As part of the course I'm teaching exploring with undergraduate students this summer, I have compiled several resources related to Internet safety.

I find safety to be a particularly fun word. The term safe itself connotes such ideas as freedom from danger, risk, or harm. And in general, I think we can all agree that it's a concept we can all identify with. Wouldn't you rather feel safe than sorry? Safety also connotes comfort which, under certain conditions, can lead to the types of unintended consequences (e.g., complacency) that fosters the need to question what we are indeed making ourselves safe from.

As I cast about the Web looking at various safety-related resources, I am finding that the notion of Internet safety is regularly tied to topics such as personal and national security as well as civil liberties. One of the major issues related to safety and the Internet is who and what are we making safe and what are the consequences of such decisions?

Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006
This link to Wikipedia's entry provides a well-rounded overview of a congressional bill introduced in 2006 that would require schools and libraries that receive government funding to protect minors from online predators in the absence of parental supervision when using commercial social networking websites (e.g., MySpace, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.) and chat rooms. The bill would therefore prohibit schools and libraries from providing these types of websites to minors.

The good news is, the bill died in a Senate committee. The bad news is, several states created their own version to be implemented within their borders. So do one or two apples spoil the whole bunch? Certain congresspeople believe so, but luckily not the majority. The bottomline--the bill will not delete online predators, but it will make legitimate content unavailable to libraries and schools. 

Just The facts About Online Youth Victimization
danah boyd posts the video/audio and transcripts from a May 3, 2007 panel presentation for the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Forum entitled Just the Facts about Online Youth Victimization (the complete list of videos can be found here). The speakers collected provide thoughtful and reasoned responses to the potentials for abuse afforded by the open nature of the Web. Rather than locking people and resources down, the speakers advocate more dialogue, more research, and more intimacy between parents and their children.

The bottom line--victimization can be more than sexual--it's time to for parents to step up and get to really know your kids and what they are doing online and offline. [Here is another associated story/link entitled MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia located on Stephanie Booth's Climb to the Stars
website.]

Awareness Test

While this video was designed to promote awareness of cyclists, the message itself feels far more important. If only a tiny fraction of all the information going into our brains enters our consciousness, this "test" demonstrates how little we truly see. Thus by overzealously trying to protect our youth from becoming victimized online, our inattention blindness could possibly explain our inability to see the whole picture quite so clearly.

Net Dangers Over-rated 
Over at tech.blorge, David Cassel posted the following article on August 7, 2007 titled Schoolboards: net dangers over-rated; bring social networks to school. He links to a National School Board Association study (also blogged here) that "warns that many fears about the internet are just overblown."

“School district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report,” the study reports. For example, more than half the districts think sharing personal information has been “a significant problem” in their schools — “yet only 3% of students say they’ve ever given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names or other personal information to strangers.”

The report cited by Cassel goes on to note that,

In fact, 76% of parents expect social networking will improve their children’s reading and writing skills, or help them express themselves more clearly, according to the study, and parents and communities “expect schools to take advantage of potentially powerful educational tools, including new technology.”

The bottomline--while the link to the actual report seems to be no longer working, it is clear that what parents and school officials sometimes say and what they actually do-- do not clearly correlate. This then leads us back to the making rash decisions before we, as an informed society, have all the facts before us.

FBI Pairs With Website Collecting Kid Info To Make Kids Safer
This article (file under: before irony was invented) published by Wired Magazine talks about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation has set up a site to help kids learn how to use the Internet safely. However, the author, Ryan Singel, points out that the site where kids are ultimately steered to test their Internet safety knowledge does not comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act which mandates "that any commercial site collecting personal information on a child under the age of 13 must get verifiable consent from a parent."

The bottomline--another case of good intentions gone bad. Too often people seem to be in too much of a hurry in trying to do the right thing. I believe this is a natural consequence of a vastly complex communication system inside and outside our governments. Over time perhaps these issues will be rectified. 

In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession
A NYT article that shares how the nation of South Korea is dealing with Internet addicts.

To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

The bottomline--To a large degree, parents need to be able to control their children's Internet access and usage.

“I don’t have a problem,” Chang-hoon said in an interview three days after starting the camp. “Seventeen hours a day online is fine.” But later that day, he seemed to start changing his mind, if only slightly.

Cyberbullying
While cyberbullying http://cyberbullying.us/resources.php is growing in terms of becoming a real social issue for teens and the Internet, I have decided not to focus on the topic for this particular discussion. More more can be found here.

5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do
Finally, I thought it would be fun to take a different perspective on safety. To this end I give you Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School. In his 2007 TED presentation, Gever shares 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.  While the presentation title might appear disturbing to some, the presentation itself is really about safety. Gever shows us some simple things we can do to raise our kids to be creative, confident, and in control of the environment around them. Ultimately, safety becomes a matter of knowing. If you are aware of the dangers inherent in the world around, you stand a better chance to make more appropriate decisions about the decisions you make and the paths you take.

All learners need an opportunity to "play with fire." They need to see what fire can do, its benefits, as well as its dangers. If we simply tell kids "fire is dangerous--stay away" then what happens when a child is invited to play with matches with a friend? Should we spend our time time telling kids what they cannot do, or spend more time telling and showing them what they can do?

The bottomline--there are no short cuts when it comes to really understanding the worlds around us. We all need opportunities to experiment, to play, to share, and to learn and reflect. It is therefore incumbent upon us, as teachers, as parents, as brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, to be actively involved in the teaching and learning process of our children. While schools provide assistance in helping children form the social norms that make up our culture, they are not enough. Internet safety and the safety of us all is a cultural responsibility--we're all in this together. Research will always be needed to help us better understand how we can lead safe and healthy lives whether we're online or off. Internet safety is not about technology--it's about people.