There is a debate about how or if parents should use spyware on their kids' computer to find out what their kids are doing online. This is a debate between parents, but is not a legal debate. Apparently a high school in Philadelphia took this idea to another level.

A Pennsylvania school district is being investigated by the FBI for remotely activating the web cams on the laptops they issued to students. The school district says that they were wanting to track online behavior when the students were supposed to be doing homework. The parents of these students disagree, saying it was a clear privacy violation. It is still unknown how the FBI will find, but I would not at all be surprised to find this a question posed to either the state's or the U.S. Supreme Court.

What do you think? Privacy violation or good intentions communicated poorly?

After watching MTV's "When Privates Go Public", I was reminded of my own high school career. I didn't have the technology that is currently available, but I saw myself in the students that were featured. The girl was naive and thought her boyfriend would never betray her trust. I was reminded how my trust was betrayed by my first love. The second student was frustrated and did something without thinking. I was reminded that I am really glad that there isn't documentation of things I did without thinking when I was a teen. As I listened to their stories, I was touched not by their story as much as how easy it is happening to youth who you would never expect.

The two stories featured were a young girl who sent a topless picture of herself and a boy who forwarded a picture of his girlfriend from his cell phone. She ended up having her picture sent to everyone in not only her school, but other schools as well. He was convicted as a sex offender and is facing those consequences (including not being able to get a job or even live with his father because of the proximity to a school). Neither person was anyone I would think would even think of doing anything like this. Both described that 'they didn't think' anything bad would happen and certainly would never have done it had they thought about consequences. I could see myself in both of these young people.

The entire episode is available online. I re-encourage you to watch it with young people in your life. It is an important topic that might lead to helping them think about consequences.

Once you watch it, post your thoughts about the documentary in the comments. Do you see yourself, or your kids, in those featured?

We've been told that 3 in 10 teens have been involved in some type of naked texting. Of those, one in five report that they have passed the images along to someone else. Since these young people are primarily defined as minors, this makes a hot story for all kinds of venues.

In the last few months the topic of sexting seems like it is everywhere. We talk about it here on SafetyClicks a lot, but the same concerns we discuss are in the main stream as well. A recent episode of The Deep End, a new ABC show about a law firm, one of the clients was a teen facing charges distribution of child pornography for a picture taken of his girlfriend. The teen being charged with child pornography for sending a nude picture of their girl/boyfriend is not all that uncommon since the laws are not prepared for this kind of behavior.

If you want to watch the episode of 'The Deep End', you can watch the full episode online. On the show everything works out thanks to the savvy lawyers - do you think you would have the same luck?

What do you think about the topic of sexting showing up so much in pop culture?

You may know YouTube as the place you saw that funny video. Maybe you watch and share family movies uploaded to the site. But maybe you are like Cecilia King of the Washington Post who was watching "Dora the Explorer" videos with her daughter when she came across "Dora on Crack".

YouTube is a great tool to share videos of your own and to watch the latest viral videos making their way through office buildings across the country. The challenge is that sometimes there are videos that are NSFW (not safe for work).

Thankfully, YouTube recognizes that not all videos are appropriate for all ages and came up with a Safety Mode. Similar to AOL Safe Search (YouTube filtering videos, while AOL Search filters search results), when it is in use it will not surface videos that are not appropriate for either viewing at work or viewing by younger users. Safety Mode can be set each time you go to the site, or can be permanently set if you login to your account. Kudos to YouTube for making our family viewing (and office viewing) that much safer.

What other safety tools do you know of?

CommonSenseMedia.org put together a great list of parenting tips for cyberbullying that I want to share.

• -- Give them a code of conduct. Tell them that if they wouldn't say something to someone's face, they shouldn't text it, IM it, or post it.
• -- Ask your kids if they know someone who has been cyberbullied. Sometimes they will open up about others' pain before admitting their own.

