What Facebook does with abuse reports

The head of Facebook's international law enforcement group, Max Kelly, Friday revealed more details than I've seen in the news media on how the site detects bad behavior and content, including criminal activity. On the prevention side, The Guardian reports, "Facebook has developed sophisticated algorithms to monitor its users and detect inappropriate and predatory behaviour, bolstering its latest raft of initiatives to improve the safety of its users." For details on what FB does about that behavior, please see the article, which includes pushback from CEOP but also signs of momentum toward a working rather than adversarial relationship. Only the former will help remove layers and redundancies in abuse reporting, as well as help educate the public on where and how to report what. Historians could probably tell us that it took time for the public to know what to report to 911/999 and, for example, what to report to school authorities, and here the system and education will need to be multinational and multicultural. This is a followup to my post last week about the "panic button" problem.

Embarrasing photos in Facebook: What to do

Lots of Facebook news this week! There's loads of information in the site's new Safety Center, with sections aimed at teens, parents, educators, and law enforcement. But if you or your child has the specific problem of Facebook "Photos Gone Wild," Common Sense Media has some great tips including one about a little app called Wisk-it that lets a photo poster airbrush out the face of someone who doesn't want to be seen in a photo s/he posted. You'll note that a lot of this reputation management is a negotiation, which is why the last section in CSM's article on the need to "Be respectful" is so important (see "Collaborative reputation protection"). It's a lot easier to get a photo deleted when poster and complainer are cooperating (often the only way, since FB says in the Safety Center that it "cannot make users remove photos that do not violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities").

Facebook No. 1 in most Asian countries, but...

...not in India, Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, where Google's Orkut, Mixi.jp, Cyworld.co.kr, and Wretch.cc are No. 1, respectively (the US version of Cyworld ceased operation this past February). According to comScore's latest Asia-Pacific data (which don't include China), Filipinos are the biggest social networkers in the region, and 50.8 % of the total online population in the region, or 240.3 million people visited a social network site this past February. Nearly 90% of Net users in the Philippines, Australia, and Indonesia engage in social networking, comScore says, and Facebook is No. 1 in all three as well as in Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.

Facebook: Why a Safety Center, not a 'panic button'

The Facebook news in the US today was its new expanded Safety Center. The news in Britain was that Facebook "STILL refuses to install [a] 'panic button'" on its pages, as the UK's Daily Mail put it. However, Facebook also announced today that its UK users will "now be able to report unwanted or suspicious contact directly to CEOP [the UK's Child Exploitation & Online Protection Center] and other leading safety and child protection organizations via its own reporting system," as CNN reported, so CEOP has come very close to getting its wish.

But this "panic button" concept is really problematic – and not just because of the word "panic," which suggests brains in crisis mode, with all rational thought switched off. Here's why it's problematic:

A single reporting mechanism doesn't cut it. In the offline world, we call 911 (or in the UK, 999) about crimes and medical emergencies. But the social Web – especially a fairly basic social utility like Facebook – is a mirror of its users' social lives and networks, of a full spectrum of behaviors, mostly good and, when bad, definitely not just criminal bad behavior. So if you just consider the really negative behavior that might lead to an abuse report, research shows that it's bullying, not predation, that would get reported far more often. Is law enforcement designed to deal with noncriminal but bad adolescent behavior? Fortunately, the new system Facebook put in place sends only reports of criminal behavior to CEOP.

Would a "panic button" have helped Ashleigh Hall? CEOP reportedly has said that the British teen whose murderer was convicted last month (see The Guardian) may have lived if such a button had been in place in Facebook. Ashleigh was reportedly communicating with someone who she thought was a boy, and fear didn't seem to be involved at the time of that FB communication. It isn't a factor when a child is being "groomed" online (see this).

A crime not involving panic. Ashleigh's case was far from typical of Net-related sex crimes. Presenting research from law enforcement files on Net-related child sex crime cases, David Finkelor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center (CACRC), said in Washington in 2007, "These are not mostly violent sex crimes ... they are criminal seductions that take advantage of common teenage vulnerabilities" and are characterized as statutory rape. "In 73% of the crimes," he continued, "the youth go to meet the offender on multiple occasions for multiple sexual encounters. The law enforcement investigators described the victims as being in love with or feeling a close friendship for the offenders in half the cases that they investigated" (see this for his "Jenna" profile). Panic buttons in social sites do nothing to mitigate this problem.

Largely the wrong location. The Internet, that is. It's important to remember that the vast majority of sexual abusers of children are people they know in real life, not strangers they meet online, much less predators trolling the social Web. In a much-anticipated 2009 update of its research on Internet predators, the CACRC reported, "There was no evidence that online predators were stalking or abducting unsuspecting victims based on information they posted at social networking sites," and we've seen no reports in this country of convicted sex offenders being arrested for violating parole agreements by contacting minors in social sites. [As for non-Internet-related sex crimes, University of California, Berkeley, law professor Franklin Zimring was recently quoted as saying people are "more likely to get struck by lightning than to get raped and murdered by a stranger," The Press-Enterprise in southern California reported last month.]

Facebook actually tested a similar proposal made by New Jersey's then-attorney general, Anne Milgram, a couple of years ago: the test of a "Report Abuse!" icon involving "at least 1.5 million randomly-selected page impressions" for nearly a year (see MSNBC). What FB found (after running the test longer than MSNBC reported up front, a spokesperson told me today) was that the number of abuse reports was "significantly lower" when there was a special icon in a different location from the rest of the reporting links on a page. Third-party buttons and graphics "intimidate and confuse people," Facebook's European policy director Richard Allen told RedOrbit.com. "We think our simple text link, which gives people the option to report abuse to CEOP as well as to the Facebook team, is a far more effective solution."

A button is not enough. Even the host of Britain's "To Catch a Paedophile," Mark Williams-Thomas, a child-protection expert and former detective, said that "the much called-for report-it button alone does not make using social networking sites any safer, but a coordinated approach providing the additional reporting to CEOP is clearly worthwhile, as is a dedicated phone line for law enforcement." The dedicated line he's referring to is similar to one Facebook has for US law enforcement and part of the safety package it announced this week, including the Safety Center mentioned above and 1 billion public-service ad impressions in the site (which CEOP called "a 5 million-pound [or $7.7 million] investment in education and awareness" in its press release, which was not yet online as of this writing).

Having said all that, everybody can thank all parties to this agreement for an important pilot test we all need to watch. Not before in history has there been a service playing host to the visual socializing of 400 million users in multiple countries, much less developing some sort of reporting system for when something in all that socializing goes wrong – the online version of dial-911 or -999 (UK) but for many more kinds of "wrong" (not just the criminal kind). I don't know about CEOP, but our NCMEC has a CyberTipline.com, a sort of online 911 service, and it still tells people to call their local 911 service in emergencies. Physical proximity is still and always will be a factor when people need help – so just what is the role of a global online service, here? We all – social-Web companies, their users of all ages, parents, educators, law enforcement, risk prevention practitioners, psychologists, etc. – need to figure this out together. It just won't work if the onus is placed only on companies', or law enforcement's, or policymakers' shoulders – not in a highly participatory, grassroots-driven media environment.

But for heaven's sake – or even better, for youth's sake – let's please take the "panic" out of this whole important test. It simply doesn't lend itself to the calm, mutually respectful conversations that help youth develop the critical thinking that protects on the social Web. We had our predator panic on this side of the pond starting in 2006. At the Family Online Safety Institute's annual conference in Washington last fall, the Net-safety field declared it over with a strong consensus that scary messaging is not productive. Why? Because it makes young people less inclined to want to come to us for help. They tend to get as far away as possible from scared, overreacting adults; find workarounds that are readily available to them; and then leave us out of the equation right when loving, steady parent-child communication is most needed. The other reason is, even the research shows fear tactics don't work (see "Let's not create a cyberbullying panic" at CNET).

[Disclosure: Facebook is a supporter of a nonprofit project I help run, ConnectSafely.org, but I so hope you've seen in the above that that's not why I've blogged about this issue.]

