Inhibitions break down, which can be good, but may reduce empathy and civility as well. That’s why lessons in citizenship, ethics, and critical thinking about content that’s incoming and outgoing are essential, throughout the grade levels, curriculum, and school day, ideally using the very social media and technologies so much in use outside of school.

More than one type of online safety
Online Safety 1.0, with the predator panic it cultivated, was largely one-dimensional. Protecting youth from predators deals only with physical safety; essential, certainly, but that’s not all. Here are the four types of safety, or rather freedoms, required for healthy online participation:

• Physical—freedom from physical harm
• Psychological—freedom from cruelty, harassment, and exposure to potentially disturbing material
• Reputational and legal—freedom from unwanted social, academic, professional, and legal consequences that could affect you for a lifetime
• Identity, property, and community—freedom from theft of identity and property and attacks against networks and online communities at local, national, and international levels.

What we know about how youth use social media
“[Teen] participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer culture,” writes boyd. “Teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize almost exclusively with people they know.” For them, the Web and cell phones represent just another place to hang out and socialize; the device used matters little.

And they’re not just socializing. Based on a three-year study by the more than two dozen researchers of the Digital Youth Project, we know that a lot of important informal learning is going on while youth are “online, texting, or playing video games.” “The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression,” reads the report. In fact, kids are engaged in two kinds of social networking: friendship-driven—the most common—and interest-driven social networking, which might better be characterized as collaboration or creative networking.

Even in multiplayer online games, there’s a lot more going on than just play. But even that’s not a bad thing. “Play is hugely important to the learning and the crafting of the brain,” psychiatrist Stuart Brown said in a recent TED talk. In the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, for example, educators who are also WOW fans tell me that players analyze statistics and probabilities, strategize, learn how to budget and market, and explore supply and demand—key concepts of economics, math, and sociology.

In his recent book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Viking, 2009), Ken Robinson describes how many people—artists, writers, scientists, etc.—achieve success when they find their “tribe” or community of shared interest, where “interest-driven social networking” happens. There, they encounter validation, feedback, and a safe place to experiment. This is the work many young people are engaged in as they use social media—informal but authentic and compelling learning experiences.

As a consequence, school becomes less important for many youth. As one student told a researcher: “If you’re doing it for a grade, it doesn’t really count.” What a missed opportunity for education and the teaching of safe media use. When in school, students could be learning the skills that ensure safe, productive writing, producing, and collaborating using social media.

Why digital citizenship and literacy are key
Consider “sexting,” the practice of sharing explicit personal photos, usually via cell phone. In most jurisdictions, a minor caught sexting could be prosecuted for committing a federal felony under child pornography laws. In a recent Florida case, for instance, a just-turned 18-year-old was convicted of child-porn distribution and, as required by state law, will be listed on the state sex-offender registry until he’s 43 because, in a fit of anger one night, he forwarded some naked photos of his longtime girlfriend (which she had taken and shared with him).

Sexting has a whole spectrum of causes—from a misguided idea of romance and intimacy, impulsive risk-taking and peer pressure to revenge, malicious bullying, or even blackmail—and the instructive, disciplinary, and legal responses to it must be equally nuanced.

You can see then why I strongly advocate for integrating new media literacy and digital citizenship into the learning experience, from the informal kind that happens outside school to within K–12 libraries and classrooms, and to teachable moments with peers, parents, administrators, and whole communities.

I’m not suggesting that these efforts will cure sexting. But literacy and citizenship training represent the baseline, primary prevention work that may help curb impulsive behavior, ease manipulation, and fuel rational discussion among young people and between generations. And it’s what librarians do best.

This is a good thought-provoking piece from CNN on the appropriate age for social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Truthfully, I don’t think it’s an age thing, I think it’s a maturity thing. I know a lot of 12-year-old that can be ok on there, and a lot of 16-year-olds that shouldn’t be on there.

Either way, if parents take proper precautions when they start letting their kids roam on the older-skewing social networks (the ones for kids are also discussed in the article), then danger can be averted. See: PC Pandora

Social networks and kids: How young is too young?
By Doug Gross, CNN

Status updates, photo tagging and FarmVille aren’t just for adults or even teenagers anymore.

Researchers say a growing number of children are flouting age requirements on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or using social-networking sites designed just for them.

