Summary

The PBS FRONTLINE video series Growing Up Online, lets viewers see first hand how teens have integrated the Internet into every facet of their lives. The series explores both the public and private worlds that youth are creating and gives a glimpse of how childhood has been transformed in the Internet age.

Things to think about

Though this PBS series gives some good insight into the online lives of teens, it blunders by perpetuating some common misconceptions about the risks youth face, the causes of those risks, and who is responsible when youth get hurt. Additionally, some segments fall short in revealing the real issues surrounding the topics covered.

I recommend that you watch the six segments in this series one at a time (each is less than ten minutes), and then read my comments after watching each one. Watch the videos.

Segment 1: Living Their Lives Essentially Online

This segment began with the assertion that youth have created their own virtual society, one that largely excludes parents. Not only is this statement false, it is damaging as it shifts responsibility for the problems with Internet usage onto youth.

It was not due to some conspiracy of youth nor was it an accident that parents are largely excluded from supervising what their children are doing online. The truth is that youth didn't create the virtual society; corporations did. To make money. (To be clear, I have no objection to companies building products that target specific audiences or make money if they do so responsibly.) Companies made a deliberate choice to target the youth market with their products and also made the deliberate choice to allow youth to interact online without safeguards or parental supervision.

There are people within corporations who vehemently argued (as I did) for the need to make products -- especially social networking products -- safer. We warned of the serious risks to youth if these services weren't actively protecting teens' safety.

Our concerns were disregarded, in part because safety features would make the products less cool. The reasoning was calculated and openly articulated: youth wouldn’t use the services as much if there were safety features and if their parents could supervise them. And less usage = less revenue.

Read my blog, Online Business 101, to more fully understand the financial drivers behind these decisions.

Segment 2: A Revolution in Classrooms and Social Life

The belief teens have that their social networking pages are sections of the Internet "that you can make your own" is dangerously deceptive.

Teen Web pages and their content are not theirs at all. A quick read of the Terms and Conditions on most social networking sites make it very clear that the site owns any content the user posts and can use it in any way the company sees fit.

We must help youth understand the difference between their perception of ownership and privacy and the reality of having granted a company access to use any of their information. When teens learn about this difference, they become much more selective in the content they share and are often outright incensed over the exploitive terms companies behind many popular sites have adopted.

Read my blog, The Fine Print – Do You Know the Terms You (Or Your Child) Agreed To?, for more detail about rights to content on social networking (and other) sites.

It is inaccurate to say that teens are more willing to live publicly and that discretion and privacy is a thing of the past.

Just push a teen for information and you’ll see discretion -- if not outright silence -- and a demand for privacy in spades. There are certainly some behaviors teens are more willing to be public about than earlier generations, but youth shocking their parents was a phenomenon long before the existence of the Internet.

A more accurate observation is that teens have always wanted their friends to know what they’re doing, don’t want adults to know what they’re doing, and really don’t care what strangers know or think of them.

This wasn’t much of a problem even five years ago before the widespread use of the Web as a social tool. Before then, not many strangers learned of youthful escapades, not many parents heard what was really going on, and friends and friends of friends were considerably more limited geographically. Information, fame, and notoriety were fleeting because personal histories were oral histories.

The Internet has radically changed this. With texting, blogging, instant messaging, and the pervasive use of video, teen histories are no longer limited to those who were part of the activity or group of friends who talked about it. The conversation has changed from oral to written histories, and that information is virtually impossible to remove once it has been posted.

This far-reaching shift, combined with the opportunity for viral dissemination, means a young person's thoughts and actions can be replayed and sent anywhere practically forever. Some students have a vague understanding of this -- for example, the girl who lamented that the school brawl was seen by lots of people and might be seen by colleges. But generally the extent of Internet exposure and its ramifications such as why they should be concerned beyond "a college or employer may see it," have not been well explained to or understood by youth. This coupled with the reality that teens so often live in the now makes considering consequences difficult.