Related links

"Why technopanics are bad"

More on why fear tactics don't work

The US's perfect storm of parental concern in 2006: created by MySpace's exponential growth, adults not understanding social networking, news media hyperbole, Dateline's "To Catch a Predator," and a mid-term election (hinted at but not fully described in this Business Week article about MySpace's safety efforts of that time). Now – even after the sanity of the Byron Review and ensuing government-industry-NGO cooperation – the UK is experiencing its own perfect storm, with an election, a tragic crime story, a "To Catch a Paedophile" show, Facebook's rapid growth, and continuing cognitive dissonance over social media. Storms are destructive; these national-level storms in a new-media climate distract us from calmly sorting through complex problems and finding real solutions.

The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, which put on the Capitol Hill event where Dr. Finkelhor spoke in 2007

Lots of underage social networkers

Thirteen is the minimum age of the world's most popular social network sites, including in the UK, and a quarter of British 8-to-12-year-olds who use the Net at home have profiles on social-network sites, according to study by UK regulator Ofcom. Given similarly high levels of Internet use on both sides of the Pond, I doubt US figures for underage social networkers would be much different (I'm aware of no parallel study done in the US). Ofcom also found that 37% of 5-to-7-year-old home Net users had visited Facebook (but didn't necessarily have a profile). The good news is that 83% of 8-to-12-year-olds with profiles have them set so that only social-site friends can see them, and 4% have profiles that can't be seen at all. "Nine in ten parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93%) also say they check what their child is doing on these types of sites." Here's another important takeaway, pointing to a growing need for solid new-media-literacy training in school: According to The Telegraph's coverage: Among kids 10 and under, "70% of those using blogs or information sites such as Wikipedia believed all, or most, of what they read."

Can the social Web be policed?

In "Cyber-bullying cases put heat on Google, Facebook," Reuters points to increasing signs around the world that people want to hold social-media companies responsible for their users' behavior. "The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals," it reports. Back before social networking, when people harassed or fought merely over the phone, people didn't hold phone companies accountable for settling the disputes. In the US, the Communications Decency Act extended that "safe haven" to Internet service providers, and courts have included social-media companies in that category ever since.

Here's the view from Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald reports some cruel defacement of tribute pages in Facebook have gotten Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to consider "appointing an online ombudsman to deal with social networking issues." [Maybe that's where we're headed: countries having ombudsmen able to decide if complaints in their countries should be "escalated" to their specially appointed contacts at social sites at home and abroad? But what about sleazy social-media operations that fly under the radar or refuse to deal?]

Certainly it's understandable that people expect more from social network sites than they do from phone companies because bullying is more public and harder to take back, but is the expectation logical? That's an honest question, not a rhetorical one (please comment here or in the ConnectSafely forum), because what does not seem to be different in this new media environment is how arguments and bad behavior get resolved: by the people involved. It may take time with complaints sent from among tens and in some cases hundreds of millions of users, but fake defaming profiles and hate groups do get deleted by reputable social network sites like MySpace and Facebook. Deleting the visible representation of bullying behavior, however, doesn't change much. Bullies can put up new fake profiles as quickly as – often more quickly than – the original ones can be taken down.

Of course we should expect companies to be responsible and take such action, but can we reasonably blame them if doing so has no effect on the underlying behavior? What court cases like the one in Italy against Google executives for an awful bullying video on YouTube that the court felt wasn't taken down fast enough (see the article in the Washington Post above) illustrate are: humanity's struggle to wrap its collective brain around a new, truly global, user-driven medium where the "content" is not just social but behavioral – and the full spectrum of human behavior at that.

If you do, please comment, but I know of no real solution to social cruelty on the social Web as yet except a concerted effort on the part of the portion of humanity that cares to adjust to this strange, sometimes scary new media environment by adjusting our thinking and behavior. That includes teaching children from the earliest age, at home and school, social literacy as well as tech and media literacy (social literacy involves citizenship, civility, ethics, and critical thinking about what they upload as much as download) – as well as modeling them for our children. Can it be that universal, multi-generational behavior modification is not just an ideal, but the only logical goal? What am I missing, here?

Fresh social-Web & Net numbers

If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's third most populous one, after China and India. As for the world's most avid social networkers, Americans are 4th, behind Australians, Britons, and Italians, respectively – The Economist reports in a special report on social networking – followed by users in South Korea, Spain, Brazil, Germany, France, and Japan. The world's most popular social sites are Facebook, Windows Live, MySpace, Chinese portal Baidu, Twitter, Google's social site Orkut (popular in Brazil and India), Hi5, Chinese social site QQ, LinkedIn, and art community site DeviantArt – in that order, based on 10/09 comScore figures and all based in the US unless otherwise indicated. Other big indigenous communities include "Skyrock in France, VKontakte in Russia, and Cyworld in South Korea, as well as numerous smaller social networks that appeal to specific interests such as Muxlim, aimed at the world's Muslims, and ResearchGATE, which connects scientists and researchers." Meanwhile, Nielsen reports that social network sites are the most popular Web destination worldwide, with FB representing 67% of all social site traffic, Mashable.com reports. As for general Internet numbers for 2009, Pingdom.com has some: e.g., 90 trillion emails went out last year (247 billion a day, on average); there were 234 million Web sites as of this past December; and 1.73 Net users as of last September (see that page for more).

Facebook's orders of magnitude of change

In six years Facebook has gone from being a social utility for students of a single northeastern US elite university (a sort of directory+community where Harvard students could find and socialize with each other) to a social utility for nearly 400 million people of multiple ages, languages, and walks of life worldwide (FB passed its sixth birthday last Thursday).

My theory is, that fairly spare original design as a utility made it less flexible for individual users but more flexible for users as a whole – in other words for the changes that going from mere hundreds to hundreds of millions would entail. A pretty bare-bones social utility (like Twitter, too, as opposed to MySpace, which was always more of a self-expression tool than a social utility) is simply a person's social network visualized. [If this makes no sense, pls let me know or post your own theory in comments below.] "In its latest redesign, Facebook is playing up applications, games and search," USATODAY reports. That makes sense to me, because apps and games are one way users can customize their FB experience, and search becomes paramount simply because of the challenge of finding someone among 400 million users – but also grows the tension between those concerned about privacy and those who want to be found by old friends and long-lost relatives. For those concerned about privacy, by the way, here's a very handy how-to article: "The Three Facebook [privacy] Settings Every User Should Check Now": the ones concerning who can see what you share (updates, photos, etc.), who can see your personal info, and who can search for and find your FB profile with Web search engines.

What's the deal with Farmville?

If you believe what a few of its 72 million worldwide players told USATODAY, the Facebook-based, virtual-reality social game offers a mild sense of escape, fosters a sort of virtual diligence (about tending one's virtual crops and farm animals), and encourages community and charity toward one's virtual neighbors (neighbors get "points and gold for scaring away pests, fertilizing or feeding chickens" on each other's land). Farmville wasn't always purely positive, of course (see "Social gaming cleaning up its act?"). Farmville's parent, San Francisco-based game developer Zynga, announced last fall it was banishing all "offer advertising" from its games (Farmville fans, have you seen any lately?), but they're something to watch out for in social games – those parasitical little offers that tricked players into ultimately paying "far more for in-game currency than if they just paid [the game itself] cash," TechCrunch reported. Just because Zynga supposedly got rid of it doesn't mean other developers did, so talk with your kids about "free" offers on phones and on the Web. [Meanwhile, SocialTimes.com reports that the BBC is getting into social gaming (looking at the iPhone, Facebook, and Nintendo Wii and DS platforms), having hired a new executive VP of games.]

Social Web's help for Haiti

With emails from President Obama, tweets in Twitter, and cellphones sending “Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief," fixed and mobile social media are raising millions for Haiti earthquake relief. Yesterday (1/14) may've been "the biggest day for mobile giving to date, CNET reports, adding that Facebook said its users "have been posting more than 1,500 status updates a minute containing the word Haiti." The New York Times reports today that "the American Red Cross, which is working with a mobile donations firm called mGive, said Thursday that it had raised more than $5 million this way" and "nearly $35 million" in general by Thursday night, "surpassing the amounts it received in the same time period after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami." This is an important media story for classroom and dinner-table discussion, but parents and teachers will also appreciate this "teachable moment" for new media literacy. Because, unfortunately, "with any urgent call for donations often comes a rash of scams that can pilfer cash or result in identity theft," another CNET post warns. The article offers advice for applying critical thinking to texted, posted, and tweeted solicitations – and so does the FBI.