Facebook and MySpace require users to be at least 13. But they have no practical way to verify ages, and many young users pretend to be older when signing up.

Some scientists worry that pre-adolescent use of the sites, which some therapists have linked to Internet addiction among adults, could be damaging to children’s relationships and brains.

But many other experts say there’s not any solid research to back that up and that most children seem to use social-media sites in moderation, and in positive ways.

“For the most part, although there’s so much press about all the bad things they’re doing, much of what they do on these sites is stuff they would be doing anyway,” said Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University-Los Angeles.

In two surveys reported this year by Pew Internet Research — of 700 and 935 teens, respectively — 38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort.

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day.

The data in the study was from 2006, so it’s not a stretch to assume those numbers are higher this year. Research on younger children is limited, but anecdotal evidence shows that many of them are also logging on.

“Of course they are,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew and one of the report’s authors. “They’re using them because that’s where their social world is. Because there’s no effective way to age-verify … children very quickly realize, ‘I just say I’m 14 years old, and they’ll let me use this.’ “

Marc Bigbie, a software salesman who lives near Savannah, Georgia, said he has three children — 14, 12 and 11 — who all have accounts on at least one social-networking site.

His oldest daughter, then 11, was the first in the family to create an account, on MySpace. And it was without her parents’ permission.

“It was kind of a negative thing at first,” he said. “We kind of took it away from her. But, finally, we said, ‘You can have it, but we need the password so we can be on there at any time.’ “

Since then, all three of the kids have gotten Facebook accounts, with their parents even agreeing to fudge their ages.

Bigbie said he makes sure his children’s accounts are set to provide as little personal information as possible, and they allow their activity to be seen only by confirmed friends. He and his wife monitor the pages to make sure they know the friends that their children have added.

He said the oldest daughter is the only one who uses the account almost every day, while the younger children log on briefly every now and then.

In the past couple of years, some scientists have voiced concerns that children are spending too much on these sites and that such online socializing could have lasting negative effects as they mature.

“My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment,” Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University neurocientist and director of Britain’s Royal Institution, told London’s Daily Mail in February.

“I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier [online] screen dialogues,” she said.

Other scientists criticized Greenfield’s comments, calling them speculation, not science.

Subrahmaynam said a study of high school students showed that in most cases, the people they interact with most often online are people they also socialize with in person.

Children today have spent their whole lives on computers, and their brains are better adapted than those of adults to integrate online activities with their offline lives, she said.

“You’ll always have the small minority of kids who are not using it appropriately,” she said. “I do think you’re going to have a few people that are doing things that kids probably couldn’t do with telephones a generation ago.

“But we don’t want to get swept away by the general fear. It’s here, and it’s pretty harmless.”

Many parents also worry that younger users of social sites could be targets for online predators. While there are some concerns that kids aren’t mature enough to make good decisions about their privacy, Subrahmaynam and Lenhart said most are savvy enough by their early teens to know what, and who, to avoid. Younger children, they say, need more parental supervision.

Alternately, a growing number of networking sites are geared specifically toward younger users. Sites such as Disney’s Club Penguin — mainly a game site, but with limited social functions — WebKinz and Whyville feature more restricted and supervised networking.

Such kids-oriented sites are “sort of a training ground” for future use of mainstream social networks, Lenhart said.

Children as young as 5 have accounts at KidSwirl, a kids’ social-networking site patterned loosely on Facebook, said creator Toby Clark.

Clark said the average user spends about five minutes on the site per visit — far less than Facebook’s average of more than 20 minutes.

He said he limits the amount of time his two children, 9 and 6, spend on the site, but that any parent who bans their children from such sites isn’t facing the facts.

“The reality is that we’re a technology-driven generation,” said Clark, who launched the site in February and said it has about 10,000 users. “That’s not going to change.”

So what long-term effect will social networking have on children? Scientists say it may be hard to know for sure.

“We’ve lost the control group,” Subrahmanyam said. “How do you find a group of kids that are not using the computer?”

The moral of the story here is that a 14-year-old girl lied about her age and voluntarily ran away with an 18-year-old boy she met online.

Think your kids are perfect angels? Are you sure? Better think twice.

If the parents had computer monitoring software, they could have prevented this situation from happening.

