Tag: facebook

Sexting: How to Talk to Your Kids [ wentzvillepatch.com, by Joe Smith, 15/4/2011]

I was late to the digital revolution. I resisted as long as I could. But as the famous movie quote goes, “Resistance is futile.”

As soon as I started Facebook, my eyes were opened to the wonders of social media. And don’t get me started on Twitter–I LOVE Twitter! I’m able to connect with so many people from all over the globe. The amount of information at my fingertips is staggering. The chance to reconnect with old high school friends has been fantastic. I really do love all this technology and how it’s increased my ability to connect and communicate with people.

But like anything, there are those who push the line and the envelope. With this influx of technology, there are dangers lurking for us and our kids. This week, we’ll look at “sexting.”

What is sexting?

Sexting is a new reality in youth culture. It occurs when a person takes a sexually revealing photo of themselves and send it to other people. It can also involve sending sexually explicit texts to others.

This is a problem that is more prevalent than you might think. According to surveys done by CosmoGirl and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen an Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009:

  • Twenty-two percent of teen girls and 20 percent of teen boys have sent nude or partially phones of themselves over the Internet on their phones.
  • Twenty-two percent of teens admit that technology makes them more forward and aggressive.
  • Thirty-eight percent of teens say exchanging sexy content makes dating or hooking up with others more likely.
  • Twenty-nine percent of teens believe those exchanging sexy content are “expected” to date or hook up.

And according to information from MTV and The Associated Press, 30 percent of teens sext.

Not only do 20 to 30 percent of teens sext, but it can become life or death when that picture starts to circulate around the school and community. AMW’s Safety Center website tells the story of Ohio teen Jessica Logan. One snap of a camera phone changed her life forever: that one image—meant only for her boyfriend at the time—would have deadly ramifications. Jessica’s parents said she took her own life in her bedroom after the racy photo was leaked around her school, and she had been harassed for months.

In the March 30, 2009 issue of People magazine the article “The Dangers of Sexting” tells of two young boys who shared a sext photo and wound up in trouble with the law. Fortunately for these two students, no charges were filed. But because of child pornography laws, anyone that takes and sends a nude photo of a minor can be charged.

In 2009, a CBS news report on the dangers of sexting said that anyone (minors included) possessing nude pictures of underage kids is violating the letter of the law. They can be charged with felonies and must register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

Eric Higgs, a deputy sheriff in Effingham County, IL said that in his county and surrounding counties 40 percent of teens with cellphones have received at least one sexually explicit photo from another teen.

I have personally dealt with the devastation and fallout that comes from sexting. It’s not easy sitting with parents and talking about images that their little girls have sent out to boys. It’s not easy counseling these young women that for one reason or another sent these pictures to one person, and “somehow” they ended up all over the school.

Imagine the shame you would feel, if you knew that most of the people you see on a daily basis had seen intimate pictures of you. The embarrassment would be almost too much to take. These feelings can fade with time, but the harassment that takes place can affect a person long after the picture is forgotten. It manifests itself in a low self image. Some of the teen girls have sought out the comfort of another teen boy who will tell them they love them, only to find out the only thing that boy loved was the physical encounter that came from the comforting words. Then the cycle repeats itself.

In my decade of working with teens and their families, this is not an extreme but the norm. Sex, in any form, is powerful. The teen psyche is not equipped to handle the fallout and responsibility that comes from sexting.

Thankfully there has been push back from networks with large teen audiences, such as MTV, using their large platforms to warn teens about the dangers of sexting. Hopefully this will help. But the first line of defense takes place in the home. We must be aware of the problem and then have solutions to the problem.

Here are some tips from Commonsense.org:

  • Don’t wait for an incident to happen to your child or your child’s friend before you talk about the consequences of sexting. Sure, talking about sex or dating with teens can be uncomfortable, but it’s better to have the talk before something happens.
  • Remind your kids that once an image is sent, it can never be retrieved, and they will lose control of it. Ask teens how they would feel if their teachers, parents or the entire school saw the picture, because that happens all the time.
  • Talk about pressures to send revealing photos. Let teens know that you understand how they can be pushed or dared into sending something. Tell them that no matter how big the social pressure is, the potential social humiliation can be hundreds of times worse.
  • Teach your children that the buck stops with them. If someone sends them a photo, they should delete it immediately. It’s better to be part of the solution than the problem. Besides, if they do send it on, they’re distributing pornography—and that’s against the law.
  • Check out ThatsNotCool.com. It’s a fabulous site that gives kids the language and support to take texting and cellphone power back into their own hands. It’s also a great resource for parents who are uncomfortable dealing directly with this issue.

Beyond just talking with your student there are ways to see if your student is caught up in sexting. Check your cell phone bills. If there a lot of data usage charges on your bill, it means there are some pictures being sent back and forth. Make sure you set limits on what times your teen is allowed to have the phone. Pick the phone up and look through it. If there are any sexually explicit pictures, delete them right away. And if you have to, there are resources online to help track and monitor what happens on your teen’s phone.