YouTube, Facebook & friends' videos

YouTube's getting a little more social with Facebook. It's a little buggy as yet, CNET reports, but "YouTube is pushing its Facebook Connect integration further by allowing its users to see the videos that their friends share on Facebook. YouTube users had previously been able to find their Facebook friends on YouTube as well as update their Facebook profile with their various actions from the site." This certainly makes sense. Here's YouTube's version of the story. There's a screenshot of what the integration looks like in Facebook in the CNET article.

Teens taking Facebook breaks together

I think it's not so much taking a break from technology as it is from high school drama – though social networking does make it easy to have the drama in their faces 24/7, if they allow it to. The New York Times tells of two high school juniors in San Francisco who, "by mutual agreement," allow themselves to log on to Facebook only the first Saturday of each month. "The two are among the many teenagers, especially girls, who are recognizing the huge distraction Facebook presents – the hours it consumes every day, to say nothing of the toll it takes during finals and college applications, according to parents, teachers and the students themselves," the Times reports. Some deactivate their accounts, others form support group (not Facebook groups!) to help each other stay away. The Times cites the view of a psychologist and "Internet addiction" center director that Facebook's just like any other addiction. I'm no psychologist, but I do think it might be partly the real-life reality TV of school life that's addictive. On p. 2 of the article, the view of educator and author Rachel Simmons seems to agree when she refers to how hard it can be for teens to turn away from the sort of ticker tape of their social circle represented by Facebook's News Feed when they're "obsessed" with where they stand in that "social landscape." I'm impressed with the initiative they're taking (are they feeling that reflection time is healthy and acting on that?). But I wonder if, by creating agreements and forming support groups they're any less tethered to each other (see MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle's "Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self") and using technology that much less. Do they not need texting and talking on mobile phones to maintain pacts and check up on each other? Still, I'm sure there are some adults just as addicted to drama who could take a queue from these high school students.

Facebook's privacy changes

Facebook has been known to make a few waves when it announces changes to privacy features, so it's probably hoping that, now with more than 350 million users, the latest changes won't make a tsunami. This week's redesign, which has been in the works since last summer, is meant to both simplify things and give users more control – "more granular control over who can see individual pieces of content while making some basic profile information available to everyone," as ConnectSafely's Larry Magid put it in his CNET blog. [Facebook's three levels of privacy are "Friends," "Friends of Friends," and "Everyone." Parents will want to know that, for users under 18, "Everyone" means at most Friends and Networks, not everyone at all.]

As for what's entailed: Everybody will eventually experience a little "wizard" window that'll pop up and say they have to configure their settings (if they've already done so, they can keep their current ones, and the wizard will show you what they are). Having seen the process, I can say it's very easy – if it seems annoying, only a small annoyance. All in all, the changes – straight from the horse's mouth – are:

A limited amount of profile info publicly available for all users (name, profile photo, gender, current city, Facebook networks, friend list, and Page affiliations)

Simplified Privacy Settings page

The three basic levels of privacy mentioned above

Apps and Facebook Connect sites can access publicly available info as soon as you interact with them (but they have to ask permission for additional info you haven't made publicly available)

Regional networks are going away (they were more viable as a privacy tool in an earlier "era" when Facebook had millions, not hundreds of millions, of users).

Facebook says these changes "have no impact" on the site's advertising system or how it makes money. For the company's own thinking behind the changes, see Facebook's Ana Muller's blog post here, and pls see Larry's CNET piece for much more detail than I have here. In related news, ConnectSafely.org has been appointed to Facebook's new Safety Advisory Board. Here's CNN's coverage.

NY predators deleted from Facebook, MySpace

The state of New York has made it easier for social network sites that work with it to deleted sex offenders registered in that state. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo this week announced that two sites that do use the state's database to check for predators, MySpace and Facebook, have purged the profiles of more than 3,500 sex offenders - "Facebook was able to identify and disable the accounts of 2,782 registered sex offenders" and MySpace 1,796 accounts, ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid reports in CNET. New York has a law that "bans many registered offenders from using social-networking sites while on parole or probation and requires all registered offenders to disclose their email addresses, screen names, and 'other Internet identifiers.' That data is provided to social-networking sites to run against their rolls" (some states just fax over a list, Facebook says, making it difficult to identify the offenders in sites with hundreds of million profiles). MySpace says there has never been a case reported of a registered sex offender deleted from the site being prosecuted for illegal contact on the site. Cuomo praised both sites for their work in this area, adding that many other social network sites are slow to cooperate. "As always, it's important to put this news into perspective," Magid writes. "It only involves registered sex offenders, which of course,is a good start, but it only includes people who have been caught and convicted. And, while the companies do their best to ferret out registered offenders who try to hide their identity, there is no way to know how many people succeed in eluding them. Also, we know of very few children who have been sexually molested by someone they met on social-networking sites or any Internet sites. The vast majority of child sex abuse victims know the offender from the real world.... And, based on conversations with security officials at social-networking companies, I am not aware of any cases where a registered sex offender has been convicted of using the site to aid in harming a child he or she met on that site."

'How to bully-proof yourself on Facebook'

Here are some great social-networking-specific tips from Facebook's director of public policy, Europe. There's just one key point missing, I think, because of the 2007 finding that "youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization" (see "Digital risk, digital citizenship" and Archives of Pediatrics). That essential tip is: "Be nice." Kindness is contagious too (check out the last three anti-cyberbullying tips at ConnectSafely.org). [See also "A different sort of back-to-school tip: Kindness."]

Vietnamese fear Facebook blockage

Vietnam's more than 1 million Facebook users are worried that their government may be blocking the social network site, the San Jose Mercury News reports. "Over the past week, access to Facebook has been intermittent in the country, whose government tightly controls the flow of information. The severity of the problem appears to depend on which Internet service provider a customer uses." One ISP's technician said his company had been ordered by government officials to block Facebook, but senior management said that hadn't happened. "Access to other popular Web sites appears to be uninterrupted in Vietnam, a nation of 86 million with 22 million Internet users."

Social gaming cleaning up its act?

Well, some social gaming companies, it appears. If you're not sure what's meant by "social gaming," you may've heard of Farmville, an extremely popular little game in Facebook. TechCrunch recently ran an exposé that called this gaming ecosystem "scamville" - great family-discussion fuel. He wrote that the games "try to get people to pay cash for in-game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of 'offers' [that get] them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers)." A week later, TechCrunch reports, Farmville's parent, Zynga, has announced it will "remove all offer advertising from their games [right away]. This isn't a meaningless action. Offers account for 1/3 or so of Zynga's rumored $250 million in revenue." But social media – which is a blend of user-produced and professionally produced media – is all about lack of control by the companies that host it. So here's the tricky thing about this situation: Zynga itself can't control the offers or ad content in its games, its CEO Mark Pincus said, which is why it's just deleting them for now. Zynga also participated in the latest Online Safety & Technology Working Group meeting in Washington – an added sign that, like other corporate members, it believes that corporate responsibility ultimately pays off.

Adults' status updates on the rise: Study

If anybody considers Twitter and other status-update tools all about self-exposure (I don't, but glad to "talk" with you about that in Twitter, Facebook, email, or the ConnectSafely forum), and consequently all about youth, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has evidence to the contrary - just out today. It found that "one out of five Internet users now say they use Twitter or some other service to share status updates about themselves, or to keep tabs on others." That's from a survey of adult Internet users - 2,200 of them. The 19% who now use status-update services is up from 11% last April. Here's more in a Wall Street Journal blog.

