Online friendships more complicated than earlier thought

My children don’t spend a ton of time online, but they do communicate with their friends on the internet via MySpace. With all the spooky talk that TV pundits spout, particularly about MySpace, you would think that the internet is a space-age demon. It isn’t: as with anything else, it depends upon how the internet is used. A study last year in Cyberpsychology Behavior (yes, there is such a journal) looked a what influences online friendship formation. It also attempted to look at motives for online communication as potential explanations. Drawing on a sample of 493 adolescents, the study tested a path model of adolescent friendship formation. As predictors, it included introversion/extroversion, online self-disclosure, motive for social compensation, and frequency of online communication. The analysis showed that extroverted adolescents self-disclosed and communicated online more frequently, which, in turn, facilitated the formation of online friendships. Introverted adolescents, by contrast, were more strongly motivated to communicate online to compensate for lacking social skills. This increased their chances of making friends online. Among introverted adolescents, a stronger motive for social compensation also led to more frequent online communication and online self-disclosure, resulting in more online friendships. The study concluded that the antecedents of online friendship formation are more complex than previously assumed.

When you think of it, the findings make sense. It is not hard to imagine a shy, introverted adolescent using the internet for social compensation. On the other hand, the results of the study are fairly disturbing, Although we monitor our children’s time on the internet I still worry about the predators who lurk online waiting to chat with innocent kids.

Web Safety for Kids

The Internet is good for so many things: information can be pored through, communities can be formed, the world can be made smaller.

These days, Internet communities are as common with modern kids as giggly prank calls were when we were younger.

The dominance of My Space - a virtual community where friends and strangers can post stories, photos, and personal information – is as commonplace amongst school-age kids as television and cell phones. It’s estimated that more than half of eighth to twelth graders have some kind of personal account online.

It can be a source of harmless networking and mindless fun – but there’s also an ominous side, and law enforcement want parents to be aware.

According to a Sherriff’s presentation made in Albany recently, one in four 10 – 17 year olds have had unwanted exposure to sexually explicit pictures online, and one in five have received sexual solicitation. The presentation demonstrated how a preditor could take an email address and a little brother’s name, spend 20 minutes online and learn a kid’s full name, schedule, and home address.

Scary stuff.

This article has tips for web safety for kids – and tips for parents to protect their kids while respecting their privacy.

Family “contracts” on Internet blogging and networking can be found here. It’s worth looking at if you’re concerned about what your kids may be doing online.

Parents spy on kids online

Worried for the safety of their children among the dark corridors of Internet anonymity, parents are coming up with innovative – some would say sneaky – ways of monitoring their children.

This recent article discusses several techniques parents are using to ensure that their children are not visiting obscene sites or giving away too much personal information.  Methods range from monitoring IM to hiring a sleuth to track down a teenage girl’s My Space account.

Companies are also becoming attuned to the need for software to filter and block potentially harmful content – and creating protective software such as K9 Web Protection.

I have some mixed emotions about this.  I do believe kids need some degree of privacy if they want it, to sort out their feelings and belief systems.  I was a kid who wrote everything down in my ultra private secret snoopers keep OUT diary and it helped me sort out issues I didn’t want to discuss with my parents.  But I also think there is a need for some monitoring because of the potential for danger on the Internet.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t trust any company currently providing social environments (MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal, etc.) to make any serious changes to ensure the safety of it’s online users unless there is a tremendous demand for it. If MySpace were deserted because a new, authenticated user social environment came online, then they might make changes. Unfortunately, that means that parents must be ultra-vigilent or not allow their kids online at all.

What do you think? Do you monitor your kids?

MySpace takes precautions against predators

In the wake of a series of negative articles and increasingly nervous parents, My Space is taking precautions against Internet predators by introducing new security measures.

The new rules are meant to prevent adults 18 and over from requesting to be on a younger person’s friend list unless they already know the youth’s full name or email address.

