MySpace TheirSpace

Tom Smith, Director of Information Technology
The Park School, Brookline, MA

The following article appeared in "The Park Parent", June 2006.

The past few years have brought us and our children a blizzard of new ways to communicate and an alphabet soup of confusing acronyms. The popularity of high speed Internet in our homes allows our children to easily take advantage of these new technologies. They see them as ways to play, to connect with friends, and to make new friends. Unfortunately, while these new technologies bring us wonderful new ways to learn and to communicate, they also create a new set of concerns for parents. Recently, the popular media has highlighted numerous instances of abuses, including the sharing of personal information and illegal contact by adults. These news reports are a wake-up call to parents, requiring us to be more involved in our children's online activities. For parents who are not yet familiar with or comfortable with these new technologies, it is difficult to know how seriously to take these alarming reports and how to help their children stay safe.

In this article, I describe a few of the online activities popular among many Park school-age children. I will also suggest a few common sense approaches parents can take to help teach your children how to be Internet-wise, and to keep safe. Recently, we surveyed our fourth through eighth graders, asking them to anonymously share information about their Internet activities. I refer to the survey throughout this article. (The full results appear at the end of this article.)

E-mail:
Electronic Mail, Like U.S. Mail, Only Faster

For some of us, e-mail has become the primary way we communicate. Most parents think of e-mail when they hear that our children are communicating electronically. Park students receive official Park School e-mail addresses and instruction when they reach Grade VI. Many parents also provide other e-mail addresses to their children, often earlier than sixth grade. It is also easy for children to get an e-mail address for free, without parent knowledge. Many children have several e-mail addresses; our survey indicates an average of about two e-mail addresses per child. Seventy-five percent said that their parents knew that they had a private e-mail address.

Instant Messaging:
Real-time Online Conversations

Instant messaging (IM) is similar to e-mail in that it allows us to communicate with others who have an IM address (or "screen name.") Some IM screen names require a paid account, but most of us use one or more of the popular free instant messaging services, like AIM (AOL) or those associated with popular social networking websites (more on these later.) Anyone can get an IM screen name. It is easy to attach completely fictitious profiles to a screen name, making it difficult to determine the real identity of the person using the screen name.

IM sessions are instantaneous. Users are connected in a session, or chat, much like a telephone call. To communicate, they use their computer keyboard, computer microphones, or webcams (cameras attached to the computer) for audio/video chats. Some computers have built-in microphones and webcams that may even be unknown to parents. IM chats can be one-to-one, like we have one-to-one conversations on the telephone, or chats with many others, like a conference call. Half of our students surveyed are active IM users.

Blog:
Online Journal or Newsletter

It has become increasingly popular for our students to create an online presence viewable by others – both friends and strangers. A blog, short for "weblog", is a kind of online diary, journal or magazine. The most common way to create a blog is to sign up for a free service and then use a few simple online tools to start creating a kind of website to post information. This is often textual information, but it is increasingly popular to include images, photos, audio and video. Professional bloggers have become front page news as they are getting an increasing amount of readership when compared to the more traditional news outlets. However, for every professional blogger there are tens of thousands of ordinary citizens with blogs that range from simple diaries to thoughtful articles.

Social Networking:
Personal Web Space Connected to Those of Others

In a kind of extension to the blogging idea, social networking websites have combined the notion of blogging, IM, e-mail, and website creation into a single "webspace." The key aspect of social networking sites is the ability to connect your webspace to the webspaces of others. The most well-known social networking sites are myspace and facebook, although there are many others. Most of these sites are completely unmonitored. Anyone who signs up for one of these free services can search the online profiles and information of other participants and can then initiate conversations with them. It was interesting to hear recently from several secondary school admissions directors that they have used social networking sites to view the profiles of some of their applicants. Forty-five percent of seventh and eighth graders at Park, and increasing numbers of our younger students, have created profiles on social networking sites.

We are working to help our students understand that it is inappropriate or unsafe to post private information about themselves or friends. Surprisingly, most of our students are oblivious to the fact that complete strangers can and do view their profiles.