MySpace's focus on music

MySpace Music announced further expansion this week. Computerworld says the site's adding music features "in a bid to reinvent itself," but you certainly can't believe everything you read about social networking; music has been a core community for MySpace since the beginning. Its music channel's traffic has grown 1,017% since its relaunch in September 2008. But here's some of the new stuff Computerworld mentions: "a massive collection of music videos" (from MySpace's record-label partners); "a new Video Search Tab"; and an Artist Dashboard. "The dashboard is designed to give bands and singers with MySpace profile analytics on who is listening to their music and how they're interacting with it," Computerworld reports. In fact, MySpace is in an entirely different space from Facebook and other social network sites now, its CEO, Owen Van Natta, announced at a conference this week, according to a great post at the ReadWriteWeb blog. MySpace always was as much a self-expression tool as a social one, while Facebook has always been a social utility (now with plenty of extras). See also "MySpace: Entertainment hub that tweets," "MySpace's metamorphosis," and "MySpace's PR problem."

UK online youth study on 'hybrid lives': Not

A new survey that 75% of 16-to-24-year-old Britons "couldn't live" without the Internet, the BBC reports. Published by the nonprofit organization YouthNet and presented in Parliament today, it also found that 80% of respondents use the Web to seek advice. "About one-third added that they felt no need to talk to a person face to face about their problems because of the resources available online," according to the BBC, and "76% of the survey group thought the Internet was a safe place 'as long as you know what you're doing'." The BBC cited the view of Open University psychologist Graham Brown that those who do know what they're doing are generally those who grew up with the Net." The reporters covering the story at both the BBC and the Daily Mail indicate they hadn't heard the term "digital natives" before, suggesting that the study's author, Professor Michael Hulme of Lancaster University, coined it, instead of author Marc Prensky, who first used the phrase in 2001. But what really troubles me is a characterization of youth that the Daily Mail attributed to the YouthNet report: that they're leading "hybrid lives," which suggests two separate, very different lives online and offline. Anyone with a young Facebook user at their house or who follows the growing bodies of both social-media and online-risk research knows that's not the case, except possibly for some at-risk youth engaged in anti-social behavior. For the vast majority of children and teens, online socializing is a reflection of what's going on in the rest of their lives. I hope that's what they heard in Parliament.

A call to action on eating disorder sites

Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists called for "urgent action" to protect online youth vulnerable to pro-eating-disorder Web sites, the BBC reports. It says the number of such sites has "soared with the growth of social networking," and the government's year-old Child Internet Safety Council should expand its definition of harmful sites to include those promoting anorexia (pro-ana) and bulimia (pro-mia). The BBC cited one eating-disorder charity as saying it welcomes the Royal College's position but banning pro-ED sites doesn't get to the root of the problem.

The other issue is that social networking complicates the issue. Not only is this not just about Web sites but profiles and pages in social sites and on mobile phone networks, and all of the above based in other countries. Further complexity is evident in the pages, profiles, and sites themselves, which display both pro and con positions at the same time. In a story about the migration from secret sites to social-network ones, Newsweek cites the view of Dr. Steven Crawford at the Center for Eating Disorders in Baltimore, who "sees the openness of the Facebook site as part of its appeal. Increasing numbers of teenage patients at the center are joining Facebook groups that proclaim their disorders to the world, which Crawford believes is a means of adolescent rebellion." Dartmouth Prof. Marcia Herrin, author of several books on the subject, "finds the public nature of the discussions of anorexia on Facebook encouraging, because it shows that teens are less afraid of confronting eating disorders," Newsweek adds. Facebook says it actively searches for and deletes pro-ED groups because, in supporting self-harm, they violate its terms of use.

This past June, Liz Jones, a columnist for the Daily Mail in the UK, wrote about her 40-year battle with anorexia and a normal-eating experiment she conducted for three weeks. It's just one person's story but maybe sheds some light: "I found the gnawing, tight knot that is always in my stomach – fear of life, work, boys, social interaction – was quietened when I starved it.... I might not have been good at anything else – relationships, sport, conversation – but I have been really good at being thin.... That's the thing about being a borderline anorexic: it makes you feel superior, clean, morally unimpeachable. It isn't a whole lot of fun, endlessly disappointing friends who invite you for lunch. My spartan lifestyle ... has kept me tiny, but it has also isolated me.... I'd rather be thin than happy or healthy." [See also my 2007 interview with "Hannah" about her anorexic friend and "Sarah's Death at 19 Left Her Family Struggling to Understand the Power of an Eating Disorder" in the Washington Post last spring.]

How mobile is Facebook?

"Sixty-five million people regularly use mobile devices to access Facebook, making it one of the largest mobile services in the world," Forbes reports. It adds that mobile users are "twice as active or 'engaged'" with their Facebook accounts than Web-only users. The social site's definitely making mobile a priority, with its updated iPhone app and new apps for Nokia phones, phones running Google's Android operating system, and Palm's WebOS - all in the last month. Facebook has also "played a central role in the launch of Motorola's new smart phone, the Cliq."

Voice chat for Facebook users

The social utility's some 300 million users will soon be able to download a plug-in and talk to each other out loud. This news is not just about Facebook; it reflects a trend. Online chat may never move away from text entirely, but voice chat's footprint is definitely growing. "The new technology is not being offered by Facebook itself," CNET reports. "Instead, it's from Vivox, a Boston-based company that provides the integrated voice service for virtual worlds like Second Life and EVE Online, and which already has more than 15 million users worldwide. For Facebook users, it means being able to talk one-on-one with people on their friends lists as well as to participate in large group discussions. It also might add an audio component to some of their Facebook apps, including games: Vivox "is making its technology available to any third-party Facebook application developer," CNET adds. I use this technology on Monday nights to hear (and discuss) presentations by educators ¬– fellow members of the International Society of Technology in Education – as (my avatar) Anny Khandr in Second Life. [See also "Facebook makes money, tops $300 million users" in the Washington Post.]

Fleeing Facebook?

Bear with me, because this is a long sentence, but: It stands to reason that, if your social life is represented online and that online representation is hosted by a corporation, then it follows that there'd be a certain "commercialization and corporate regulation of [the part of your] personal and social life" that's represented in its site. Don't you think? Why am I bringing this up? Because New York Times columnist Virginia Heffernan in the Times Magazine reports that she "asked around"; found that "a small but noticeable group [of users] are fleeing" Facebook; one of the more ostentatious fleers is Leif Harmsen; and his biggest beef is that "commercialization and corporate regulation" of one's social life that social networking represents. Heffernan writes about waves of Facebook disillusionment, the third one being made up of people "bored with it, obscurely sore or just somehow creeped out - though the numbers don't exactly indicate a large exodus (nearly 88 million US visitors in July, she cites comScore as finding). I think these people she's referring to are all Gen X-ers and Baby boomers. It does feel a little voyeuristic or a bit much, maybe, if you 1) did not grow up with social media necessarily hosted by social-media companies and 2) don't have real reasons for social networking, such as keeping up with distant friends, playing online games with distant friends, finding long-lost friends, managing an alumni association, monitoring your kids' social lives, marketing your cause or business, or professional networking. I'm not saying youth all have specific purposes in using social sites, but adults seem to need purposes for them to feel useful - because they "got along just fine without them before." See what I mean?

Facebook & Ottawa reach privacy agreement

Facebook and Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart today announced an agreement to, among other things, "give users more control over the information they share with third-party applications like games and quizzes," Yahoo Tech News reports. The Vancouver Sun explains that what the commissioner objected to was that, currently, "in order to download popular games and quizzes, Facebook users must consent to share all their personal information, except their contact details. These companies, totaling nearly 1 million, operate in 180 countries." Now, app developers will have to "specify which categories of data" their software needs, and Facebook will give users the ability to "decide accordingly," Yahoo News says, adding that "users will also have to specifically approve any access Facebook applications have to their friends' information," subject to the friend's privacy and application settings." All that sounds pretty complicated, but the agreement also provides for better clarity. In its blog, FB says about the agreement, "We'll be making a series of improvements that include notifications and information about privacy settings and practices, additions to Facebook's privacy policy, and technical changes" as mentioned above.