Read my blogs, Information is Forever on the Internet, for details about the consequences of written versus oral histories, and, Corporate Cyberbullying - Your Blogs May Be Subpoenaed, for insight into additional ways written histories can haunt users.

Segment 3: Self Expression. Trying on New Identities

The idea that virtual identities are like playing dress-up, something that kids do and can then put away, is not always true.

Often there is tremendous emotional investment in online personas and the bereavement very real when the identity is ended, exposed, comes under attack, or is ridiculed. Those who’ve invested a great deal of energy into their persona may become consumed by it, feeling that it is even more real than everyday life. They often rush through "real" life to get time for the online life they want. If their Internet lives give them the attention they crave, the online dependency is all the stronger.

It may be very appropriate for parents to require a teen to change or erase his or her persona. But before asking a young person to do this, take care to understand the needs the persona is fulfilling and what can be done to satisfy those needs in safer ways.

Jessica underscored this point when she said, in reference to her parents requiring her to delete her online alter ego, "I was just completely erased from that…whole realm of the Internet, and.. it probably seems really stupid to a lot of people that I’m getting this upset over it but if you have something that's that meaningful to you, to have it taken away is like your worst nightmare."

Segment 4: The Child Predator Fear

While online sexual predation of minors is a real issue, the level of fear about child sexual predators online is not appropriate to the actual level of online risk.

The specter of sexual predators circling our children is a terrifying one. The statistics that indicate one in three girls and one in five boys will be sexually abused before adulthood should outrage and galvanize every person in this country. But these statistics are independent of Internet use.

Though there is valid reason for concern about how the Internet enables sexual predation, teens are still far more likely to encounter sexual predators in the real world who are still most typically family members. Note: In cases where a family member or trusted adult is abusing a child, the Internet is frequently an important additional method of communicating with and grooming him or her. The online interactions are likely to go undetected and therefore do not raise red flags with adults who would otherwise observe them.

There are also those who fan the flames of fear for profit – companies that sell software to protect kids, the media, and others. Take a hard look at the motives of anyone who preaches fear to understand their agenda for doing so.

Read my blog, Internet Scare-mongering -- who benefits?, for more background.

There are also misconceptions among those who denounce as largely unfounded the concerns about sexual predators trawling for teens online.

First, there is the sobering reality that when finally pushed to purge perverts from their pages in the spring of 2007, MySpace reluctantly admitted to identifying more than 29,000 known sexual predators using its site. (Read the story.) It’s hard to deny that sexual predators are trawling for youth when that many sexual offenders (and MySpace only caught ones stupid enough to use their own names) were using MySpace alone.

Second, there several studies cited by those who claim that concerns are unfounded. The first is Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization. The main flaw in this study is that it selected a very small, homogenous set of exploited victims but extended its conclusions to apply to all cases. (Read my detailed analysis of the findings.)

The study selected only youth who knew how and why they were targeted. All had met and interacted online with their abusers and then agreed to meet them in person. The research does not cover any of the myriad other scenarios where sexual predators use the Internet to find and sexually exploit youth -- for example, when a predator uses the Internet to identify a victim without ever contacting them online. A second study has similar findings, but drew the same flawed conclusions.

Those trying to minimize the risks also cite research, Social Networking Websites and Teens, by the PEW Internet & American Life Project. This study shows that 66 percent of teens have taken active steps to protect their privacy and safety.

Unfortunately, showing that kids try to be safe does not mean kids are safe. Of course it's important that teens set their pages to private or hit the delete or block buttons when they are directly solicited. But these actions are not sufficient to address the more subtle ways of making contact with youth or gleaning information from them, and the result is that teens are often overconfident in their ability to protect themselves.

One of the reasons teens feel particularly confident in their ability to detect and block exploitive adults online is the fault of another common myth – the story they are fed about "youth are digital natives and adults are digital immigrants." In reality there are digital novices and digitally savvy users of any age. No teen is a digital native when facing an experienced online predator.

