M. Markus

Concern about children’s safety and privacy online has led to a number of initiatives and programs — by schools, by private companies, and by government entities. These efforts are all aimed at protecting children and teens from what are perceived to be the big dangers on the Internet: sexual predators, advertisers, and bullies, for example, but they’re also at protecting children and teens from themselves.

A new proposed piece of legislation in California (SB242) aims to mandate new privacy policies and practices for social networking sites. Much of the language was initially framed in terms of protecting those under age 18. That age restriction has been taken out of the bill’s draft language, and now requires a number of changes to how social networks handle all their users’ privacy.

Facebook still does not allow users under 13 to register for an account – and the legislation won’t change existing age restrictions. But now all social networks will have to establish default settings that prevent public or private display of anything other than a user’s name and city without their consent. New users would have to establish their privacy settings during the registration process. Privacy options would need to be written in “plain language” and displayed in an “easy-to-use format.” Sites would have to remove personally identifying information, including photos, within 48 hours of a user’s – or a minor user’s parents’ – request. And companies could be fined up to $10,000 any time they fail to do any of this.

Not surprisingly, many notable Internet companies, including Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Google and Skype, are expressing their opposition to the bill, saying that not only is it unnecessary, it violates the First Amendment, and would damage California’s technology sector.

Nonetheless the bill raises a number of interesting questions about how we think privacy and security online works — and for whom. Is there a difference between making the Internet safe for children, versus safe for teens, versus for anyone? Is it an easy slide between creating laws that address the security online of children under age 13 (as in COPPA), users under 18, and all users?

That line between who needs such protection is also at stake as federal legislators look to update COPPA, with the “Do Not Track Kids Online Act.” There was some concern that this new COPPA would also change the age limit on privacy protection measures from 13 to 18, but the draft introduced by Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has left the age limit the same but beefed up and modernized the language. (COPPA was first passed in 1998, in pre-Facebook and even pre-Google world.)

It isn’t just a matter of the age of a child that may or may not need better privacy protection online that has some onlookers concerned; it’s about the role of the parent. Although it may reassure some parents to know that a law could enable them to demand data about their child be pulled offline within 48 hours, some have interpreted the bill to mean that parents would also have a backdoor to their children’s social media accounts. Teen researcher danah boyd is among many who have balked at this idea asking “Why do well-intentioned politicians assume that parent-child dynamics are always healthy?”

How will these parental requests work? How will companies verify parenthood? What about divorced parents? Emancipated minors? When does parental access get revoked?

If parents need to have some sort of system for monitoring their children’s online activities, what should this look like? Should this be legislated? Should technology be used to negotiate children’s online activities, or should parents and children work that out together? That last option is ideal, perhaps, but is it realistic?

Flickr:Husky

Project Tomorrow has just released the results of its Speak Up 2010 survey that asked over 300,000 students (and 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, and 3,500 administrators) about their thoughts on technology and learning in the classroom. The results confirm what many of us already know: Children have access to a wide variety of technologies, both at home and at school.

Take for example, these statistics comparing 6th graders today with those from just five years ago. In 2005, half of the 6th graders surveyed said they own a cellphone. Today, that same statistic holds true, but now an additional one-third say they own a smart phone. Almost 73% say they own an MP3 player, compared to just a third in 2005. Half of all 6th graders take tests online and three times as many have taken an online class as did in 2005.

Almost half of 6th grade girls and over a third of 6th grade boys say they regularly update their social networking profiles – up over 125% from five years ago. This, despite the fact that most 6th graders are not old enough to legally register on many of these sites.

But here is the statistic I found particularly striking. In 2005, the 6th graders complained that the Internet at their school was too slow. Today, their number one complaint is that school filters and firewalls block the websites they need to do their school work. It wasn’t just the main complaint of 6th graders — 71% of high school students and 62% of middle school students said that greater access to the Internet was the number one thing their school could do to make it easier to use technology.

Of course, removing filters and blocks at school is easier said than done. CIPA, the Children’s Internet Protection Act, requires that schools and libraries receiving federal E-rate funding have protective measures in place when it comes to students’ Internet access. But there’s often a gap between the mandate for and the practice of filtering and blocking.

CIPA requires institutions have an Internet safety policy that addresses blocking or filtering access to images that are obscene, child pornography or harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors). It requires a method for monitoring (not tracking) activities.

CIPA, along with the other regulations that are frequently invoked in discussions of blocking (namely FERPA and COPPA, both of which address data privacy), is meant to protect children online. But as teacher-educator Tom Whitby argues in a blog post, “World’s Simplest Online Safety Policy,” these regulations “were not created to keep students stuck in the past, educated in a disconnected school environment that shares little resemblance to the real world for which we should be preparing our children. These acts do not say we can’t publish online student’s names, videos, work, pictures, etc. They do not prevent us from using social media, YouTube, email, or any of those things that may be blocked in many school districts. An important goal of education is to strive for creation and publication of content by students. In today’s world technology and the Internet are an essential components of that process.”

Based on the results from the Speak Up 2010 survey, students seem to realize that, even if schools and districts are reluctant to do so. As students’ access to Internet — for better or worse — may be unrestricted at home, they are increasingly frustrated to find the tools they use the most are unavailable at school. Not surprisingly, many students also listed restrictions on cellphones as a major barrier to their technology usage at school. And while cellphones offer a lot of things (including, of course, access to teens’ favorite communication platform, text-messaging), a data plan also means that a student can have access to sites that a school may block on its network.

Blocking and banning, Whitby argues, are just the “easy way out,” and schools need to do more to help teach kids how to behave and search responsibly online. How can schools navigate what seem to be very challenging waters, balancing the demands of students for more open access and fears from adults that they’re not ready for it?