I hope this agreement is a precedent for how governments and social-media companies work together. Not so much in terms of threatened legal action (though of course not to be ruled out) as in where governments get their information. The Sun reports that the Canadian government's "privacy probe began last year when the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa filed an 11-part complaint, alleging Facebook violated key provisions of Canada's private-sector privacy law." The model, here, is reputable companies working with informed policymakers from a basis of understanding the risks involved and arriving at what companies can in fact do about them.

Facebook sued for being a social-network site

I can't always fit the bottom line of a story in the headline, but this time I could. "Five Facebook users are suing the social network for doing what made it an online superstar – letting members share aspects of their lives on the Web," Agence France Presse reports. They allege that Facebook violates California's privacy laws, reports ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid in his CNET blog. It's an interesting group of plaintiffs: a woman who joined when Facebook was just a college service suing because it became an open network with 250 million+ members; "a photographer and an actress who contend Facebook is wrongly sharing pictures posted on their profile pages"; and two boys under the minimum age state in Facebook's terms of service. One of the boys, an 11-year-old, "posted that he had swine flu and uploaded pictures or video of 'partially-clothed' children swimming," the AFP cites the lawsuit as saying. Larry adds that "the complaint says that 'upon learning of the Facebook account and the posting of an uncertain medical condition,' the child's parents 'removed the medical condition postings from Facebook' and that 'Xavier O. and his parents have been unable to learn where the minor's medical information may have been stored, disseminated or sold by Facebook'." The AFP reports that "Facebook has steadfastly maintained that its members own information they post to profile pages and control who gets to see it" and recently reworded its terms of service to make that clearer, it told users. Meanwhile, the complaints of Xavier's parents raise a number of questions, e.g., why they didn't just delete his account – why leave the photos of kids swimming in his profile if they're mentioned as objectionable? And Larry asks, "Could [the parents] be implying he was posting child pornography images? If so (and I doubt it), this kid could find himself in juvenile court."

Anyway, lots of kids under 13 lie about their age and set up social network accounts – mostly because they're at an age when life is getting very social and social networking is now part of kids' social lives. Responsible social network sites have the age-13 minimum because of COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), which created that somewhat artificial barrier. But – even with the technology that MySpace and Facebook apply to under-age detection – parents are infinitely better at "detecting" their kids' social-Web activities and deciding what's appropriate. I can't imagine a judge who knows anything about social media saying anything different. Looks like Facebook can't either, because, according to the AFP, the site "has dismissed the lawsuit as being without merit and promised a legal battle."

MySpace's metamorphosis?

That MySpace is "showing flickers of life," as the Los Angeles Times puts it, is quite an understatement, especially to music fans. Year-over-year traffic to MySpace Music "has increased 1,017%" since the music site launched last September, World Market Media reports, and it ranks third behind AOL Music and Yahoo Music and ahead of MTV Networks Music and Pandora.com.


MySpace has big plans for its music channel, which just could become the tail that wags the dog. The music site's president, Courtney Holt, who left MTV for MySpace Music last November, "plans to make the site a data goldmine for figuring out what's going to be the next big thing in pop music – helpful not only to artists and users, but producers and agents, too," reports the New York Observer. MySpace's music community will "publish trends, track influencers and create lists of top-played and playlisted content of not only major bands and artists but also of all the independent work on millions of MySpace artist pages," the Observer adds. "If done right, they could create a new kind of Top 40 hit list for online music."

My husband Ron, an avid music fan, said, "I'm surprised it has taken MySpace this long!" and I think he's right. It is, after all, a social site where tunes are talking points in ongoing conversations between artists and their fans. "They could blow iTunes out of the water – iTunes is too corporate, and Genius [its software that finds new songs according to users' past purchases] is robotic," Ron added. It's like a videogamer playing against software in the game as opposed to other gamers in multiplayer online games. Dealing with fellow humans is just a lot more interesting. As if to confirm this, Gigaom reports that "iTunes needs to get social" and is planning to provide provide "a more interactive album-purchasing experience."

MySpace's built-in opportunity

Anastasia Goodstein over at YPulse.com seems to agree that MySpace is at a turning point. "Everything I've read lately about how MySpace is planning to reposition itself makes me optimistic that the site could emerge stronger than ever by literally going back to its roots of being a hub for young tastemakers," she writes.

Certainly Facebook "won the social networking war," as Anastasia put it, but Facebook is more a utility (a social utility) that everybody needs than the self-expression tool or canvas that MySpace has always been, something that works better for a smaller, more vertical user base (my last post on this is here) and as such can look messy at times. Its new CEO, Owen Van Natta, recently said in London that it intends to be a “window for the youth (16-30) to reflect all their creative talents,” The Telegraph reports. That fits the latest Nielsen research, since "people between the ages of 12 and 17 were 2.4 time more likely than the average active Internet user to visit music.myspace.com [last month]," and visitors 18-24 were 2.2 times more likely to.

I'm not idealizing things – it's a full range of self-expression, from porn-queen wannabe pages to serious graphic design (of MySpace profiles). But there are many opportunities for positive self-expression in MySpace, as well as for exposure to creativity represented in the service's media communities. [See also "MySpace's PR problem" and "Boys & girls on Web 2.0."]

Comparisons

Eszter Hargittai at Northwestern University recently release some fresh data comparing MySpace and Facebook use among first-year college students. She relates two main findings: 1) Besides a general increase the use of Facebook since 2007 (when 79% of first-year students surveyed used Facebook, compared to 87% now; compared to 55% using MySpace then and 36% now), 2) "we continue to see ethnic and racial differences as well as different usage by parental education (a proxy for socioeconomic status). Students of Hispanic origin are more likely to use MySpace than others and less likely to use Facebook than others. Asian-American students are the least likely to be on MySpace." For danah boyd's findings on ethnic and socioeconomic differences, from talking with teens around the country, see also "Does Social Networking Breed Social Division?"

"Regarding parental education," Hargittai writes, "the relatively small number (7%) of students in the sample whose parents have less than a high school education are much more likely to be on MySpace and much less likely to be on Facebook than others." Here's one mother's very balanced view of social networking.

How a police officer uses Facebook

Constable Scott Mills, a community youth officer in Toronto, says "police officers must be where the people are, and these days, the people are on Facebook." He uses his Facebook account, as well as Groups and Events, not just to send out information and get tipped off to threats and crimes very fast to and from a lot of residents, but to "build a stronger, more meaningful connection with the community we serve," he says as a guest writer in the Facebook blog. This is participatory law enforcement, Mills says, getting the community involved in preventing and solving crime. Facebook users have helped him "sniff out threats against local schools, bring much needed help to people at risk of committing suicide, warn the public about criminals on the loose and even locate missing persons," he writes. And his program, Toronto Crime Stoppers, is not alone in this. He points to social policing programs in Boston, Vancouver, and Brunswick, Maine, as well. And speaking of policing, Facebook is doing a little of its own - making sure advertisers on its service comply with its new guidelines and blocking them if they don't, Advertising Age reports (please see Ad Age for specifics).

India's digital natives

Nearly 10% of the world's under-25 population live in India, and they "are shifting their career aspirations and social life to the digital world," India's Economic Times reports. The study, by Tata Consultancy Services, surveyed 14,000 high school students in 12 cities and found that over 93% of respondents "were aware of social networking sites and used it in some way in their daily life. Bangalore students are "leading the pack, as 66% of them said they were active on blogs and social networking sites, compared with 39% nationally." Nine percent of them use Second Life and MySpace and do podcasting. "Among social networking sites, [Google's] Orkut was most preferred, followed by Facebook, while Google continued to be the most preferred source of information." Careers that top their list are the ever-popular IT and engineering, but "other fields like travel and tourism, media & entertainment are emerging as professional choices." The US and UK are the top picks for overseas university study (40% want to go to the US), but Singapore and Dubai "are preferred by one in five students in Chennai and Cochin, respectively, as top choice for overseas education."