While the move is nice in theory, it’s a tad useless, in my opinion, because the site doesn’t have any way of verifying the real age of the user when they’re registering. I just registered successfully as a 16-year-old and I’m 54.

I don’t know if there is much My Space can do to solve the problem of Internet predators and false identities unless they agree to use authentication of all their users. Bringing all the MySpace millions of users ‘inside’ would be difficult if not impossible, but my hope is that a new, safer environment for teens and young adults will eventually take on MySpace. Such a new social environment could be a very popular place if parents were satisfied that all the users were authenticated. I know I would be. 

High school reserves right to search cellphones

Framingham High School, in Framingham, Massachusetts, is famous for a number of things. Now they can add another first to their list: the principal has decided that he has the right to search students’ cell phones if he thinks they may have drugs or stolen goods. Critics, including the students, say it is an invasion of privacy. At least one student feels that administrators are making the school out to be more problematic than it actually is.

Administrators, on the other hand, say they need the policy to improve security at the school and stop illegal activity. According to federal law, schools can conduct searches if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that a student has contraband. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, “School officials need only have ‘reasonable suspicion‘ that a particular search will reveal evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”

Personally, I’m not sure data held in a cell phone would be “evidence” — there could be plausible explanations for just about anything and, once upon a time, people in this country were considered innocent until proven guilty. At the very least “I’m writing a novel about a drug dealer — those are notes and excerpts” should result in reasonable doubt. I know that if I were a student at the school, I would certainly encourage my classmates to join me in putting “incriminating evidence” in their cellphones just to make the policy irrelevant.

You have to remember, though, I’m a troublemaker by nature. What do you think? Is this a reasonable policy for a high school in this day and age, or is the school really going way to far?

Marines recruiting on MySpace

The Marine Corps entrance into the hangout of 94 million mostly-teenage users is stirring up controversy.

In an effort to “fish where the fish are”, the United States Marine Corps has set itself up with a profile on MySpace in an effort to pique the interest of potential new recruits.

A Marine Corp representative said “The Internet is a great way to show what the Marine Corps has to offer.”

But some object to these tactics to recruit teenagers, noting that it’s not fair for the Corps to be using something that’s kind of like a youth domain, to “sucker youth into something they’re not really explaining fully.”

The US Army, originally leery of MySpace because of well-publicized report of online predators, plans to set up a profile soon.

Now, I’m not sure of the legalities around recruiting teenagers in the US, but this does seem a little stealthy to me, kind of like recruiting in a high school parking lot. I think perhaps I’d be more comfortable with the notion of a paid ad space on MySpace, rather than a “profile” set up as a member of the MySpace community.

What do you think? Is this just really savvy advertising or an unethical way to recruit teenagers?

Text Messaging alerts parents of truants

Skipping school just got a bit harder for some Tucson-area students. Several high schools in the area are using a text-messaging system to alert parents of truant students.

The system, called “Messageyou,” is already in use in Australia. Messageyou sends a text message to parents that have signed up for the program, telling them the child has an unexcused absence.

Oftentimes, parents are hard to reach by phone and cunning students erase messages left on the voice mail.

Or the kids could just do what I did and have ahem, “valid” excuses, as to why they were absent.

High school switches to Linux

If you haven’t heard of Linux, you’re probably not a high school student in Indiana. The Department of Education has installed 22,000 Linux workstations in 24 high schools over the past year and the number of schools is expected to grow to 80 this year. Like Windows, Linux is an operating system, the basic set of software that lets you run programs, manage files, and so on. Unlike Windows, however, Linux is available for free. Developed over the last fifteen years by hordes of eager volunteers, it has become a solid, reliable operating system suitable for both desktop computers and the servers that run the internet.

