Schools Tracking Kids' Social Media

ABCNews reported today that the Glendale Unified School District (in Southern CA) has hired the electronic surveillance company, Geo Listening, to track the social media posts of its 14,000 middle and high school students. Geo Listening expects to be tracking approximately 3,000 schools by the end of 2013, which demonstrates the scope of the social media abuses amongst K-12 kids.

Obviously, a company such as Geo Listening can not monitor kids' social media accounts with human eyes, but instead must rely on computer algorithms to do the searching. Geo Listening provides daily reports to administrators which take into account the "frequency and severity" of student posts, especially in the areas of cyberbullying, crime, substance abuse, and even truancy. By watching kids' accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and blogs, Geo Listening watches for keywords and location timestamps. Of critical importance to schools is whether or not potentially harmful posts are created while kids are on school property or not, and whether the posts refer to schools specifically.

Geo Listening is currently the only company providing social media monitoring services, although individual consultants are able to do this as well, and with 3,000 customers, I wouldn't be surprised to see more companies jump into this market for a wide variety of circumstances ranging from monitoring school kids to monitoring parents at work.

Source:
GeoListening.com
ABCNews

Online Beauty Contests or Photo Editor?

Instagram is a free smartphone app for iPhone or Android which allows users to add beautiful edging, color tints, and other special effects to photos and videos. But are there any reasons to be concerned about kids using it?

Like all other social networking software, Instagram requires kids to be at least 13 years old to create an account. And like Facebook, Instagram provides a special page where underage accounts can be reported for deletion. Teens accounts are considered off-limits to parents, and Instagram's rules point out that the company is "generally forbidden by privacy laws" against giving parents access to their kids' accounts.

As a photo styling app, Instagram excels, and the resulting photos can be stunning. However, where Instagram creates significant challenges for parents is in its "following" and commenting features. Like Twitter, users may "follow" other Instagram users, which gives them access to view and comment on any of that user's photos. By default, anyone can view your photos, videos, and other posts in Instagram. These features open the door to strangers following your kids' Instagram accounts, viewing their photos, and engaging them with comments. Many unsavory incidents of stalkers and adult strangers following kids have already been documented. I was disturbed to find several, unknown, grown men following my 10 year old niece's account.

Through the photo comment features of Instagram, cyberbullying has found a new medium. Kids may simply leave mean or slanderous comments on another kid's photo. Or they may participate in online beauty pageants, where kids rate the popularity, clothing styles, or photogenic qualities of each other. More well-documented instances of kids innocently creating beauty pageants with their friends have led to hard lessons in netiquette for some young kids. ABC News profiled a group of 9 year old girls who thought it would be fun to have a beauty contest in Instagram, until several of them became very upset at their friends' comments. The losers of that contest got a red "X" across their face, which probably doesn't make anybody feel beautiful.

If your child simply wants a great photo styling app with features similar to Instagram's, my favorite is called "fotor", and it's available free for iPhone or Android smartphones. There's also excellent MacOS and Windows versions, plus a great fotor website (all free).

So while Instagram is a powerful photo styling app, it's social networking features can lead to all sorts of damaging and even unintentional cyberbullying. Instagram is one of many social networking apps that is better left off a child's phone altogether, but if you want your kid to have access to the photo styling features, there are many features you should explore to help protect your child.

Besides the mandatory netiquette lessons a parent should frequently enforce with internet or phone-savvy kids, parents can also take the following steps with their child's Instagram app:

• Child accounts should not be public, but set to private, so that all followers must be manually allowed. In your child's Instagram profile, switch "Posts are Private" on
• Frequently monitor your child's success in allowing only known followers
• Create your own Instagram account and follow your child's account
• Frequently remind your child of proper Instagram netiquette: no beauty contests, no negative comments ever, and only positive language

Since Instagram is a smart phone app, parents can control whether or not kids even download it from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, using the built-in parent controls for the iOS and Android platforms.

Instagram is currently free in 2013, however news reports are predicting that advertising will begin soon. There is excellent precedent for this. By September, 2013, Instagram had over 150 million active users, and, of course, the app is owned by Facebook.

Sources: 

Instagram Tips for Parents

http://help.instagram.com/154475974694511

"Instagram Pageants: New form of cyber-bullying", ABCNews
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/special_reports&id=9097109

"Instagram Ads Are on the Way", Time.com
http://business.time.com/2013/09/09/instagram-ads-are-on-the-way/

Kids and Facebook

When should a student get a Facebook account? Schools always discourage it, parents usually frown on kids communicating through it, and Facebook does not allow kids under 13 to have an account. Yet one study found that 40% of Facebook users under the age of 18 were actually under the age of 13, and another study suggests that 34% of 9-12 year olds have Facebook accounts.

The same 1998 US law which limits email accounts to kids 13 and over, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), also governs social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Recently, the FTC actually strengthened the law with 169 pages of additional privacy restrictions. So kids under 13 aren't going to be openly welcome on social networking sites for the foreseeable future.

But kids are using Facebook in a big way, as the studies mentioned above attest. All social media sites let new users set up accounts if they provide a birth date prior to the year 2000, and absolutely no verification takes place if the new user fudges the date a bit. In 2012, Facebook was rumored to be developing a special version of Facebook for kids under 13 with substantial parental controls, but those efforts appear now to be abandoned. Facebook implied in news reports that it was simply too complicated to come up with a suitable system with the right restrictions.