Teacher's Facebook 'teachable moment'

I loved The Ethicist's answer to the question of how an 8th grade teacher, who has been "friended" by a lot of her students, should deal with issues like underage drinking when they come up in students' Facebook profiles: "She should carpe that diem," Randy Cohen writes in his New York Times column. "Were she simply to bust these online doofuses, she would squander a chance to convey something of lasting importance and leave them feeling that she had betrayed their trust. In short, her essential role is educator, not cop." I, too, wonder what suspension or other discussion-free discipline accomplishes, when there's an opportunity for students to add some life literacy to their tech literacy. [See also "Zero tolerance = zero intelligence: Juvenile judge," "Schools: How to handle group cyberbullying?," "Facebook: No. 1 tool for parenting? Maybe. Use wisely.", and "Anti-cyberbullying teachable moment."]

Russia's avid social networkers

Russians are the most engaged social networkers in the world, spending an average of 6.6 hours in social sites a month, based on comScore's survey of online social networking in 40 countries. "Of the 1.1 billion people age 15 and older worldwide who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in May 2009, 734.2 million visited at least one social networking site during the month, representing a penetration of 65% of the worldwide Internet audience," comScore's press release says. The rest of the Top 10 countries in May were Brazil (6.3 hrs), Canada (5.6), Puerto Rico (5.3), Spain (5.3), Finland (4.7), UK (4.6), Germany (4.5), US (4.2), and Colombia (4.1). Russia's Top 3 social network sites were Vkontakte.ru (18.9 million people or 45% of Russia's Net users), Odnoklassniki.ru (24%), and Mail.Ru-My World (20%). Facebook (2%) and MySpace Sites (1%) were 7th and 9th place, respectively.

Facebook's new public/private feature

Is Facebook becoming a cross between Twitter and a mini-blogosphere? Partly – if you make your status updates as long as blog posts. The social network site "is rolling out a new option for users who have made their profiles viewable by everyone," the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro reports. "A new lock icon in the Publisher, the "what's on your mind?" form, will allow users to choose a potential audience for each status update: everybody on or off Facebook; all of their friends and all of their networks; friends and their friends' friends; only friends; or a custom combination that includes some people and excludes others." Pegoraro goes on to correct a misconception some users have had about this development. Which leads to the question of when Facebook will simplify all these private-vs.-public options. The potential upside of being able to choose how public each status update is that it encourages users to think before they send each update. That would be good. Then again, the Post's headline is "Facebook Adding Overexposure Options."

Why Gen Y's not into Twitter?

The bottom line: "We have everything we need on Facebook," says Gen Y CNET blogger Sharon Vaknin - though, despite an insightful post, she's pretty hard on her generation. First the numbers: She cites a recent Pace University/ Participatory Media Network study showing that 99% of 18-to-24-year-olds have social network profiles while only 22% use Twitter. Then she offers a little history on Gen Y's migration from creative expression to status updates. "We no longer impress our friends with profiles that represent us through our creative flourishes, but rather with profiles that spell out what we're doing.... What Facebook intends as a forum for sharing, Gen Yers see as a game of show-off." She cites examples of author and psychologist Jean Twenge's "narcissism epidemic" among her peers. "We do anticipate seeing our friends' activities, but what we really look forward to is what they think of our activities - we want to be 'cyberstalked,' preferably in the form of replies to our self-published content." So why not Twitter? Her reasons illustrate two important differences from FB: 1) Twitter, she says, is too one-dimensional, too text-y (e.g., "Sally went to a great party last weekend, but where are the photos? Who went with her?"), and 2) "updates on Twitter happen so fast there really isn't time to react ... my friends don't have time to react to my activities." I think the latter point is about how fleeting tweeting is, compared to status updates in Facebook, which stay until one replaces them. Twitter is like a real-time, ongoing, multi-person conversation - more like back chat in an online presentation, where people just put tweets "out there" without necessarily expecting anything to come back. It's a little like comparing apples and oranges, because a Facebook profile functions so differently - it's as much a representation of a person's social network as a person, which seems to be the greatest appeal for youth. Vaknin's conclusion may say more about how she feels about her generation than about Gen Y itself: "Largely as a result of the digital communication tools on which we were raised, a big part of my generation wants to know what the cyberworld thinks of us, and we want its inhabitants to pay attention to us." Here's more on this from author and youth tech consultant Derek Baird at BarkingRobot.

Will India switch to Facebook?

Facebook has serious designs on India, but "for years [Google's] Orkut has dominated the Indian social-networking scene," Business Week reports. Facebook added Hindi and five other Indian languages last month, bringing the total number of languages it supports to 57, "with several dozen more in the works." Some question why, though, since such a high percentage of India's Net-using population speak English, especially connected young urbanites. The real draw for Facebook, probably, is English-speaking friends overseas who already use Facebook. A New Delhi-based source told Business Week that none of her US friends use Orkut, so she had to join Facebook. On the other hand, globally, linguistic diversity and issues may not be the issue so much as differences in how digital media and technologies are used from country to country, an interesting piece in Ad Age suggests, also using India as an example.

Facebook: No. 1 tool for parenting? Maybe. Use wisely.

In fact, "the No. 1 tool in our lifetimes for parenting," according to B.J. Fogg, who runs Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab and teaches about Facebook with his sister, Linda Phillips, parent of 8, in a free, noncredit class. Their reasoning: "Because it enables parents to ask about specifics." Absolutely. That's a great point. But, please, parents, think this monitoring option through carefully. Every child's different - at some point in the spectrum of age, maturity, and trust levels - and parental questions and monitoring need to be calibrated to those levels. Why? If we go too far and really hover - try to friend all their friends and maybe embarrass them (not that Fogg and Phillips are suggesting this) - we risk losing their willingness to engage with us and communicate. That, I contend, is, always has been, and always will be the No. 1 tool for parenting. If kids stop wanting to communicate and go into stealth mode online, which is very easy for them to do, we're even farther out of the equation, the one in which they use us as their chosen backup. For a teen's view on this, see Aseem Mehta's blog post here. Also don't miss "Parental Faux Pas on Facebook," by author and blogger Sharon Cindrich. Meanwhile, Lisa Belkin, the New York Times's "Motherlode" blogger seems to have declared the end (or at least rapid decline) of helicopter parenting in "Let the Kid Be." [Thanks to Susan Fassberg in California for pointing out the Stanford Alumni magazine article.]

Facebook *not* bad for grades: Study

I'm "guilty" too - NetFamilyNews added its headline and a brief post to the mountain of media coverage last month about "a draft manuscript suggesting that Facebook use might be related to lower academic achievement in college and graduate school," as three social-media researchers put it in the latest issue of FirstMonday, an online academic journal. The authors - Josh Pasek, Eian More, and Eszter Hargittai at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University, respectively - published a much more definitive report on this subject, looking at a large sample of undergrads at University of Illinois, Chicago; a "nationally representative cross-sectional sample" of US 14-to-22-year-olds, and a "longitudinal panel" of US 14-to-23-year-olds. "In none of the samples do we find a robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades," the report. "Indeed, if anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades. We also examined how changes in academic performance in the nationally representative sample related to Facebook use and found that Facebook users were no different from non-users" in terms of academic performance.

Teen social-networking fatigue?

Now that parents are flooding Facebook, might it be losing cachet for teens? The fastest-growing age breakdowns in the past three months were women 55-65 (175.3% growth), 45-54 (165%), and 35-44 (154%), according to InsideFacebook.com (the site also just passed the 200 million mark for users worldwide, the San Jose Mercury News reports). Not that it's a quid pro quo, but people who follow this stuff are wondering if there's a new "place" on the horizon where teens might prefer to hang out - for example, maybe the part of the wireless spectrum that text messaging uses. The indicators of texting's popularity (teens are sending and receiving 2,274 a month, on average, the Washington Post reports) suggest that it may be stealing some of users' Facebook time. But a sudden mass migration is unlikely (people don't just leave social sites - not if their friends don't leave). More likely is that "FB passion among youth is fading," as social media researcher danah boyd observed in Twitter and Facebook the other day.

