Social Networking on the Internet

The Internet—Increasingly Indispensable

• Research

• News

• Ideas and help with projects

• Instructional Games

• Homework Help

All Reasonable Efforts are Made to Ensure Safe Internet

Use at School

Require that all students have read and signed a Technology Usage Form.

Instruct teachers to supervise young children when children are using the Internet.

Block inappropriate sites by categories using an Internet filter.

Categories Blocked by our filter include…

Games

General Pornography

Hate Groups

Instant Messaging

Spyware

Obscene/Tasteless

Personals

R Rated

Unsavory Content

Weapons

Alcohol

Chat

Child Porn

Criminal Skills

Banners

Cults

Drugs

Explicit Art

Gambling

Facts on Social Networking

• 87% of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 currently use the Internet. Of those, about half go online on a daily basis.

• Surges at the seventh grade mark. While about 60% of sixth graders use the Internet, by seventh grade the number jumps to 82%. (Pew Internet and American Life, "Teens and Technology," July 27, 2005.)

• 47% of children have received e-mails with links to pornographic websites. (Symantec market research report, June 9, 2003)

More facts on social networking

• 30% of teenage girls said they had been sexually harassed in a chat room. Only 7%, however, told parents, --worried that their parents would ban them from going online.

• 86% of girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents e-mail, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship. (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002)

• 64% of teens say that teenagers do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about. (Pew Internet and American Life, “Protecting Teens Online,” March 17, 2005.)

More facts on social networking

Online teens admit that they frequently communicate with people they have never met.

• 54% have Instant Messaged a stranger, • 50% have emailed a stranger• 45% have participated in a chat room with a

stranger • 28% of teens said they use code words daily to

hide their online conversations from parents – example: “PIR”

(Teen Research Unlimited, “Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research,” October 2005.)

Trends among youth

• Email

• Instant Messaging (IM)

• Text Messages on Cell Phones

• Communicating through social networking websites (MySpace, Facebook, Xanga)

• Blogs

Net Lingo

Examples

• POS—parent over shoulder

• g2g—got to go

• LOL—laugh out loud

• A/S/L or ASL—age/sex/location

• Brb-be right back

• B4N—bye for now

IM—Instant Messaging

Almost 1/3 of the surveyed

6th graders have friends on their buddy list

they do not know.

AIM

AIM is the AOL version of Instant Messaging. (Others exist, but this is by far the most popular)

It is free. Been around a long time.

Students generally want to start using IM in about 4th or 5th grade.

Some students equate popularity by the number of friends on their Buddy List.

As a safety precaution, students should not have people on their Buddy List that they do not know “PERSONALLY!”

Students should block IMs from anyone not on their Buddy List.

Students should not put information in their Away Message that would allow someone to locate them.

Away Messages

Check the Privacy Settings for Young Students

Blocking can be helpful if your child is a victim of cyber bullying!

Cyber Bullying: Breaking It DownBeware of the Cyber-Bully

Cyber Bullying is verbal harassment that occurs during online activities. Cyber Bullying can take many forms.

These are a few: a threatening e-mail a cell phone text message nasty instant messaging session repeated voice messages to a cell phone a website set up to mock others “borrowing” someone’s and pretending to be them

while posting a message. forwarding supposedly private messages, pictures, or

video to others.

Blogging: Breaking It DownThe Promise and Peril of Blogging

Blogs (Weblogs): Journals/diaries posted on the Internet.Blogs are maintained in chronological order by date of post. People who read the blog are usually welcome to post replies, their thoughts, etc. This makes most blogs interactive.Blogging makes the writer feel like they are writing confidentially because they are behind a screen. However, the reality is that anyone online can read the blog. This can be dangerous.

My Space

My Space Privacy Settings

Facebook

Benetsafe.com

• On-Line Networking isn’t bad! Poor judgment is!• Facebook is the 21st century version of the 20th century

yearbook without the benefit of the yearbook sponsor editing it!

• Social Networking is a part of the millenniums’ culture.Advice to Students• If you wouldn’t do it face to face—don’t do it on-line.• If it isn’t who you are in person, don’t pretend to be that

person on-line.• If you wouldn’t want a parent, a teacher, a future

employer or potential college admissions counselor to read it, don’t “post it.”

About parental surveillance

• Do you let your kid know or not?

• How to handle the information you get by “snooping.”

• Scale by age. Lots of reason to do for younger kids. Makes little sense, though, by age 18.

Thanks to…

• i-SAFE America Inc.

• 5963 La Place Court Ste. 309 Carlsbad, CA 92008 Tel: (760) 603-7911 www.isafe.org

Their information continues to be a wonderful source for our school system.