It's absurd to believe that it is just the actions of teens that place them at risk online.

In far too many cases, the very services teens use expose them to considerable risk. For example, MySpace exposes consumers even when they set their sites to private. The company also specifically recommends that people post a photo that identifies them on their pages so others can see who they are.

Read my blogs,MySpace flunks Safety 101 and Using a Safe Email Alias? You May Still Be Exposed to understand how products create risks and fail to protect consumers who have taken steps to be safer. Then refer back to The Fine Print – Do You Know the Terms You (Or Your Child) Agreed To? to see how companies put youth at risk by exposing information the teen thought was private, and extend their risk by claiming the right to use their information (even if they have deleted it).

You won't be able to protect teens by taking control of their computers.

Keeping the computer in a public place or taking control of it can help protect young children from predators online, but will have little impact on teens who have so many opportunities to go online. Their cell phones most likely have a browser, a camera, and text messaging, e-mail, and blogging capabilities, and even the ability to conduct financial transactions. Their game consoles are likely connected to the Internet. There is access in friends’ homes, at school, in libraries and Internet cafés, and so on. In fact, any attempt to control teens will fail.

For teens it’s good to monitor, but it’s vital to talk and to help them be and act smart about online safety. We can accomplish this by helping them:

• Learn how to identify quality information from legitimate sources when they look for advice.
• Fully understand the far-reaching impact their actions online may have.
• Balance what they learn and explore online with the values, messages, and information they receive at home and at school.

Read my blogs. Who are you going to trust: your doctor or the Web? for insight into how to identify quality information online, and Why ‘Parental Controls’ Won’t Work, but Family Safety Does, to get some tips on how to approach these conversations in a constructive manner.

The closing comments in this segment not only perpetuate negative misconceptions about teens, but also blame the victims.

The commenter says:

"Sexual predators are a risk. But all the cases -- known cases -- of sexual exploitation involving social networks have involved kids who have gone out looking for a meeting with somebody. They were not deceived. We need to start thinking about our kids less as victims and more as participants. Real problems, real damage can result because of things that teenagers do to themselves and each other. "

Let’s break these claims down.

• The statement that all the known cases of sexual exploitation involving social networks have involved kids looking for a meeting with someone is not only incorrect, it presumes to lend credibility for the ensuing claims.
• The assertion that kids who met a sexual predator and were not deceived is outrageous. They didn’t go to be exploited. Research by Wolak, Finkelhor, and Mitchell, Internet-initiated Sex Crimes against Minors, suggests that considerable deceit is involved:

• Fifty percent of the victims of child sexual exploitation were groomed to believe they were in love or felt close to the offender; 48 percent of predators gave the victim gifts or money while communicating with them.
• About a quarter of the child sexual abusers lied about their age, their physical appearance, and their sexual motives.

• The statement that we need to start thinking about our kids less as victims and more as participants is preposterous. Certainly not all kids are angels. Many child victims may even have known they were going to meet someone and have sex. But to claim that they were not deceived or mentally manipulated is appalling. Any child is too young to consent to sexual intercourse and was clearly preyed upon by the molester.

Kenneth Lanning, former Supervisory Special Agent and profiler with the FBI, puts it this way in his book, Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis: "Society seems to have a problem dealing with any sexual-victimization case in which…the child victim is not completely "good".…When adults and children have sex, the child is always the victim."

• The claim that real problems and damage can result because of things teenagers do to themselves and each other implies that the problem is simply that teens are making bad choices and hurting their peers. While there is certainly teen-on-teen abuse that must be addressed, this statement trivializes the very real exploitation of minors by adult sexual predators. The research cited above indicates that 90 percent of victims studied were between 13 and 16 years of age, while 76 percent of their abusers were over the age of 25. That just isn’t a case of "things teenagers do to themselves and each other."

Segment 5: Private Worlds Outside Parents Reach?