Responding to that, YPulse founder and youth marketing blogger Anastasia Goodstein wrote in her blog that "it may be that teens aren't necessarily going somewhere else; they’re just spending less time on social networks and more time socializing in real life, texting, etc. That makes sense to me, that Facebook (and for many teens MySpace) will need to move over and make room for the growing number of other tools in their social toolbox - an important one, nonetheless, because it does represent a tool *bundle* (email, real-time chat, asynchronous wall comments, etc.). So it may be kind of naïve and adult to think there has to be a single new place or technology teens will adopt en masse, (though social networking was like that back in 2005, that was then, this is now). [Other noteworthy FB numbers: though no longer the fastest-growing, 18-to-25-year-olds are still the biggest population segment of Facebook by far (43%), parents may be interested to know that 13-to-17-year-olds make up only 12% of the FB population.] There's more on social-networking fatigue, enthusiasm, and ambivalence at Yahoo News. And from the "This just in!" Department: comScore just released data showing that Facebook now accounts for about a third of all online social networking worldwide and 4.1 out of every 100 minutes we all spend online, The Guardian reports.

Facebook users have lower grades?

"Correlation does not equal causation," the researchers say, but a recent survey of college students found that "Facebook user GPAs were in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users," LiveScience.com reports. Online socializing seems to be in the same category as other extracurricular activities, such as sports or music (in the case of music, probably at the same time!). "For instance, students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook.... Student who work more hours at jobs spend less time on Facebook, while students involved in more extracurricular activities were also more likely to use Facebook." LiveScience also reports that over 85% of undergrads use Facebook, versus 52% of graduate students.

Facebook friend saves suicidal teen

A girl in the US saw a suicidal comment from a UK boy on her Facebook friends list, and within three hours he was found and taken to the hospital for treatment, The Daily Mail reports. "Shortly before 11.30pm [last] Wednesday [the 16-year-old boy] wrote: ‘I’m going away to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while then everyone will find out'." His friend knew the school he went to but not his address, so she told her parents, who contacted the British Embassy in Washington. Police local to the boy "had just a name to go on but narrowed the search to eight addresses in [his] county. Officers were dispatched to each location, and three hours after the boy had filed his Facebook message, he was found at home [conscious] " conscious but suffering the effects of a drug overdose." He has since been released from the hospital and "is recovering at home," The Daily Mail adds. The story bears out what the US's National Suicide Prevention Lifeline told me for a 2007 profile of its work with MySpace and other social sites, that peers are often the first to know when a teen's in trouble, so social network sites are a vital source of referrals to hotlines.

Teens' online friends = offline friends: Study

Fresh evidence this week that most teens use the Web to socialize with their "real life" friends - "people they already know rather than strangers who might turn out to be predators," USATODAY reports. A study of students in grades 9-12 by University of California researchers "will be presented at a meeting of the Society of Research in Child Development" this week, and similar findings were "published last year in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology." Among the former's key findings: For 44% of youth surveyed, using social network sites "had no effect on their relationship with their friends and 43% said it made them closer; 5% had "friends known only from the Internet."

Cellphones = wireless connected computers

Landlines may be going away (see CNET), but don't think of cellphones merely as their replacement for voice communications - at least not if you're a parent. Because to get a better handle on how young people use phones, think of them as "the world's most ubiquitous computers," as the New York Times put it recently, adding that there are 4 billion mobile phones in use worldwide right now. The social network sites certainly get it. MySpace "has seen its mobile user base grow by 400% from last year, and now nearly 20 million users access the site through [mobile] phones," InformationWeek reports, and Facebook "is also looking to expand its mobile presence and is reportedly in talks with Nokia and Motorola for tighter integration into handsets." (BTW, on the landline subject, CNET reported that 17.5% of US households depended solely on cellphones for their phone communications during the first half of 2008, up from 13.6% a year earlier.)

Schools: How to handle group cyberbullying?

I have a question for you, but first here's what it's about: A recent group cyberbullying incident involving two high schools in Palo Alto, Calif., has "sparked intense discussion" among parents, school administrators and general community members "about the proper role of the school district" when cyberbullying involves students but doesn't happen on school grounds," Palo Alto Online reports. School officials called the parents of students known to be involved and took no disciplinary action. Each incident is unique, but digital pile-ons are not unusual, in fact a very similar group cyberbullying story in Oregon arrived in my in-box just a few days ago. In both incidents, an "I Hate____" group in Facebook had been established by the bullies, but that development is often not the beginning of an altercation, and it definitely wasn't in the Oregon case. So even the lack of users' anonymity in Facebook couldn't expose every student involved and doesn't get to the bottom of what happened. In the Oregon case (it's hard to tell from the Palo Alto story), even the target of the hate group apparently wasn't completely the innocent victim. It's important to note, though, that in both cases, Facebook deleted the groups upon notification. This isn't the solution (it doesn't end arguments), but it's an important part of the resolution process.

My question is, what do you think school officials should've done? In California, a new law gives schools authority to suspend or expel students for cyberbullying, but as I read through these cases - saw their complexities and how hard it is for schools to know exactly how the argument started, who started it, how many students are involved, whether the victim was the original instigator, or even whether it was staged for the instigators' instant fame online - I think suspension is like a blunt-instrument approach that of course punishes some involved but discourages students from reporting such cases in the future and doesn't resolve what the argument was about. The schools were right to call parents. But tell me if you agree that the schools could also turn incidents like this into "teachable moments" in the form of school assemblies about all possible implications of taking fights public online. In such assemblies or in digital citizenship instruction, schools might teach students the three basic types of leadership behavior described by Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use: "speaking out against the harm, reporting the harm to an adult who is in a position to intervene, and helping the targeted student." Would appreciate your thoughts - via comments here or in our forum at ConnectSafely.org. Feel free, too, to email them to me via anne(at)netfamilynews.org.

Parental social networkers multiplying

Well, an actual group labeled "parents" wasn't measured, but I suspect parents figured prominently in a Nielsen study that found 35-to-49-year-olds are the fastest-growing group in social-network sites. "Time spent on these sites is growing three times faster than the overall Internet rate ... [and] more than two-thirds of the world's online population now visits social networking and blogging sites," USATODAY reports, citing the study. In fact, one out of every 11 minutes of the average Web user's time is spent in a social site, the USATODAY article says, and one out of every 6 minutes in the UK, reports the BBC. The Nielsen study looked at nine countries. Among these, Brazil was No. 1 in social networking and blogging with 80% of Net users visiting such sites. Spain and the US were Nos. 2 and 3, at 75% and 67%, respectively, according to USATODAY. Social networking has surpassed Web email among top computer activities across the user population, the (others are search, portals, and PC software). As for mobile social networking, the numbers of Britons accessing a social site via their phone was up 249% (the BBC doesn't say, but that's probably in the past year). If you're a parent in Facebook or MySpace, check out "Virtual helicopter parenting" and, in the Los Angeles Times, "Big Mother is watching."

Facebook: 'Facelift,' lawsuit

Seems like every week's a big week for Facebook! This week saw the beginning of functionality changes for users which will "over time enable user 'profiles' to serve more as individual Web pages that could convey messages far beyond the current 5,000-'friend' limit," the San Jose Mercury News reports. The Mercury News said changes will include: users being able to categorize their "friends" into "separate and sometimes overlapping subgroups, such as 'family,' 'close friends' and ''co-workers'," and users able to "more easily post links, photos or videos with their comments into the 'stream' of information to and from the Facebook site [parents, ask your kids to keep you posted on how this works and whether they're paying attention to privacy settings in the midst of this]." Meanwhile, Information Week reports that "a New York teenager has sued the social networking site and some of its users because of a Facebook chat group where she says she was ridiculed and disgraced." In such cases so far, the Communications Decency Act has protected social network sites and other Internet service providers from being held liable for content users post on their sites.

The Dunbar no. & online social networks

A few years ago, extrapolating from her study of primates, Oxford Unviersity-based anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that "the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148," The Economist reports. That's usually rounded off to 150 and called "the Dunbar number." The Economist interviewed Facebook's "in-house sociologist," Cameron Marlow, whose findings pretty much match up with the Dunbar number - an average of around 120 "friends," but ranging from a handful to thousands. I've long suspected that people whose friend lists are at the upper end of the spectrum are marketing more than being friends or, in the case of young adolescents, working through the "popularity contest" that school social scenes can represent. Here's the thing, though: Marlow told The Economist that the average person with 120 Facebook friends responds to the comments of (keeps in close touch with) only 7-10 friends (men at the low end of that range) - their "core network." Beyond that are the "casual contacts that people track more passively." The Economist ends with the observation that "humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever." Not that everybody uses social network sites to advertise themselves, but I do think the second half of that observation is exactly right. [See also the UK's NewScientist.com on "how social networking might change the world."]