The world that I grew up in is vastly different than the world today. My children are and will face pressures once unheard of. Sexting is one such pressure.

As parents, we must be willing to do whatever it takes to guide our children to a point of mature adulthood. Doing so can and will lead to uncomfortable conversations and circumstances. I would encourage all parents to do a little digging on social media, both the positives and the negatives. Arm yourself with information and then use that information to help guide your child to responsibility.

Have you dealt with sexting? What advice would you give? The more conversation we have, the better we all become.

Are social networks child friendly? [ herald.ie, by Garreth Murphy, 31/1/2011].

LIKE more than 500 million people around the world, I have a Facebook account.

My son, who is eight years of age, would like one too. Aside from the fact that his mother and I don’t think it’s wise for a child of his age to be surfing the internet, Facebook doesn’t allow it. Most popular social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, restrict the minimum age of their users to 13. But that doesn’t stop pre-teens from setting up accounts by entering a false age.

Resourceful

A large part of the appeal of Facebook is its accessibility. It’s ridiculously easy to set up an account. Just to prove it, I set up a page in my son’s name. All I needed was an email address (which his mother and I have the password for) and when it came to entering his age, I simply wrote that he was five years older than he actually is. Simple. It takes less than five minutes.

“It’s up to parents themselves,” says Catherine Bolger, registered psychologist with DIT. “They have a responsibility to strictly supervise their children’s and young teens’ access to any internet sites — not just social networking sites. It sounds obvious but parents need to know what their children are doing.”

But pre-teens are resourceful and have embraced technology with an ease that their parents can sometimes find difficult to comprehend. And it’s not just a question of monitoring the family’s computer any more — most mobile phones now have internet capabilities.

More children can now use a smart-phone than can tie their own shoelaces or make breakfast, according to a January 2011 survey by software company AVG. In the poll of 2,200 mothers with internet access and children aged between two and five, more children knew how to play with a smart-phone app (19pc) than tie their own shoelaces.

While there are no statistics available to indicate how many pre-teens have social networking accounts, Facebook themselves say that they take a zero-tolerance line with those who give a false age when signing up.

“Facebook has systems in place to prevent people who identify themselves as under the age of 13 from creating accounts,” says a Facebook spokesperson when asked about their age verification process. “It’s a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (http://facebook.com/terms.php) to provide false birth-date information, and we have community verification systems after sign-up to help identify people who are doing this so we can take action.”

Police

Facebook admits that age verification is a difficult area to police. “There is no ‘perfect’ solution when it comes to age verification — on Facebook or anywhere else on the web. A child of any age can head to a search engine and look for whatever they want, from perfectly acceptable material to the highly unsavoury. What the Facebook environment offers in contrast to the wider internet is, in effect, a walled garden that enables teens to share the best of the web and consume it in a safe place where unacceptable content is quickly removed.”

If Facebook itself doesn’t have the answer, what hope do parents have? When it comes to social networking, they can either use software to block the websites or can give in to their pre-teens’ requests and allow them to set up accounts online.

Neither is a real solution, say experts. Linda Criddle, author of Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet says parents should respect the guidelines of any website that their child wants to join. “Doing otherwise teaches children that it’s okay to disregard the terms and conditions of the service,” she says.

Blocking social networking websites is not the answer, says Simon Grehan of Webwise.ie, a Government, sponsored safety initiative, providing internet safety information, advice and tools for parents and teachers.

“Parents have to take a common-sense approach. Parents have to open the lines of communication rather than just looking for filtering options to block social networking sites.”

Although Facebook has self-imposed the 13-year-old restriction, Grehan says that parents should judge for themselves when a child is ready for these types of websites. “Parents know their children better than anyone else. Some kids of 11 are very mature, while some kids of 15 are very immature. So parents themselves are best placed to make the decision of when their children are ready.”

Cyber-bullying remains a big concern of many parents. Last year the case of Irish teen Phoebe Prince made international headlines. The 15-year-old girl, who moved with her family to Massachusetts, was allegedly subjected to a sustained campaign of online abuse, which prosecutors have said led to her suicide in January 2010. And it’s not an isolated incident. Newspapers and the internet are littered with stories about cyber bullying and worse on networking sites.

But parents should take heart. Irish kids are among the most responsible users of social networking websites, according to a Europe-wide study conducted late in 2010.

The EU Kids Online research found that Irish children are the least likely to publish their address or phone number on their profile (just 7pc in Ireland compared to 14pc in Europe) and most likely to have a private profile (11pc). Irish children are less likely to encounter key risk factors — pornography, bullying, sending/receiving sexual messages, going to meetings with contacts first met online– than most of their European peers. Children here ranked 21 out of 23 for having seen sexual images online in the past 12 months.

But the more children use the internet, the more they are likely to encounter risk. Next Tuesday, February 8, is Safer Internet Day, and to mark the occasion, a new online resource is to be launched to help parents get involved in what their children are doing online, (www.facebook.com/ webwise). Communication is the key when it comes to the internet, says Aine Lynch, CEO of the National Parents Council Primary, which is involved in the Internet Safer Day: “One of the reasons children say that they don’t tell parents about things they come across on the internet that they feel uncomfortable with, is they feel that their parent may take away access to the computer. So it is important that you reassure your child that they can come to you about anything they may have seen on the internet.”

