Magnus Becker: “Please visit www.isafe.org to the work of i-SAFE’s Internet Safety Education and Outreach program!”

United States: The Promise and Perils of Blogging

The online sexual predator over time can glean enough information from a blog to put together a personal profile of the author. School name, names of friends, teachers, physical addresses, street names, town—anything and everything can be used by the sexual predator. While the teen posts what s/he thinks are innocent details, s/he is in reality drawing a roadmap to her house. S/he is lulled into a false sense of security by what s/he sees as the anonymity of the Internet.

This perceived anonymity gives rise to the other dangers of blogging: cyber bullying and slander. Without the physical immediacy of an audience, teen bloggers are less likely to see and understand the damage their words can do. Schoolyard gossip finds its way into a blog, and the target of the gossip suffers at the hands of unknown online assailants.

Blogs can be used to the same effect by cyber bullies. The damage done by cyber bullying cannot be overstated—just recently Ryan Halligan, a 13-year-old from New Hampshire, committed suicide as a result of cyber bullying. Teens, especially when it comes to blogs, sometimes forget that anything posted on the Internet has an unintended audience, and therefore, unintended consequences.

In the United States two sites have been incredibly successful within kids and teens market – www.myspace.com and www.facebook.com. MySpace is a phenomenon in America, allowing teens and adults to create their own space and encourage personal expression though pictures, diaries and the like. Of particular interest is the ability one has on these sites to have MySpace “buddies” – a list of other MySpace participants whose picture and link can be seen. Like the AOL “Buddy Lists” children feel the more buddies they have, the more popular they are. Often teens are allowing just about anyone to become their buddy solely for bragging rights. Sexual predators and others know this and are ready to take advantage of it.

‘The Children’s Online Protection and Privacy Act’ (COPPA) is an American federal law which requires, among other things, that no personal information maybe collected by those under 14 years of age. In its rules MySpace states that children under 14 should “Go Away.” Yet it is incredibly easy to state you are of age when you sign-up – there is no other verification. Here at i-SAFE we continually get calls and e-mails from parents of children far under COPPA’s requirements that have had active MySpace pages with pictures and references to their ages. American schools have become aware of the blog phenomenon and the majority of schools implementing the i-SAFE K-12 curriculum do not allow access to these sorts of sites on their computers.

We speak to many kids and teens here in the United States that do not realize anyone can access their private sites on MySpace; their belief is that they have to direct someone to their page. The naivety inherent in children is something we all respect and protect as long as possible – perhaps with all the good the Internet does, the loss of that precious commodity is perhaps the worst it can do. In fact, most parents have no idea of what blogging is or if their children are a part of it. While kids and teens have the technical skills their parents lack, they can not match that savvy with the maturity needed these days – here at i-SAFE we call that the real digital divide. The following link illustrates that this dilemma faces all sorts of parents, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11080181/, not to mention situations like this http://www.middletownpress.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16080596&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6

The Internet has brought such positive aspects to kids and teens across the globe – a world of information and connections we could never have imagined, yet the perils of the Internet are increasingly dangerous. The advent of the Blog is a true testament to this duality.

Please visit www.isafe.org to the work of i-SAFE’s Internet Safety Education and Outreach program, or contact blay@isafe.org regarding i-SAFE in your nation.