*Social* classifieds: Safer

Combine social networking and classifieds and online buying and selling really start to make sense. Why? Because you can get a much better feel for who you're dealing with. You can peruse the profile of the person who responded to your ad. Even better, you can go to your network of friends and acquaintances first when you're ready to unload that laptop or car, no screening required. And you can donate the proceeds to a charity of your choice in a few clicks. I'm mentioning all this because Oodle, which started providing online classifieds to MySpace last summer, today launches Facebook Marketplace (disclosure: Oodle is a sponsor of NetFamilyNews, but even if it weren't I'd tell you that selling stuff to the wider circle of friends and acquaintances that social networking allows makes sense and is safer than other forms of classifieds online and offline). Where charitable selling on Facebook is concerned, members "can go to Marketplace, post a listing and select ‘Sell for a Cause.’ Once posted, the listing will be distributed to their friends through news feeds allowing the seller to tap their social network for fundraising." This classified advertising's free. Here's the San Jose Mercury News's coverage, and here's Oodle's own Safety & Fraud Center.

Terms of use: Social Web bill of rights?

It's a big headache, Facebook's experiment in folding users' input into updating its terms of use, but so is democracy! And by definition - as a user-driven or -produced medium - Web 2.0 is more democratic than any that preceded it. Revising terms of service in this participatory way actually makes them relevant. I wonder why it has taken so long to get here, actually (maybe partly because all eyes were directed to predators by politicians and the news media, with the relentless message that it's entirely up to these social-media companies, like their mass-media predecessors, to control the content they "broadcast"). Now, as my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid wrote in CNET, Facebook's "officials seem to be trying to figure out what it means to run a company where users, not professionals, provide most of the content. In some senses, Facebook is a media company but unlike newspapers, TV networks and even most blogs, its contributors aren't employees or contractors. It's those 175 million members." Terms of use can no longer viably be written entirely by corporate lawyers "for other lawyers, in the hope that their lengthy recitation of claims leaves no room for a lawsuit," as the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro put it. Nor can Facebook afford simply to "grind" users' reactions and edits to its proposed user "bill of rights" "into the usual legalistic sludge." Pegararo suggests Facebook should put its draft in a wiki that users can edit as in Wikipedia. The only problem is, Wikipedia doesn't need the input of corporate lawyers on its "encyclopedia" entries. The other problem is what adequate representation is for Facebook's 175 million "citizens." If more than 7,000 people comment on a new policy, Larry Magid points out, "the policy will be put to a vote and the result 'will be binding if more than 30% of all active registered users vote." Thirty percent of 175 million is 53 million. This will be an amazing experiment indeed if that many people vote! In any case, this is a great discussion to be having - it's important to make terms of use relevant. [Here's a transcript of Facebook's 2/26 press conference on this at CNET.]

Social networking growth in India

India has a population of 1.1 billion, out of which a mere 19 million people visited social network sites this past December, comScore reports. Still, social networking growth was significant last year: 51% overall. Google's Orkut, popular in Brazil, is No. 1 in India too, at 12.8 million visitors in December, an increase of 81% over the previous year. Facebook, at 4 million December visitors, is No. 2 (150% growth). Indigenous sites bharatstudent.com (88% growth) and ibibo.com were in 3rd and 5th places, respectively, but ibibo lost ground, traffic-wise, between Decembers 2007 and '08. In 4th place, San Francisco-based Hi5.com had the highest year-on-year growth at 182%. Meanwhile, the Times of India reports on the Internet as "a great social research tool."

Facebook's about-face on terms of use

Facebook was smart to go back to its previous terms of use while it conducts this terms-of-use-updating experiment in a spotlighted Petrie dish in what seems like the middle of Mumbai's Victoria Station at rush hour (see CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "Update on Terms"). And this is indeed a giant (global) societal experiment, as we the people (the content producers and distributors) and they the companies (the content co-distributors and hosts) - not to mention policymakers and other overseers and observers - figure out who is responsible and to what degree for protecting the content producer, aka user. Because the social Web is largely a user-produced and user-controlled medium, clearly (to me, anyway) the responsibility is shared. Educating users about that is a challenge all by itself, witness the general lack of close attention to privacy options (see "10 privacy settings every Facebook user should know"), but factor in developing teenage brains learning impulse control and shared responsibility at the same time, and the user-protection challenge grows significantly (see PBS Frontline's "The Teenage Brain").

I said Facebook's smart in my lead up there because, in going back to its previous terms-of-use version, it's buying time for the process of folding user input into the new terms' development process and this giant experiment is also about user (and societal) education. It needs time. There are factors involved that only a few of the privacy bloggers are writing about (e.g., author Daniel Solove), including the tension between consumer privacy pressures and those from law enforcement to hand over as well as retain user data after users have closed their accounts. But time is short, too. Though this social and media experiment - and consensus-building in general - take time, Facebook doesn't have a whole lot, given the climate outside the Petrie dish. The predator panic recently brought into perspective by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force is a good illustration of how worst-case scenarios and fears tend to eclipse the public discussion about the social Web - to the detriment of child safety (see the New York Times and my post on that). Why to the detriment? Because kids usually want to get far away from scared, worked-up parents; they go "underground" online, where parents aren't in the mix. Never the best scenario. [Thanks to UK privacy researcher Tara Taubman for pointing out a few of the links below.]

Here are other reports and commentaries worth reading:

Audio interview with both Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly by CNET/CBS tech analyst Larry Magid (Larry is also my co-director at ConnectSafely.org)

A lawyer's view on Facebook's 180 and how enforceable terms of use are anyway (Maxwell S. Kennerly in Philadelphia)

University of Wisconsin information studies Prof. Michael Zimmer's very critical view of Facebook's process

Internet consultant and blogger David Silversmith on the technical and monetary realities and then "plain old reality"

The Guardian on how people definitely do read the "fine print" in social sites (vs. grocery store loyalty cards)

Coverage at the Washington Post and New York Times.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force report

Facebook, terms of use & privacy

The biggest news over the holiday weekend besides the economy was the buzz about Facebook's recent terms of service update. Facebook said it was all about consolidating and clarifying "what people could and could not do" on the site (see CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blog), but the ruckus raisers said it was about what Facebook could and could not do with users' content, CNET's Caroline McCarthy reports. I think the update and the ensuing flap are much more about what users can do with and for their privacy - and society getting used to a bottom-up, user-driven, user-controlled medium. Here are two important takeaways on user privacy: 1) If you want to delete your own account and all the personal info therein, you can certainly do so, but Facebook can't automatically delete information you post in other people's profiles (because it's on their wall, not yours); 2) if by using Facebook you "license" the site in effect to own and share your content, its use of your content is subject to how you set your privacy settings, so users need to pay attention to and proactively set those privacy options; and 3) that last point is even more true now that Facebook Connect "allows users to 'connect' their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site" and Facebook of course cannot control or protect user info in other sites. In his blog post, Zuckerberg wrote, "There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with."

Virtual helicopter parenting

We've all heard of helicopter parents, people who hover a lot over every aspect of their children's lives. Well, now there's some hovering happening in cyberspace too, with parents setting up social-networking profiles and attempting to friend their children and all their friends. It's a bit much, and it can get creepy too (and not just from a teen's perspective), when the result is like insisting on being present at their social circle's every hangout. Author/blogger/parent Sharon Cindrich has a great list of tips for guarding against parental Facebook faux pas - "a few basic rules for parents" of social networkers. The overall rule of thumb, I think, is to try to think about how our teens would feel about having a friend's mom's every tidbit of workday and PTA "news" on their "wall" all the time. Check out Sharon's blog for some very good reasons for not letting this happen - and finding a happy medium between helicopter and fly-by parenting.