Hindsight is 20/20… then again, monitoring what your children do on the Internet is just basic parenting in 2009…

November 4, 2009
Oldham County Missing Girl Found In Ohio
Rosemary Weiler Reported Missing Tuesday Morning

OLDHAM COUNTY, Ky. — The father of a missing Oldham County 14-year-old girl said his daughter was been found in Ohio.

Rosemary Weiler, 14, was reported missing by her parents after 7 a.m. Tuesday. Her father said she was found safe and sound in Portsmouth, Ohio.

“When I got on the bus, everybody was freaking out saying, ‘Rosemary’s missing, and did you hear about Rosemary?” neighbor Drew Mitchell said.

Her family said she met an 18-year-old college student at Shawnee, Ohio. She told him she was 16 years old and he drove down to Oldham County to pick her up.

“For someone to be gone in the middle of the night, that’s kind of scary,” resident Mary Felt said. “It must have been really tragic for them to go through that all day and be so upset and panicked and you know, what happened to her, is she safe, is anything wrong?”

Detectives said they quickly started putting the online pieces together.

“(We) went through her chat and e-mail rooms that she was in. As far as with her computer, they had located a phone number for a gentleman, they contacted that number,” Oldham County Police Department spokesman Chris Morris said. “At this time, it’s unknown what his intent was, he obviously came down to Kentucky from Ohio to pick this female up and it’s unknown what, if there was a relationship prior to that, or they’d just met.”

The man took Weiler to the Shawnee Police Department after Oldham County police contacted him to tell him she was only 14 years old, officers said. Police said no charges will be filed.

“She is still sticking to the story that she told him she was older than she was, and with her saying that, we really can’t file charges against that 18-year-old adult, he was under the pretenses that she was older,” Morris said.

Authorities are using the episode to warn parents once more about the dangers of online predators.

“I know your kids don’t want you monitoring what they’re doing, but sometimes you need to, because there are predators out there,” Morris said.

Weiler’s father said he drove to Ohio to reunite with his daughter. He said he’s just glad his daughter is safe. He had no comment on the fact that no charges will be filed.

WLKY also asked police why that student couldn’t be charged with transporting a minor across state lines for sex.

Police said they just don’t have enough evidence to say that sex was the reason the student brought Weiler back to Ohio.

This is some very cool news to report, from the “Land of Lincoln”…

November 3, 2009
State pushing internet safety message to students

Illinois launches its first statewide Internet safety contest to raise awareness about the dangers of the Internet.

State Superintendent of Education Christopher A. Koch and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan shared the details of the Youth Internet Safety Contest with students at Springfield’s Lincoln Magnet School Tuesday.

Students are being asked to create either a poster or electronic message addressing Internet safety and cyber-bullying.

“Teaching children how to safely navigate the Internet is as important as telling them to look both ways before they cross the street,” said Koch. “The dangers may not be as evident but they are real. This contest as well as a new requirement to incorporate Internet safety into the curriculum starting in third grade can help raise awareness about good Internet practices to keep children out of harm’s way.”

“Internet safety education is now an essential part of our school curriculum here in Illinois and I believe it is an important tool in our arsenal to protect children from potential threats posed by Internet predators,” said Attorney General Madigan. “Many of our children and teens are exposed to dangers online that can be avoided by empowering them with ways to stay safer. This contest is a terrific vehicle for getting them thinking and talking about ways to be safe online.”

The contest is open to students in grades first through 12. All entries must be submitted in an electronic media format (video, podcast or slideshow) to the Illinois State Board of Education by March 31, 2010. Winners will be announced in May.

Contest rules, terms and conditions: http://www.isbe.net/curriculum/html/internet_safety.htm

Here are two more good reasons to keep track of who your kids are talking to online…

• A 40-year-old Florida man got 20 years for luring and molesting a 12-year-old and 14-year-old girl through MySpace. THIS GUY SUCCEEDED!
• A 52-year-old man in Pennsylvania was arrested for driving to a meeting in hopes of having sex with a 13 and 15 year old girl, who were actually undercover cops. This guy did not succeed, but he was trying and thought he was well on his way to achieving his goal. Maybe this wasn’t his first time either. Maybe in the past, he did succeed.

I have filled up a lot of weekly posts with stories like these for a reason: parent, you need to know these guys DO exist, and they DO succeed. If the danger is there, why are you not taking precautions? PC Pandora is the best weapon you can have in your arsenal because it will let you KNOW what your kids are doing online, for sure – no guesswork. Why would you prefer guessing to knowing when it comes to your child’s safety?