Parent tips for elementary school kids

• -- Keep online socializing to a minimum. Let them use sites like Webkinz or Club Penguin where chat is pre-scripted or pre-screened.
• -- Explain the basics of correct cyber behavior. Tell your kids that things like lying, telling secrets, and being mean still hurt in cyberspace.
• -- Tell kids not to share passwords with their friends.

Parent tips for middle school kids

• -- Monitor their use. See what they're posting, check their mobile messages.
• -- Tell your kids what to do if they're harassed. They shouldn't respond or retaliate, they should block bullies immediately, and they should tell you or an adult they trust. They shouldn't delete the messages because in persistent cases, the content should be reported to a cell or Internet Service Provider.
• -- If your kid is doing the bullying, establish strict consequences and stick to them. That goes for mean or sexual comments about teachers, friends, and relatives.
• -- Remind them that all private information can be made public. Posts on friends' walls, private IMs, intimate photos, little in-jokes can all be cut, pasted, and sent around. If they don't want the world to see it, they better not post or send it.
• -- Don't start what you don't want to finish. Game chat can get ugly fast. Make sure your kids are respectful because hurtful retaliation happens all the time.

Parent tips for high school kids

• -- Tell kids to think before they reveal. At this age, kids experiment with all sorts of activities, many of which should not be made public. Remind your teens that anything they post can be misused by someone else.
• -- Remind them they aren't too old to ask for your help. There are things some kids can handle on their own, but sometimes, they just need help. Coming to their parents isn't baby-ish, it's safe.

All the advice I think is great, but I especially like the tips for older teens. When I was in high school (aka, the age that I "knew everything"), I may have hesitant to ask my parents advice. Being reminded by my parents that it was still OK to ask advice helped me.

What other advice would you give to parents regarding cyberbullying?

The PBS's series "Frontline" recently aired an episode called "Digital Nation". It talked about how much the current generation has transformed the world through technology. It was done by the same people who did Growing Up Online, so I was intrigued.

The program started by talking about how effective (or not) people are at multi-tasking. I was in full agreement. I kept thinking how crazy the people were who said "they can read email, pay attention to a lecture, and search the web at the same time." Then I had to laugh at myself. I was watching this documentary with my laptop open checking mail and starting to write this post.

After I put my laptop away and started paying closer attention to the message, I was really impressed with the information.

They said that there are two categories of people in the digital arena, digital natives and digital immigrants. Among the natives, there was a deep look at the possibility of Internet addiction and the observation that multi-tasking is rampant and unproductive, the social aspect (looking mainly into massively multi-player online role playing games such as World of Warcraft), and how this technology has transformed warfare.

Regarding which camp I fall into - I think I fall squarely into the immigrant category. I have worked very hard to learn about different kids of technology, but it is not easy for me. I often end up asking people (generally young people) who are natives for help. Do you think you fit into the digital native category, or the immigrant? If you are a native, do you share your knowledge? If you are an immigrant, do you seek to learn more? How?

It is playing on PBS periodically, so I'd recommend watching it. Check your local listings for when it will be on in your area.

You may remember the Cingular commercial with the child professing the need to text her "BFF Jill" 50 + times a day. You may even have the child who has the need to text his/her BFF all day long. This is becoming more and more common.

Richard Wood, vice president of Nielsen Mobile, discussing the company's Mobile Kids Insights report, recently said: "Tweens have grown up with mobile phones and expect them to do much more than make a call." Is it just the younger market with higher expectations?

Assuming the "need" of the tween/teen to have a cell phone is a real need, having a phone that just makes calls will not do. The phones need to make a phone call home, be able to text their BFF's, take a picture of him/herself for the social networking site, and the phone must be able to download the latest song for a ring tone to match the personality of anyone calling. Extra bonus points if the phone can hold their entire music collection, surf the Web and play the latest games and get the latest apps. They almost don't even need the cell phone to make calls.

