One of the most striking differences from this year’s annual Family Online Safety Institute conference (titled “Internet Freedom, Safety & Citizenship: A Call to Action”) is the broad adoption of social media by attendees and interested bystanders. Last year when CEO Stephen Balkam asked how many participants were “tweeting”, only a few hands went up (mine included). This year, during the conference and measured by the use of the #fosi2010 “hashtag”, 267 people around the world were sharing the discussion with an estimated half a million people. And I’m proud to say that I’m listed as one of most influential users of Twitter at the conference, both measured by the number of 140 characters or less messages I sent and the number of times others chose to re-tweet those messages.
Now how do we know the above? Another change in the past year is the growth of Twitter tools, enabling you to measure the impact and reach of your social media efforts. One influential attendee, Denise Terry, of SafetyWeb, shared a tool called “TweetReach” in her blog about the conference. TweetReach measures how many people received a url, a tweet or a hashtag in their Twitter feed. It’s an effort to measure audience size, in the same way the Nielsen ratings measure television audience.
According to TweetReach, the FOSI conference reached an estimated 575,394 people via 1485 tweets. They estimate “impressions” of over 4 million. This measures how many times people saw tweets with the #fosi2010 hashtag, explained by the fact that many of us saw many different tweets since we were following the conference with interest.
Privacy Consultant Shaun Dakin shared another tool called “Twazzup”. This shows in real time the activity around the hashtag you want to evaluate, along with photos being uploaded, blog entries mentioning the topic and articles being linked to in the urls of the messages. SafetyWeb has graciously uploaded a transcript of the entire Twitter conversation if you are interested to browse the discussion.
Now, what did we learn over the packed two day meeting about online safety for families? We learned more about international safety efforts, hearing from Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East attendees. A special breakout panel to discuss Latin American issues was held and some of the concerns focused on the unequal distribution of money for computers let alone funding schools with electricity and water. Symantec/Norton’s Bruno Rossini from Brazil participated, sharing Norton’s Latin American research findings from our annual Norton Online Family Report. He discussed that some countries are passing advanced legislation against cybercrime, while citizens in their own country lack broadband and education about internet safety. A key place for people in Latin America to get online is via LAN houses where a private citizen might set up a few computers for people to use. It’s not uncommon for children to get online without parental supervision and perhaps sitting next to someone viewing porn.
Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Foundation shared an interesting presentation about teens and mobile use with some points made about the racial and economic disparity regarding use. While most teens have mobile phones, numbers drop as income drops (as you’d expect.) The use of phones is rarely about making phone calls, with the irony that cellular devices are primarily photo sharing and texting devices. There were a few jokes about how difficult it can be to make a call on a cell phone but the message is there. Kids are frantically pecking away at their devices, sending hundreds of messages per day and taking and distributing photos away from the review of caring parents. And with regard to the sharing of sexual images and messages via phones (“sexting”), her presentation includes information about racial differences among youth and young adults that are worth a look. African-Americans are more likely to send sexts and the most likely to receive them are low-income, single, separated or divorced African –American or Hispanic men.
Several speakers made mention of the need to address the at-risk youth population with technology. We can’t assume there are caring and attentive parents in the home who can share our message of safety with their children. Many children are in homes where the parents are working multiple jobs or working late shifts or simply unavailable due to their own personal problems of depression, addiction and so on. And then we need to consider the single parent homes and children being raised by grandparents and foster care. Therefore the education of our young people about digital citizenship and media literacy must happen in the school system as well.
Those from education spoke up to share teacher’s concerns about fitting yet more educational content into an overstuffed day. Or that they lack the education and training to handle technology issues well. Representatives from Common Sense Media and other non-profits spoke about methods of blending digital citizenship and media literacy within existing curricula. This position was reinforced by Karen Cator of the US Department of Education who said, “We need to integrate it into the lessons so that the English lesson becomes ‘English on the Web.’” Her boss, Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education, released his “National Education Technology Plan” during the conference and you can review it in its entirety here. Common Sense Media announced a pilot of their K-12 curricula kicking off next month in Omaha in partnership with MTV.
The National PTA was well represented at the conference, providing the joint point of view of education and parents. A number of key educational events are kicking off across the country. Be sure to check with your local PTA to find out how you can participate. A report released by Renee Hobbs, professor at Temple University the day of her presentation at FOSI, is entitled, “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action.” This report includes ten specific things needed to help adults and young people develop the critical thinking to handle the “overwhelming amount of digital information they receive every day in our media-saturated society.”
Protecting children online from advertising and commercial media was also discussed. The decade old COPPA law was the topic in a privacy panel at FOSI. A review of the panel can be found here.
Anne Collier and Larry Magid of ConnectSafely.org released the long needed “A Parents’ Guide to Facebook”, available as a pdf download here. It includes the how to’s necessary to set the privacy settings appropriate for young people to limit over exposure and risks of social networking. There’s even a cheat sheet of sorts with just the chart of those settings.
There was a panel on cybercrime and law enforcement on the web, featuring Symantec’s Adam Palmer. Comments were made about the fatigue that sets in for judges when they see too many cases of child pornography and tend to give strict sentences only to the worst offenders, and allowing those who merely “view” the images to negotiate parole or light sentences. This can be addressed, according to some on the panel by getting creative and prosecuting for related crimes. Often those who view, trade and distribute child porn are also engaged in hacking and sending spam, for example. Palmer said, “it’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion instead of racketeering.”
David Finkelhor of University of New Hampshire coined a term, “juvenoia”, meaning paranoia about young people and media. This would include that general sense that kids online are addicted, constantly being approached by predators and prone to violence as a result of simply being online and connected.
Another perspective on the key moments of the conference can be found at SafetyWeb’s blog.
Check out the FOSI YouTube channel to see some of the video highlights of conference. And make your plans to attend next year’s conference now! www.fosi.org.