This weekend I read an article called New Approach To Online Safety Education which summarizes new research about kids who use social networking sites and their likelihood of internet victimization. The author, Larry Magid, has written about internet safety for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and hosts websites dealing with online safety for kids and teens. The research comes from several universities, including UNH.
In the past, safety measures have focused on the importance of not posting personal information like name, age, location, school, phone number, etc. While this is a good practice for children, the three studies cited suggest that this may not be the most important message for us to be relaying.
The data is consistent with other recent findings that have caused the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to no longer focus on “stranger danger” but rather the types of interactions that children are having with other people, including both strangers and acquaintances.
The types of interactions? The obviously risky ones like sex talk with someone met online. But also the less obvious – rude or nasty commenting and harassing or embarrasing others in a virtual setting. The kind of behavior we teachers don’t allow in school. The kind we trust parents don’t allow at home. Perhaps now the adult message needs to be stronger that these behaviors are unacceptable everywhere – including in the virtual world where we encourage anonymity and true identities can be hidden behind usernames and avatars.
This new research doesn’t mean we’ll change our message to kids about posting personal information. But even our young students chat – with each other as well as with unknown players in virtual settings. For their own safety, they need to learn to be as cautiously respectful online as they are off.