Aine advises that parents establish ground rules with their children: “It is important to talk to your child about the areas of personal information and meeting with online friends. For rules and boundaries to be really effective they are best developed between you and your child. If your child has had an input in developing the agreement in relation to their internet usage they are more likely to see the rules and sanctions as fair and are therefore more likely to abide by them.

“Rules should be very clear that your child does not give out personal information.”

For more see www.facebook.com/ webwise or www.webwise.ie

Scots teachers call for legal clampdown on Facebook as schools see rise in cyberbullying [Herald Scotland, Investigation by Rachel Money, 17/10/2010]]

Scottish teachers want a legal showdown with Facebook in a bid to make social networking sites accountable for abusive and intimidating comments posted online by school children.

 

The Education Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country’s biggest teaching union, says it receives between 50 and 60 complaints a year from teachers who have been cyberbullied, harassed and threatened online by their students.

Drew Morrice, EIS Assistant Secretary, said new laws are needed to bring websites more into line with newspapers and broadcasters which are subject to defamation and libel legislation.

He claimed most social networking sites such as Facebook “have published derogatory material and in some cases it does a lot of emotional damage”.

“We need a change in the law to make liability rest with the site holders,” he said.

Teachers have become “fair game” for malicious comment online, Morrice said, adding that there was “no reason for these social media sites to get legal immunity”. At the moment, social media websites and their owners cannot be prosecuted for insults and threats made by users.

The EIS has commissioned new research which will look at the extent of cyberbullying and harassment of teachers and lecturers for the first time.

In new legislation passed under the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, which will come into force shortly, police are to be given more powers to charge those who have harassed people using emails, text messages and social networking sites. The EIS said it will support any teacher who wishes to pursue a criminal complaint under the new laws.

Schoolteacher Jennifer, who asked for her identity to be withheld, discovered three of her teenage pupils had posted abusive comments on a website, stating they wanted to punch, stab and burn her. Two of the students have now been charged with breach of the peace.

Jennifer told the Sunday Herald: “I know these girls may end up with a criminal record and I have been torn about what to do, but I feel like I have given so much of my effort and energy into these girls and for them to turn around and do what they did is wrong.”

Brian Donnelly, Director of RespectMe, Scotland’s anti-bullying service, said: “We need to educate young people on how to use the internet and to think about what they say online and where the boundaries are.”

Dr Alistair Duff, an information technology lecturer at Edinburgh’s Napier University, described cyberspace as the “Wild West” as it is as yet untamed by law or social boundaries.

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “There is no place for cyberbullying on Facebook and we respond aggressively to reports of potential abuse. Reports involving harassment are prioritised, with most reviewed within 24 hours.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson described cyberbullying as a “deeply frightening crime” and promised that “perpetrators who engage in this criminal activity [will be] brought to justice.

“When implemented, the new stalking offence in the Criminal Justice & Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 will give victims … greater legal protection, whilst ensuring prosecutors have the full range of powers available to them to bring a conviction.”

 

 

‘There were even death threats on there, like how they wanted to stab me and shoot me in the face’

 

Next month Jennifer, a secondary schoolteacher for more than 15 years, will step into court to see two of her students face criminal charges after posting what she describes as “vile” comments about her online.

Still visibly upset, she describes how the “ordeal”, began: “I was in the classroom with fifth-year pupils and I could sense an atmosphere in the room, girls giggling and whispering every time I had my back turned. I had a hunch something was happening online. I Googled one of the girls’ names and up came a Bebo page which was public. Within a few clicks I was reading a conversation between three of my pupils and there was a photograph of me they had taken without my knowledge in a classroom.

“The comments were pornographic, calling me names and saying what they’d like to do to me, very derogatory about me personally, calling me the ‘c-word’ all the time. I felt like I’d been sexually abused. I felt so violated. There were even death threats on there, like how they wanted to stab me and shoot me in the face.

“My first instinct was to go to the principal. At first he said he couldn’t do anything because this happened outside of school, but eventually the campus police officer spoke to the girls and that’s when one of them apologised. The officer asked me if I wanted to press charges on the two who didn’t apologise and I said ‘yes’.

“When police got involved, one of the girls’ fathers said he agreed with all his daughter had written about me. This is what you’re up against. The stress is ridiculous. I ended up in A&E after I collapsed at school. They told me I’d had a severe anxiety attack. I can’t sleep because I’m worried about the court case. It’s horrendous.

“Teenagers seem to think they can write whatever they like about people and there’s no consequence. I can see this could explode and get worse for teachers if something isn’t done now.

“Parents are often concerned about their child being bullied or targeted by paedophiles but do they check on what they’re writing on Bebo about others?”

The girls face breach of the peace charges.

Bebo did not respond to the Sunday Herald’s request for a comment on this story.