Full stories and links below… Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always great to report news like this: a local school district (in this case, a Cassia County in Idaho) has adopted a new policy and set of guidelines to help combat cyberbullying. This is great.

Of course, parents are a big key to solving this problem as well. They need to do their job in the home of 1) teaching their kids to treat others as they would treat themselves, and 2) monitoring how their child interacts online. This includes putting a stop to bullying behavior, whether it be instigating or passing it on…

Only as a community can we ever make progress against this problem that plagues our schools and youth. But we need actions, not words. Take action. Be a powerful 21st century parent in your house. KNOW how your kids use the internet. Between your authority and giving schools more resources to help solve the problem on their end, we have a chance…

October 30, 2009
Cassia schools adopt new bullying policies
Guidelines define cyber bullying
By Laurie Welch – Times-News writer

BURLEY – Students and staff at Cassia County schools who engage in any type of bullying behavior could find themselves expelled from school or their employment terminated.

The Cassia County School District unanimously approved an amended policy on student harassment that includes new language against bullying someone over sexual orientation. It also includes a new policy titled “Prohibition Against Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying” that outlines the district’s response to issues such as spreading rumors, cyber bullying and “sexting,” which have become issues since the original policy was adopted in 2000.

“These reflect current things we experience in the community and other parts of the state,” said district Superintendent Gaylen Smyer.

The new policies put in place guidelines that define cyber bullying as the use of any electronic communications device to convey a message in any format – including audio, video, text, graphics, or photographs – that intimidates, harasses or intends to harm another individual.

“Parental awareness will play a big role in this,” Smyer said.

According to the policy, school administrators will report any conduct they believe is in violation of the law to local law enforcement and no retaliation will be taken by the district, employees or students for someone who reports harassment or bullying.

The district will maintain a written record that is submitted to the district with witness statements and investigative reports. Those records will be kept in district administrative offices and will not be purged by district personnel without board approval.

The prohibition extends not only to actions on school grounds but those originating at a remote location and carried out via technology. The policy also includes a section on district employees and staff members engaging in bullying behavior.

The bottom line here is that a school district imposed punishments on girls who, during the summer, took very provocative and sexually-themed photos and put them on their MySpace pages. There was no nudity. Now, the ACLU is suing the school system on behalf of the girls saying their 1st amendment rights were violated.

So now, the big argument is: where do schools have jurisdiction in the net age?

I can argue on both sides of the fence… but the real elephant in the room is the fact that the parents are less concerned with the fact that their little girls like to dress up slutty and share the photos with the Internet, and more concerned with how they can go after the school system for money, revenge, restitution, whatever…

Sad. But that’s the age we live in…

The AP story is pasted below. I also highly recommend this article from the Examiner:
ACLU lawsuit over teens’ racy pics on MySpace shakes up sleepy town

October 31, 2009
School sued for punishing teens over MySpace pix
By Charles Wilson (AP)

INDIANAPOLIS — Two sophomore girls have sued their school district after they were punished for posting sexually suggestive photos on MySpace during their summer vacation.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a federal lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the girls, argues that Churubusco High School violated the girls’ free speech rights when it banned them from extracurricular activities for a joke that didn’t involve the school. They say the district humiliated the girls by requiring them to apologize to an all-male coaches’ board and undergo counseling.

Some child advocates argue that schools should play a role in monitoring students’ behavior, especially when dealing with minors. And the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that students can be disciplined for activities that happen outside of school, so long as the school can prove the activities were disruptive or posed a danger and that it was foreseeable the activities would find their way to campus.

But some legal experts say that in this digital era, schools must accept that students will engage in some questionable behavior in cyberspace and during off hours.

“From the standpoint of young people, there’s no real distinction between online life and offline life,” said John Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “It’s just life.”

In the Indiana case, the ACLU argues that the district and Churubusco Principal Austin Couch went too far in banning the two sophomores from fall sports, requiring them to apologize to the all-male coaches’ board and undergo counseling after the photographs were circulated at school.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne, names Couch, the high school and the district as defendants and seeks unspecified damages. No hearing has been scheduled.