When asked if they had online friends whom they have never met in person, one third of our seventh and eighth graders said "yes." There are also several fifth and sixth graders who have online friends whom they have never met in person.

Home Computer Network:
Extra Work for Families with Children

Setting up a home computer network is not "rocket science," but underneath the surface, the equipment is rather sophisticated. A modem translates cable or DSL Internet information and passes it off to a router.

Connecting your home computers to your router, either via a cable or wirelessly, is all that you need to use e-mail, IM, web browsers, and other Internet services. This is often where most parents stop, thinking they have a home computer network that will serve the entire family. Unfortunately, configuring a home computer network that is used by young children takes more work.

Other than antivirus software, the first add-on that parents consider is usually a web filtering or monitoring program. A web filter is a program that prevents children from viewing web sites that parents consider objectionable. Web filters are imperfect. They commonly allow access to some sites you would consider objectionable and can also prevent access to desirable sites. In addition, clever children can bypass web filters completely. A monitor is a program that simply logs all activities that take place on a computer. This can include web browsing, IM, and virtually anything that one does on a computer. A parent can then view the history of all computer activity. Some programs combine monitoring with filtering features. Many filters and monitors must be installed on each individual computer, though some systems can be devised that apply to all computers on your network.

I asked our students to answer a few questions about their home computer networks. Two thirds of them have no web filters and over forty percent of our students have completely private and unmoderated use of the Internet in their bedrooms. Three quarters of our students can use the Internet without asking permission from their parents.

Suggestions for Parents:

So what is a parent to do? Clearly, each household must determine what is an appropriate home network and rules, depending upon your family dynamic and the age of your children. But having been asked by many parents, I suggest you consider the following guidelines.

• Locate Internet-capable computers in a family room or other public location. This will allow you to more easily monitor your children's online activities. A bedroom is not a good place for your child to use the Internet.

• Take an active interest in your children's online activities. Ask them to show you what they are doing, with whom they are communicating, and whether they have e-mail addresses or online profiles on sites like myspace.com.

• Consider setting up clear family rules for using the Internet. Most importantly, help your children understand that they should not reveal personal information online nor meet their online friends without your permission. For example, try this simple experiment. Enter your ten digit telephone number into a Google search (e.g., "617-277-2456.") You may be surprised what you find. Anyone who knows your phone number can easily retrieve your address and view a map to your house. You can find many suggestions for reasonable family rules on sites like www.getnetwise.com. Share your family Internet rules with other parents, particularly for overnight visits.

• Consider installing a web filter or monitor. To help maintain trust among family members, it is important that everyone knows that you have installed monitoring software. You can find many different filter/monitor programs described at www.getnetwise.com.

• Familiarize yourself with the online services children are using. In addition to e-mail, use IM and sign up for a myspace.com account. Learn what your children are doing and where they are visiting online. If you don't have a monitor installed, learn how to view a web browser history to see a trail of websites that were visited.

• Just as you would consider setting limits for television viewing or video games, consider setting time limits on home computer use.

The bottom line is that clever children can always circumnavigate any system you put into place that would prevent them from using the Internet services that interest them. There is no substitute for building a strong partnership with your children and helping them to understand the implications of their online activities.

Parents and teachers have an important and challenging new role for which many of us feel unprepared. If we simply take an active interest in what our children are doing, seek opportunities to learn more about Internet tools, and follow basic parenting and teaching instincts, we will have taken great steps toward helping our children develop good computer habits and to practice safe and appropriate online behavior.

Park School Home Networking Survey

In January, 2006 we asked our fourth through eighth graders to anonymously answer several questions about their online activities. This is a summary of the results, broken down by upper and lower school.

Note: 14.3% reported using Limewire, Aimster and/or KaZaA (file-sharing communities)

* MMORPG = Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, e.g. Everquest, World of Warcraft and Halo are the standards. Children play games (sometimes violent) with others (known or unknown) on the Internet.