Mike Huffman, special assistant for technology at the Indiana Department of Education, said “The amazing part of this is, with everything we’re doing in the classroom, teachers don’t bring up Linux. They don’t bring up open source. They bring up curriculum.” Huffman asked a student, last year, what he thought of using a Linux-based computer instead of a Windows-based one. The student answered, simply, “who cares?” Huffman explained the impetus for the switch: “We have a million kids in the state of Indiana. If we were to pay $100 for software on each machine, each year, that’s $100 million for software. That’s well beyond our ability. That’s why open source is so attractive. We can cut those costs down to $5 [on each computer] per year.”

With a savings like that, it’s a wonder more schools haven’t made the switch. Currently, of the five active computers in my office, only one — a file server — runs on Linux. My next laptop, however, will definitely run Linux rather than Windows. Would you want to see your kids’ schools switch to Linux? Have you considered making the move yourself?

Just how public are your private records?

I’ve talked before about how concerned I am regarding internet security and identity fraud. I think any country that relies on social security numbers as the main source of identification in both social and financial arenas is doing things ass-backwards and just plain stupid. Yes, fellow Americans, I mean our government allowing our social security numbers to become part of a public record both inside county courthouses and on the internet. What? You think your social security number isn’t available to anyone with internet access around the world? Are you sure?

Betty Ostergren, a 56 year old resident of Richmond Virginia, is committed to making important people angry. She puts their Social Security numbers on her Web site, or links to where they can be found. She does this because she is trying to embarass government into making privacy a priority. And she’s making an impression. She isn’t trying to make government officials like CIA Director Porter J. Goss, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, or Florida Gov. Jeb Bush be victims of identity theft, as were millions of plain, hardworking Americans in the past year. She is on a crusade to scare and shame public officials into doing something about how easy it is to get sensitive personal data.

Ostergren discovered that a wealth of documents — including marriage and divorce records, property deeds, and military discharge papers — containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other sensitive information is accessible from any computer anywhere. Many of the online records are images of original documents, which also display people’s signatures. She began organizing citizens and complaining to officials on the issue in 2002, when a title examiner called to warn her that her county was about to put a slew of documents online, including pages with her signature. She swung into action, bringing enough pressure on the Hanover County Virginia officials that they halted their plans. Then she broadened her attack, targeting other counties in Virginia and elsewhere.Today, she is eager to guide reporters to her favorite example: the Social Security number of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), which is viewable via the Internet on a tax lien filed against him in 1980. She says that if she could easily find Tom DeLay’s social security number online, couldn’t internet identity thieves do just as well with your records. I think she’s got a good point.

Ostergren found that for decades, Social Security numbers, mothers’ maiden names and other crucial forms of personal identity were routinely included in dozens of documents with little thought to the consequences. That, in turn, enabled companies such as ChoicePoint to send their workers to courthouses across the country to grab such personal data for their databanks. The information is collated, or analyzed, and sold to other companies and back to government agencies. Just what I wanted to hear. All those things I assumed would remain private, like my mother’s maiden name, are out there for anyone willing to dig them up in a county courthouse. Once that information is found, it becomes a valuable commodity and can be sold over and over again to financial database organizations. Now I get why I’m on every junque mail list for credit cards ever created, regardless of the “Do Not Contact” letter I’ve sent.

Florida is one of the few states that has legally required the blacking out of sensitive data from public records. Why Florida, which has never been known for it’s forward thinking? Thank Ms. Ostergren. When she finds a well-known figure, she decides whether exposing his or her number on her Virginia Watchdog Web site might further her cause. Which is how she came to link to Jeb Bush’s Social Security number.She notified Bush through someone she knew in the administration of his brother, President Bush. Soon after, she noticed that the governor’s number was blacked out on the county Web site in Florida where it was listed. So she posted it on her site. Ostrander says:”I decided since he protected his own hind end and nobody else’s, I’d put his on there,” she said.Ostergren gets my vote for Woman of the Week. She’s my new hero!