Parry Aftab’s comments in this section are right on target, but this segment missed two key issues: the crossover risks to teens who explore their darkest feelings online and how teen misconception of their own anonymity expose them to risk.

For most teens, seeking out information online about their darkest feelings can be cathartic – and risky.

Going online lets teens know that they aren’t alone in their feelings. But for some, the feeling of acceptance they get from others facing similar issues can pull them into destructive behaviors.

For example, a teen who doesn't believe she is thin enough might go to anorexia (or ana) sites for tips on how to lose weight. There she might be enticed to mimic anorexic behaviors by following fasting tips or the Ana Boot Camp diet. These sites also extol the belief that life is better for those who are thin and promote the thinnest photos from today’s popular figures, like Angelina Jolie, Lindsay Lohan, Mary Kate Olsen. So a teen who was looking for a weight loss solution could  get herself into all kinds of health trouble and head down a destructive path. It's not hard to see how this could also apply to young people who are depressed and fall into Web sites which talk about suicide as the solution.

Teens believe their activities and vulnerability are well-hidden, but they are not.

Helping youth understand that they are not anonymous is critical to their physical and emotional safety. Predators search for youth who they believe will be vulnerable to their exploitation. Colleges and employers look for information which might give them pause about accepting a student or hiring an employee. Insurance companies use content to deny medical claims and car makers may subpoena records to avoid paying damages in lawsuits.

Segment 6: Cyberbullying

The cyberbullying segment lays out an adequate top level framework, but does not make the larger picture clear.

First, there is a failure to agree on what constitutes bullying. Some might make such comments as "it's just kids being kids" or "they were just teasing." Others may even blame the victim with comments like "he needs to learn to take a joke," or "she needs to toughen up." As long as adults disagree as to where on a continuum of interactions -- joking, taunting, terrorizing, assault -- bullying actually begins, bullies will exploit this ambiguity.

Second, for lack of better terminology, we (including me) refer to online and offline environments, but in reality we only have one environment. The myths that what happens online stays online or that you cannot have real pain in a virtual world simply aren’t true. Cyberbullying may be the activity that most immediately highlights the way the online and offline worlds blend into one. The suicide of Ryan Halligan brings this into sharp focus.

Third, many adults aren’t familiar with the tools being used to humiliate, expose, insult, or harass and so they don't appreciate the far-reaching impact and damage caused by spiteful online actions. To understand means knowing how it feels to have your Web site defaced so that it appears to insult your friends thereby antagonizing your whole support network; to have cruel comments about you posted on your site; to receive telephone threats at all hours of the day or night; to have your image defaced so you look fatter, nude, etc; to be exposed to a predator by a bully who impersonated you; or to have your reputation smeared in front of everyone you know -- all of your friends, and friends of your friends.

Fourth, it's important to understand that the humiliation may be permanent. Information online can last literally forever and no amount of apology or atonement will ever put the genie back in the bottle. Schools, employers, friends, and others who search on a name ten, twenty, thirty years from now may come across the information. With this understanding, imagine how solutions that adults may suggest -- "just don’t go on the Web," "take down your profile," or "turn off your phone" -- would feel to a teen for whom the Internet is their lifeline to friends.

The Internet did not create bullies, but it gives them new tools to do irreparable harm.

Read my blog about the serious problem of online bullying including five safety tips for avoiding it and what to do if someone is bullying your child.

What you can do

The Internet is a dynamic entity that young people (in fact, all consumers) are riding like a rollercoaster. Though the benefits vastly outweigh the risks, we cannot discount -- or accept -- the current level of risk youth face online outlined above.

To protect teens we need to holistically address the risks and improve the safety of the online environment. This requires that we:

• Reject the myths being perpetuated about online actions, causes, and effects;
• Stop blaming teens for the problems they encounter and teach them the skills they need to be safer online;
• Hold companies responsible for providing meaningful safeguards for youth within their products and services;
• Demand that our elected officials give law enforcement the tools and resources they need to hold criminals accountable for online abuse.

Linda