Erik Weber, an attorney for the Smith-Green school district, said Couch was enforcing the northeast Indiana school’s athletic code, which allows the principal to bar from school activities any student-athlete whose behavior in or out of school “creates a disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral or educational environment at Churubusco High School.”

ACLU legal director Ken Falk insists the Churubusco case doesn’t warrant the punishment the district handed out.

“We all did things when we were sophomores in high school that can be construed as immature or problematic or whatever, but that is not the issue here,” he said. “The issue is what possible impact this could have on the school environment, and the answer is none.”

The girls, identified only by their initials in the suit, took the photos during a sleepover with friends before school started this summer and posted them on their MySpace pages, setting the privacy controls so only those designated as friends could view them. In the photos, the girls wore lingerie and pretended to lick a penis-shaped lollipop. None of the photos made any reference to the school.

Weber declined to say how the photos reached Couch, but the suit contends that someone copied the pictures and shared them with school officials, and they eventually were given to the principal.

Couch initially suspended both girls from all extracurricular activities for the year but reduced the penalty to 25 percent of fall semester activities after the girls completed three counseling sessions and apologized to the coaches board.

Palfrey, the Harvard professor, said privacy on social networking sites is an illusion, even if strict privacy controls are set.

Rick Hills, a New York University School of Law professor, said most courts have found that simply being able to access questionable material on campus is generally not sufficient proof that an activity was disruptive. But he acknowledged courts have a long tradition of deferring to administrative agencies that make their own rules.

Teens who have done similar things in some states have faced prosecution, said Beverly Johnson, an Irvine, Calif., attorney who serves on the board of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit, online safety group. A 14-year-old New Jersey girl was arrested on child pornography charges in March for posting nude pictures of herself on MySpace. The charges were later dropped after she agreed to counseling.

Other students have been expelled from school or lost scholarships, Johnson said.

The ACLU argues that the Indiana case is different. They say the photos were a joke intended to be shared only with friends. It wants the school district to expunge all references to the incident from school records and seeks to bar the school from taking similar action in the future.

“The problem is there’s a line drawn. And the line is drawn as things that disrupt the school. And outside of that, the school has no say,” Falk said.

“Imagine if everything teens texted back and forth to friends became fodder for school discipline.”

Palfrey, of Harvard, said schools have a right to regulate students’ online behavior but said the court will have to decide whether the students’ First Amendment rights were violated.

“The fact that it took place in cyberspace instead of in a classroom doesn’t mean you don’t enforce the rule,” he said.

A 17-year old boy swiped three skateboards from a local store. But employees recognized him from his MySpace page. Might want to keep a low Internet profile if you plan on shoplifting.

October 28, 2009
Police: Skateboard Thief ID’d On MySpace Page
17-Year-Old Martin County High School Student Arrested

STUART, Fla. — Police said a 17-year-old Martin County High School student’s MySpace page led to his arrest on a shoplifting charge.

Stuart police said the teen entered Deep Six Water Sports on Tuesday afternoon and grabbed three skateboards worth $250.

When police arrived, they were assisted by employees and patrons who recognized the teen from his MySpace page.

The teen was arrested at his home, booked in the Martin County Jail and released to his parents.

Wow. Just wow… another over-protective parent resorts to cyberbullying a child on her daughter’s behalf.

You know, cyberbullying can be solved… but we need the parents to act like parents first…

Happy Friday

October 28, 2009
The Cyber Bully Next Door:Mom Uses Craigslist to Exact Revenge
By Amy Beth Arkawy, NEWS JUNKIE POST

“I need a little affection… I’m blond & cute… I’ll be waiting….” This vaguely titillating ad–mild by the steamy standards of the sexually provocative personals posted on the busy site Craigslist–isn’t really news. Except the “woman” for whom it was posted is nine years old.

No, this isn’t a story about a precocious pre-pubescent run amok on the Internet. The nine year old in question is a victim of a strange strain of cyber-bullying. It’s the alleged perpetrator that could give your blood pressure a run for its money. Forty-year Long Island mom, Margery Tannenbaum –whose daughter apparently got into some sort of fourth grade dust-up with a classmate–decided to use the site to exact revenge on the girl’s “rival.”

Tannenbaum, who–get this–is a licensed social worker (which means, among other things, she should know better to the nth degree), is headed to trial on charges of aggravated harassment and endangering the welfare of a minor, both misdemeanors. The misguided mom has been mum since her arrest last July; but her lawyer maintains her innocence.