Parenting teens in the days of MySpace

I’ve written before about MySpace and that I allow my teens to have pages on this site, despite my reservations. I do so because I am ever vigilent about watching their pages, questioning anything I think is inappropriate, and deleting friends I don’t want them talking to. I’m extremely careful and I talk about adding new friends and giving out personal information all the time. My kids roll their eyes they’ve heard it so much. But evidentally not quite enough.

Today I was checking my daughter’s page while she was in school. First I went through her inbox to see any new messages. She has several, from some guy I’ve never heard of, and a couple of them are really inappropriate. So I looked at his site and there are 6 pages of women and no men at all in his friends list. Plus, quite a few of the women are scantily clad and a bit too sexy for my taste. They guy identifies himself as 23 years old. I’m really not happy.

I contacted MySpace and reported him as a predator. I contacted the police and reported him as a predator. The police are taking it seriously enough to come over and get the printouts of his mail to the Girl. They’re going to be watching his space carefully. I also sent him a message telling him I was reporting him to both the police and to MySpace and not to contact my daughter any more. She is no longer on his friend’s page, either.

But what upsets me the most is that when the Girl came home and I questioned her about this guy, she told me a friend of hers is in love with him, and that he’s been to our house to pick up said friend. Her friend is 13, too. OMG, I’m so upset it’s beyond pissed and angry. This is bothering me to the core of my being.

I deleted this guy and blocked him from my daughter’s site. But the bad thing is, unknowingly she gave him WAY too much information as to where her friend lives now, and now to get in touch with her. I don’t think she meant to, and she says that he’s a ‘nice guy’, like all predators are. She just doesn’t get the whole predator thing at all, despite watching Dateline shows on this very topic over and over. She thinks that because her friend knows him in real life, he’s OK. Even when I showed her the latest mail from him asking about her sexual preferences. She’s 13. I don’t think she needs to be asked this by anyone, never mind some 23 year old creepy guy on MySpace.

I so want to delete her page, but she is using it appropriately 99.9% of the time. She made a bad error in judgement, one that involved the police and her friend’s parents. Hopefully she’ll learn from her mistakes. If not, the page goes.

Update: About 2 hours later, after I had talked to her about this, this jackass emailed her thru MySpace again. AGAIN. First he responded to my email telling him to leave my kid alone with this ditty:

” I might also add that a bitter old lady should really mind her own business and allow her daughter to become a person, not just a posession that you monitor. “

Then the Girl writes back, idiot that she is:

” THANK YOU. want to tell her that. but i really am sorry and i like totally cried ova this “

He responds to her mail:

” HAHA, Im sorry, I know your mom is just looking out for you, but i dont think your profile says ur 13 anyway does it? i thought it said a bit older, but dont worry, im a nice guy, I assume mxxxxx told you some stuff about me so….ya, thatd be good lol. so how was ur day otherwise??? “

Then she writes back:

“if i were u, i would nt message me, but if u want to talk to me, tell some to message me and tell them to tell me to message u back. i can message u and we can talk that way but u shouldnt message me first. did that make any sence?”

And he responds:

“it would make more sense if you just had an email address lol???”

At which point I catch her in the act and go ballistic. I emailed him this:

“How fricking stupid are you? I told you to leave my child alone. I’ve reported you to the police. YOU STOP HARASSING MY CHILD NOW. NOT ONE MORE WORD. NOTHING. You are a predator and a real sicko. She’s 13. Mxxxxx is also 13. I’ve contacted her Mom, and she isn’t happy. Either you stay far away or I’ll be forced to have the police take immediate action.

DO NOT RESPOND.”

So, I again blocked him from her site (yahoo to MySpace for ignoring me the first time), copied all the emails for the police to pick up tomorrow morning, and banned her from the computer unless I am sitting with her. She told me she felt badly that she just left this jackass hanging. She STILL thinks he is a nice guy.

I called her friend’s parents to let them know, and found that her mother had already reported this guy and called the FBI. And still he goes on.
I haven’t yet pulled down her page, but the computer is now password protected and she cannot get on it without my knowing. Heh.

I fricking HATE THIS.