Several big problems have surfaced with kids using Facebook, with the most common being cyberbullying. Kids themselves believe that about a third of bullying is now done online these days. And besides the standard types of bullying, using an impersonal, public social media platform like Facebook allows kids to be brutally honest and say things they might never otherwise say in person.

Schools around the country have encountered vicious and lewd comments on student Facebook pages in addition to inappropriate photo contests, school critique pages, teacher gossip pages, and yes, brutally honest beauty pageants. West Salem High School in Wisconsin this year became aware of a "confessions" page where students were posting details of lurid sexual encounters and drug and alcohol abuse. While the original posts were anonymous, as soon as someone "liked" a post, their name became visible to school administrators, demonstrating once again the unintended consequences of using social media.

Besides the things kids post on Facebook the other major problem is the amount of time spent using Facebook. 43% of kids in grades 9-12 now say social networking sites like Facebook are their "primary mode of communicating with friends", according to one report. Kids consume huge amounts of evening and weekend time using Facebook. One Ashland Middle School student commented that "using Facebook" was his high school sister's primary hobby outside of school. And kids are using Facebook at school too. At schools which ban mobile devices, 63% of students report using them anyway.

Social media also allows posts to go viral, with vast numbers of users reading comments just minutes after they are posted. Earlier this year, the Watertown City School District in New York discovered just how viral Facebook posts can be when someone posted a Facebook comment saying that a student was bringing a gun to school. Once again, the largely anonymous, impersonal nature of social media allows people to say things they would never even dream of saying in public. As most Facebook users have witnessed, even parents often are guilty of "too much information" on Facebook.

The problem of underage Facebook use has become so rampant that Facebook itself estimates it's removing 20,000 underage user accounts every day, using a variety of heuristics, direct observation, and reporting to do so. Facebook even has a special site set up where people can report suspected under age Facebook users. The UK government published a detailed document in 2011 called "Common Facebook Issues for Schools" which you can find at this link.

Because educators and parents find so many problems related to Facebook usage by kids, please think twice before allowing your child to set up a Facebook account, and avoid it if at all possible. If you decide to give your child a Facebook account, at least insist that they "friend" you so that you can monitor their posts and help guide their understanding of "netiquette."

Sources:

WebProNews
Huffington Post
Linn County Sheriff's Office
LaCross Tribune, La Crosse, WI
WWNY News, Watertown, NY
Facebook.com

Kids Email 101

I'm going to post a series of brief articles regarding kids' use of the internet and online social media  based on my personal experience as an educational software developer for over 25 years as well as my education experience having worked with school districts.

First up: email accounts for students.

Mainstream email services require users to be 13 or older, but many students younger than that need or want email addresses, sometimes even at the direction of their teachers. The federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 forbids websites from collecting personal information from children under 13, so all email and social websites in the US do not allow younger students to legitimately create accounts. Of course, users may set up such accounts by providing a date of birth prior to 2000.

So what should parents and guardians do? It's up to them. Neither I nor a school can condone such a personal decision.

In 2011, a Consumer Reports survey reported that Facebook had over 7.5 million active, underage users, and more than 5 million of those were under 11 years old. That was almost 3 years ago, and the numbers have surely risen dramatically since then for all types of online social media accounts. Many families allow their kids to get email addresses because of the practical benefits, and I've seen many children under 13 use email addresses responsibly. But obviously some children may not be ready for the responsibility of having an online account.

If you do set up an email address for any child of any age, there are several common sense practices to follow:

1. Set up your child's accounts yourself, with their input
2. Make sure you know your child's account login and password, and make it clear that these can not be changed without your permission. Ever.
3. You do not need to set up the account with an actual birth date; you are simply providing free market research if you do. I use fake data whenever possible when setting up accounts, although I usually use the correct birth year (if before 2000) and zip code so that basic age and location features work.
4. Many people believe Gmail is the best free email service. I concur.
5. Set up a forwarding email address so that you get a copy of all incoming and outgoing email from your child's account. In Gmail, this is done under the Settings gear popup menu.
6. Some email services, like Gmail, provide 1 or more additional services with your account, such as online Chat, that you may wish to turn off. In Gmail, you can turn Chat off in the Settings, however other features such as the Google+ social media site require a discussion with your child in order to avoid.
7. Go over basic email send and receive features with your child so they know what to do.
8. Explain what SPAM, unsolicited emails are and instruct your child to report them, delete them, and ignore them. It's important to never click links inside spam emails, or "sponsored link" ads which appear in banners or sidebars. A good rule of thumb is to never read an email from someone you don't know.
9. Explain to kids that all emails will be public and read by you, and that emails should never contain profanity, sexual content, or other inappropriate words or pictures. They should write emails as if they are talking to a teacher out loud, and use the utmost courtesy and proper language. And of course, children should never give out their names, addresses, or phone numbers without your permission.
10. Moreover, monitor your student's use frequently and communicate with them about features, "netiquette" (internet etiquette), and who they are emailing.

While the awesome power, flexibility, storage capacity, spam filtering and completely free accounts of Gmail work for many parents, some parents may wish to explore email services designed especially for kids with more specific parental controls and possibly fewer ads. The top such services, which cost $1-5 per month, include:

• KidsEmail.org
• Zoobuh.com
• Zilladog.com

This all may seem rather daunting to a parent of a kid who has never used email, but I can say with nearly 110% accuracy that your child will use email at some point in the near future. So if you decide that it's time to let your child use email, talk about it with your child and communicate the important parameters that will help your child avoid many of the common pitfalls of social media.

Suggested Reading

Time magazine article from 2011
YouTube video: How to set up Gmail to monitor your child's email