Here’s how her alleged scheme worked: she posted the ad, using the fetching e-mail address lacethong23@yahoo.com for responses. Once libidinous lads replied, she forwarded the girl’s name and phone number. According to CBS’ Channel 2 News in New York City, a total of forty calls came into the girl’s house, twenty-two of them on one single hot and steamy day alone. Fortunately, the girl’s parents intercepted all the calls, so her emotional scarring may be kept to a minimum.

After one guy mentioned the girl’s name, her mom said, “this is her mother, can I help you?”

The guy retorted: “The hot lady lives with foxy mama?”

Mom replied: “The “hot lady” you’re talking about is nine years old.”

That call–and presumably the dozens of others–ended with a dial tone. But what do Tannebaum’s actions say about passive-aggressive parenting in the interactive age?

There have always been bully parents: the loud over zealous little league dads, the pushy stage moms, the petulant PTA parents. But as annoying ( and sometimes downright dangerous) as these characters can be, at least you can identify them. With the elaborate digital system of smoke and mirrors the Internet provides, people can slink around, covertly reeking havoc on the lives of others, often without fear of detection. Of course, there are cyber sleuths who can probably capture all but the savviest of such bullies.

But the presumptive anonymity the Internet offers is very alluring to some people, providing them with a protective cover, a place to create fantasy lives, play out roles they could never imagine in the real world. Such activities have gotten all sorts of folks in trouble with their significant others and in some cases, the law. We’ve all seen those “To Catch a Predator” Dateline episodes.

And remember the creepy case of Lori Drew, the Missouri mom who went on trial after she created a fake MySpace page, using it to taunt a fragile teen Megan Meier with love notes from a cyber-generated imaginary boyfriend? After the virtual love went sour, and a series of flat-out cruel comments were left to linger, the distraught girl committed suicide. Drew–who initially faced manslaughter charges and convicted of a lesser charge– eventually got her case tossed on a technicality. But she was–rightfully–tarred and feathered in the public square of media scrutiny.

Tannenbaum’s case is far less serious since no one died, and hopefully the little girl will be left largely unscathed. But her devious plot speaks to her inability to communicate effectively and parent properly. I mean what sort of example does this set for her own daughter? And, by the way, just how much did the girl know about her mom’s scheme?

Clearly, the healthiest and most sensible tact to take would have been to have her daughter constructively confront the other girl. If that had been tried to no avail, parental intervention along the conventional lines of contacting the teacher, principal, and/or the other girl’s parents would be in order. Given Tannenbaum’s training and profession, such a “normal” approach should have been a no-brainer.

Speaking of her professional status, the Suffolk County D.A. is looking into Tannenbaum’s license to practice social work. So along with criminal penalties–which, ( if she’s convicted) will probably amount to some sort of fine and probation–she could face career problems. And with neighbors up in arms, she may also want to move. So Tannenbaum may wind up looking for a new job, a new house, oh and some personal counseling services might come in handy, too. Good thing she knows her way around Craigslist.

This is potentially very good news. It all depends on how they utilize the funds. I hope they don’t go to waste in more think-tank rhetoric with self-proclaimed “experts” who tell us the same things over and over, while the problem gets worse…

October 27, 2009
UNH receives $2 million to combat internet crimes against children
By Krista Macomber, Contributing Writer, The New Hampshire

With the help of stimulus money, researchers are hoping to find effective methods of protecting children in an ever-expanding online world.

The Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) at the University of New Hampshire has received over $2 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding through the U.S. Department of Justice to further its research into Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC).

The center will be conducting three studies related to Internet crimes against youth – an evaluation of Internet child safety materials used by ICAC task forces in school and community settings, the third Youth Internet Safety Survey, and the third National Juvenile Online Victimization Study.

The principal investigator on the Internet safety materials evaluation, Dr. Lisa Jones, explained that it aims to produce a standardized toolkit to rate victimization prevention programs used by ICAC task forces in school and community settings. The project will determine whether the way prevention messages are currently being delivered coincides with what is known to work for other at-risk behaviors like using drugs and alcohol.

“There is currently no tool to evaluate outcomes,” she said. “People want evidence for less victimization as the result of [safety education] programs and this study will lay the groundwork for that.”