I don't think this is exactly what Alexander Graham Bell had in mind.

As an adult, parent and a kids safety advocate and professional, I "need" the cell phones to be able to make a phone call, have safety features and parental controls built in. Actually, for my own use I also need it to access my email.

What do you expect out of a cell phone? At what age do you think of all the features that are now available are "needed"?

I love the Internet. I really do. It allows me to communicate with my friends and family around the world. It lets me instantly share pictures and videos of my daughter with her grand parents. It is also pretty great that the Internet provides me with a career. Even though I think the Internet is a great place, I am not foolish enough to think it is 100% perfect.

How to keep our families safe while using technology is just one of the challenges . Enough.org has some shocking statistics on their web site. This is just a small sampling:

- Every second, $3,075.64 is spent on pornography
- 79% of youth unwanted exposure to pornography occurs in the home
- Child pornography has become a $3 billion annual industry
- 20 percent of teens have engaged in cyberbullying behaviors, including posting mean or hurtful information or embarrassing pictures, spreading rumors, publicizing private communications, sending anonymous e-mails or cyberpranking someone.
- 14 percent 7th-9th grade students reported that they had communicated with someone online about sexual things
- 30 percent of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chat room. Only 7 percent, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online"

Enough Is Enough has developed a program called Internet Safety 101. Holly Hawkins, the Director of Consumer Policy & Child Safety (and one of our very own bloggers ) calls the program "a truly unique teaching series designed to bring Internet safety education into the busy lives of parents and other caregivers." She has witnessed how this program has really empowered parents and teachers regarding online safety.

I am not sure it is ever going to be possible to make the Internet 100% safe for all members of the family - but I do think that through education and empowerment, we can make it a safer place for everyone.

"Kids will be kids."

"That's outrageous!"

"My child wouldn't do that"

These are things people say about the youth in America. The first is what people say when someone takes something small and makes a huge deal about it. The second is what people say when they hear of a teen doing something that they never thought would happen. The third is what parents might say when they are asked if their teen has ever done anything they wouldn't approve of.

We've been writing about Sexting for a while. As an attempt to stop it, some have been very heavy handed with penalties for sexting including being charged for trading child pornography. Some don't see it as that big of a deal.

As a part of MTV's 'A Thin Line' campaign to stop digital abuse, they are showing a documentary called "Sexting in America: When Privates Go Public". In their research, they site that 3 out of 10 young people have either sent or received nude "sext" messages and only 51% of them believe that their digital actions could come back to haunt them later.

It is being aired on MTV this Sunday. When I checked my local listings it is being shown again a few more times this week. I think it would be a great thing to watch the young people in your life. Do you think you will watch this?

The scene: A teen is working away on the family computer. The teen takes a little break to check her social networking site and finds something horrifying. A girl she had a fight with at school has gone on her profile and said some really mean things. The teen feels very bad and asks her parents' advice. What do you say?

All of the online safety experts have the same advice about how to keep our families safe online. There are a few variations, but the basics are always the same: Keep your personal information private, block people who aren't nice and don't open unknown files, and finally, report anything that upsets you.

It is not always easy for parents and teachers to clearly express these messages to kids and teens, especially when you either are upset. Click Clever Click Safe, from the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, has come up with a clear message we can all follow.


Zip It: Keep your personal stuff private and think about what you say and do online.
Block It: Block people who send you nasty messages and don't open unknown links and attachments.
Flag It: Report anything upsets you or if someone asks to meet you offline.

If you can remember to Zip It, Block It, Flag It, you can advise your teen to report the behavior to the provider, block the person who said the mean things. As a bonus, this takes only a matter of seconds and you have empowered your teen to stand up for herself without retaliating with more hurtful words.

Hopefully your teen will never encounter this type of harassment. But it is a good idea to talk to the kids and teens in your house. If they are old enough to go online, they should learn these simple things to help keep their time online enjoyable. What ways would you suggest to open the conversation with your kids and teens about online safety?

