MHLS - Internet Safety for Young People

Internet Safety for Young People

Information gathered from postings on YA-YAAC listserv

Information to share in Internet safety programs

Limiting access to blogs

Many blogging services allow users to limit access to certain posts. LiveJournal allows a post to be security locked so that only readers you have designated as "friends" can read it. If you want to post pictures of yourself and friends on your blog, this kind of feature is a good one to use if you're concerned about privacy. Some blogging services require you to have a paid account rather than a free one to access certain features. Concerned parents with the available money should consider whether upgrading their child's account adds any of these safety features.

Common information-sharing situations
A library Internet security program should emphasize the more common, typical problems students may encounter, such as having something ill-considered on the Internet get them in trouble with their parents, their school or their ex-significant other, rather than with unrelated non-school adults. Students frequently get in trouble with school for outside-of-school Internet activity.

Posted by -Ginger Weil, MLS student, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Piecing together scattered information (with bad intentions)

Most people don't realize how easy it is to piece together relatively small bits of information found in various places on the Internet. It's surprising how many young teens (and others) will fake their age in one place (their profile), but then fill out a meme, a quiz or an interview that makes it very clear what their real age is. Or they may not mention a location in their profile but entries include their school name, sports team names, local hangout, etc. Someone who's willing to invest some time (and who has access to a number of entries) can gather a lot of information.

This is tricky to demonstrate in a class, but constructing a sample set of short posts that had all these different little bits and pieces in there, and then walking people through exactly how much information they're giving away over time might work.
Information archives
What you say online can stick around for years and years. Sites like http://archive.org or Google's cache (or Usenet archives) might help demonstrate this. Remind them that *anything* that's public information may potentially be archived. (This is a 'don't be paranoid, but do be aware' thing.)

Drama and angst

Teenagers have drama and angst and are very emotionally charged. Often teens completely panic because they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a troubling situation, with threats, nastiness, bullying, etc. They get scared, they make bad choices, and scary stuff can happen.
The ideal is that parents are aware of their child's online activity and support them in making better choices; however, we all know this isn't what happens all the time.
What parents and teachers should be doing
1. Encourage teens to find *some* adult they feel they can talk to about this. That might be a relative (aunt, uncle, older sibling) or a teacher or librarian. It means there's someone they can go to, if they get in over their head or a situation suddenly turns nasty, who can help them figure out how to talk to their parents about it. (This parallels, very nicely, the advice a lot of groups give about physical safety and abuse concerns.)
2. Encourage teenagers to think about supporting each other. Model thoughtful online behavior. Say "Hey, are you sure you really want to post that? I'd be embarrassed if my parents found something like that about me, and it's totally public…" or "Hey, knock it off, it's not worth the argument." It's not perfect - peer pressure gets in the way - but it helps. It also seems to help teens be more willing to find adult support from someone when it's necessary.

Marketing

Remind them of who's running the site. Yes, MySpace is popular but what information is being collected about them? What data mining things can the people who own the servers do? What information is required to register?
This is one reason I think a lot of the projects that started as open source or volunteer distribution are safer. There are sometimes errors of judgment, but the overall goal is creating something cool. The more recent commercial services aimed at buying into the success of the older methods are a bit worrisome as a result, especially if people don't think through who they're giving information to.

Some information from Jen Arnott jenarnott@gmail.com
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