Jones explained that there is a lot of literature available on the topic of effective strategies for preventing at-risk behaviors in youth. Her study will review this literature and rate the materials implementation of the four best-developed youth Internet safety curricula: Netsmartz, i-SAFE, Web Wise Kids, and iKeepSafe.

The third Youth Internet Safety Survey (YISS-3) will interview a nationally representative sample of 10- to 17-year-olds via phone about their experiences with technology over the past year. This is the same methodology as YISS-1 and YISS-2, allowing for comparison and the discovery of trends and new developments between surveys.

Dr. Kim Mitchell, the lead YISS-3 researcher, worked on the first YISS survey. It was conducted in 2000 and she described it as “groundbreaking.” She said that a significant proportion of respondents – one in five – reported an unwanted online sexual experience. She cautioned, however, that this statistic is often misquoted. It encompasses a wide range of episodes, not all of which have devious and criminal intent. There is a difference, she said, between inquiring about a bra size and aggressive sexual solicitation.

When YISS-2 rolled around five years later, Mitchell said she saw evidence that the big push in education and prevention that occurred in the time period paid off; a smaller percentage of respondents- two in seven this time-reported an unwanted experience than in 2000.

Harassment and bullying did increase in YISS-2, though, which Mitchell said is correlated to online sexual victimization. She said that kids who are using drugs are at a greater risk for sexual victimization.

“Most safety messages are targeted at parents, and this group tends to have bad relationships with parents,” Mitchell said. “We have to find creative ways to reach out through peers and schools.”

YISS-3 will also incorporate “sexting” – text-messaging pornographic images – and Facebook. Conducted in 2000, 2005, and now 2010, Mitchell said that the YISS surveys have been timed well to chronicle the effect of the emergence of the Internet and various technologies associated with it.

The third National Juvenile Online Victimization Study (N-JOV3) will look at the dynamics and nature of ICAC, as well as changes in law enforcement activity. Investigators and prosecutors involved with over 1000 crimes will be interviewed in-house to determine which investigative strategies appear to be working, how law enforcement is responding to cases, and changing trends from the first two N-JOV studies.

Janis Wolak, principle researcher on the study, said that she wants to look at the dynamics and natures of these crimes and determine their severity. She wants to talk to prosecutors to see how they determine the level of criminal activity if, for example, a school reports to police that a student is upset because her boyfriend circulated sexual pictures of her.

Wolak said she also hopes to determine how changes in law enforcement activity – namely increased training and undercover operations – have affected arrests.

Detective Captain Corey MacDonald of the Portsmouth Police Department, commander of the state ICAC taskforce, said that he has seen a lot of “traveler” cases – where the adult travels to meet the victim – and peer-to-peer trading of child pornographic images.

MacDonald said that in cases of travelers, the old image of a stalker discovering a victim’s address through MySpace isn’t very accurate. He said it’s not that this doesn’t happen, but he’s seen far more predators establish a relationship based on false trust – they bond with their victims through talking about their unhappiness, and then lure them to meet in person.

To combat these crimes, MacDonald said that investigators are specially trained to mimic youth and try to lure these travelers to meet up with them, where they will then make an arrest. This type of training takes approximately one week.

Certain detectives also receive forensics training over the course of at least three months in how to go through computers and find deleted files or other signs of abuse. MacDonald described the extensive work these investigators do as “phenomenal” – a single forensics exam of a computer can take two weeks and they can find a lot. Detectives usually move around between areas of crime specialty, but he said that this training is so expensive and time consuming that they look for detectives who are committed to doing just this for several years.

MacDonald said his task force is working on education. If he gets a call that a girl’s photo has been circulating, for example, he wants to have a comprehensive plan in place to handling it and eliminating the photos.

MacDonald said he recognizes the need to establish the nature of a crime, especially in cases of sexting.

“In my opinion, we’re not trying to lock up 16-year-olds for making stupid decisions,” he said. He cited malicious intent as an important distinguisher.

Of all the cases he handles as captain of the detectives unit – from homicides to personal injury – MacDonald cited internet crimes against children as one of, if not his top, priority.

“For me, the most important message to send out is that behind every picture is a child victim,” MacDonald said. “Often, the child also suffers further abuse, like rape. People unfortunately do horrible things.”