For Safer Internet Day, Canada is marking the occasion with a campaign by The Canadian Centre for Child Protection called The Door That's Not Locked.

One of the disconnects between kids and adults is that kids are being raised with the technology, so it is simply part of their world. Many adults have begun to use technology regularly, but in many cases there is a definitive line between online and offline. The youth are flowing easily between on and offline and in many ways, there is no difference. They are just two sides of the same coin.

The Door That's Not Locked campaign addresses the incorrect perception of some adults that the door is closed to knowing how to protect their kids because they need to know more about the tool than their kids to keep them safe. This comprehensive site is designed to educate teachers and parents with age specific tips and information, regardless of where the starting point is.

Do you feel like you know how to protect your kids and teens online?

February 9, 2010 is Safer Internet Day. To mark the occasion, countries around the world are holding a variety of events to raise awareness about how to keep kids safer while online.

The issues of one country rarely match the issues of another as closely as they do regarding children's online safety. Regardless of where you live, the desire of parents to keep kids safe online are only matched by the desire of the kids and teens to be independent and free to use the Web without hassle.

In the U.K., Safer Internet Day is being marked with an awareness campaign, "Think B4 U Post". As a part of the campaign, they have several suggested activities that translate into any nation, any area, any neighborhood. Here are a few more.



- Tell the young people you know about why they should think before they post anything online. Then have them tell two friends. Repeat.
- Host a parent's get together about online safety. There are a lot of resources available on this blog and on saferinternet.org that can help get you started. Training someone else is a great way to learn yourself.
- Help your kids make a video about "Think B4 U Post" using their own examples.
- Encourage local stores that sell technology to highlight safety features on the things they sell, no matter who the customer is.

What are some other ways you can commemorate this day?

It's no secret that many schools block social networking sites. What is a mystery to most educators is how to block sites from teens that they shouldn't be able to get to and how to allow sites that they should be able to get to easily and economically.

This article from YourSphere talks about this very problem, but poses a different solution. Instead of blocking them - use them as tools in teaching. This is a solution that I've suggested before - and I still believe in it.

When I hear from teachers, they say that if they can't get to a web site they need to use for teaching, there is always a student on hand who can help them get there. This is suggesting that we are preventing access to these sites for the wrong group. Why wouldn't we want to harness the good things social networks have to offer and include them in the curriculum, instead of pretending they are these dark caves that should be avoided?

What do you think about including social networking in the classroom?

We've talked about Twitter on this blog and it is mentioned with some regularity in the traditional media. But what IS it?

The answer (in exactly 140 characters) is:
Twitter is a micro-blogging site that is asking you to share what you are doing right now with your friends and the world in 140 characters.

Why? This video from Common Craft answers this question:

I remember when Adam Walsh was abducted. I felt the fear of all the parents around me and it really made an impression. What made an even bigger impression on me is how his father, John Walsh, reacted. He took every parent's worst fear and turned it into an organization to help all the parents whose worst fears have been realized. He paved the path to legislative changes to help missing children and his non-profit merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where he is still on the board of directors.

While the Walsh family has my highest respect, the worst part about his story is that the services are needed. I hope that you will never have a need for these services. If I am wishing for things, I would wish that there was not a need for their services. Since there is a need – I am proud that AOL has been partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in many ways for more than 10 years.

Two services available on AOL that can help locate missing kids are:

Alerts: You can sign up to be alerted when an AMBER Alert is sent in the zip code of your choosing. These alerts notify you of a missing child in the area, so you can watch for them. As you know, the missing piece of information can come from anywhere. Alerts can come via e-mail, text message to your cell phone or via Instant Message.

Updated Notifications: You can include a widget for local missing children in your area by going to your local MapQuest page. If you can provide any information about any missing child, you can call the toll-free number 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678).

The National Center's web site is full of information about protecting kids. I encourage you to check it out.