Verdict in Megan Meier case

In the cyberbullying case against Lori Drew, the Missouri mother involved in the creation of a fake MySpace profile that led to Megan Meier's suicide, "a federal jury delivered a mixed verdict," the Los Angeles Times reports. She was convicted of misdemeanor charges involving unlawful computer access, but the jury "rejected more serious felony charges." It was also "deadlocked on a conspiracy count." The L.A. Times added that Drew "faces anywhere from probation to three years in prison." For details on what happened, see my first post on the story a little over a year ago.

'The parents' fault. Not.'

Those are the words of tech educator Will Richardson, who in his blog tells of a conversation with a high school principal. Richardson had said in his presentation that no one was teaching young people how to use social-network sites well. So the principal told Richardson he was teaching them - when he hauls them into his office, shows them the nasty stuff he'd found on their profiles, and watches the "genuine astonishment" on their faces that he'd found their profiles. Clearly that cluelessness was their parents' fault, the principal indicated. Richardson thought not, but the solution is not the one-shot "parent awareness night" or "some type of scary Internet predator presentation by a state policeman." He continued: "For the life of me, I can't understand what is so hard about opening up the first and second and third grade curriculum and finding ways to integrate these skills and literacies in a systemic way. If you want kids to be educated about these tools and environments, then maybe we should, um, educate them." Hear, hear! But here's a literacy we can integrate into our kids' lives too: life literacy, learning how to function in community (online as well as offline), learning treat others as we'd like: Tech-etiquette basics like "no texting or talking during dinner." [See also "Cellphone etiquette."]

1 in 5 employers screen profiles

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey of "more than 31,000 employers" and found that 22% of employers look at social-network profiles as they screen job candidates, ComputerWorld.com reports, and 9% said they plan to do so. That represents rapid growth in the practice, since only 11% of hiring managers said they screen with social sites in 2006. Of the 22% who said they do, one-third said they "found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job." Interestingly, that last percentage was exceed by that of hiring managers who found content in profiles that convinced them to hire the candidate (24%); these managers said what convinced them was "profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate's chances for a job." Please see the article for the eight "top areas of concern" employers look for in social-network profiles.

MyYearbook helps teens give to 'Causes'

The US's No. 3 social-network site, MyYearbook.com (see this), just launched a new feature called "Causes," YPulse.com reports. "MyYearbook users can choose from a number of causes like ending world hunger, fighting climate change, saving the rainforests or curing cancer. They donate with virtual money, i.e. $40 buys one grain of rice (expensive grain!), and then get a badge on their profile (status)." They also get to choose what advertiser gets to display its ad on their profile, YPulse adds. A percentage of the ad money goes to the cause to which the advertiser's linked. This is kind of interesting - the teen profile owner ups his/her coolness factor through both the causes and the products advertised. As in many sites for young people, virtual money (called "Lunch Money" in myYearbook), is earned by playing games in the site. ClubPenguin, too, has causes to which member penguins can give (but no advertising). MyYearbook is apparently close to reaching $20,000 a month in donations to organizations such as the World Food Programme, CarbonFund.org, Conservation International, Save Darfur, and Child Help.

The ISTTF: Chicken or egg?

"ISTTF" stands for Internet Safety Technical Task Force, the result of an agreement last January between 49 state attorneys general (minus Texas) and MySpace. The emphasis is on the word "technical," because the attorneys general basically charged the task force, of which I'm a member, with reviewing technical solutions to online youth risk - "age verification" technology being their stated predetermined solution of choice. Why? Because they're law enforcement people. They deal with crime - not all these other subjects that have come up in online-youth and social-media research - so they probably feel that this is all about crime and technology, so some technology that separates adult criminals from online kids, or that somehow identifies every American on the Web, is what will make the Internet safe for youth.

The problem is, we now know - via a growing body of research - that young people's use of technology for socializing is not limited to MySpace, to social networking in general, or even to the Web. Youth don't even focus on what technology or device (phone, chat, blogs, IM, Skype, computer, Xbox Live, Club Penguin, World of Warcraft, etc.) they use when they're socializing. They just communicate, produce, and socialize. So the "problem" is not technology. We're dealing with behavior, learning, adolescent development, social norm development, and identity formation, here. What technology is going to give adults (those who want it) control over that, or somehow sequester American youth into American sites that are compelled to verify ages, or separate adults and children across the entire universe of increasingly mobile, device-agnostic communications, media-sharing, and social activity?

Besides, we also know now that only a tiny percentage - well under 1% - of US youth are at risk of being victimized by the kinds of crimes the attorneys general put the Task Force together for, and this minority is, unfortunately, already at risk in "real life." Technology probably doesn't have much of a chance at curing the age-old struggles of troubled youth - certainly not ID verification technology.

The other thing we know, though we adults don't think about it a whole lot, is that the "problem" is changing - fast (it actually won't be that long before our teenagers are parents!). Because nobody's brains are fully developed till their early 20s, teens need our input, but so do we need theirs. For the most part, youth understand what's happening with tech and the social Web, they're the drivers of it, they're changing (growing up), and technology is changing faster than we can keep up with it, so we don't have anything close to a static "problem" to get a fix on, much less to fix.

Which leads me to the chicken/egg question. The first day we heard at least a dozen presentations by purveyors of various technologies, many of them focused on verifying either ages (very hard with US minors, who under federal privacy law have very little verifiable personal information in public records) or identities. By the end of the day I couldn't shake off the unnerving picture of a roomful of baby boomers (digital non-natives, including me) - many of whom barely understand the "problem," much less the full picture of young social Web participants, and some of whom stand to gain a great deal from selling the Task Force on a particular technology for nationwide adoption - trying to assert control over the unruly social Web. The understanding is growing, not least because the Task Force has a research advisory board as well as a technical one, and the former is right now completing a review of all research on youth online safety to date - the first of its kind. This is brilliant! So what's wrong with this picture? Seems to me the research comes first, then - as we understand the problem - we begin to look at what the solutions should be.

The second day we heard from a Rochester Institute of Technology sociology professor with a background in law enforcement. It's an important study (I'll blog about it more next week) because it looks at Internet use by more than 40,000 Rochester-area students all the way from kindergarten up through 12th grade, and it offered the Task Force insights into the peer-on-peer, noncriminal but negative and sometimes unethical and illegal side of the online-safety question. But youth were referred to in an extremely negative adversarial way, first- and second-graders referred to as "perpetrators" and "offenders." For example, the "four types" of middle-school "online offenders," he said, are "generalists, pirates, academic cheaters, and deceiving bullies." As useful as the data is, I don't feel this is productive language to use when trying to change behavior or inspire children about digital citizenship (see my description of an amazing such project at Bel Aire Elementary School in Tiburon, Calif., here).

So there you have one person's (rambling) perspective. There are others available now - that of Adam Thierer of the Washington, DC-based Progress & Freedom Foundation and a more radical one from CNET blogger and Berkman fellow Chris Soghoian. [The Task Force is hosted and chaired by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.]

Your views are always welcome - in our forum here, posted in this blog, or via anne[at]netfamilynews.org. With your permission, I love to publish your views for the benefit of all readers.

Police department's MySpace profile

It's not the first time I've seen news stories about law enforcement on the social Web (see links below), but the Washington Post reports it's the first time police in the DC area have established a MySpace profile. The Arlington, Va., Police Department is "hoping that children who use MySpace will add the department to their lists of 'top friends' to discourage sexual predators from contacting them." A retired detective suggested the profile and some "George Washington University criminal justice students working as interns for the police department put the page together and will monitor and update it. On its first day, the Arlington police MySpace page signed up 12 'friends,' mostly other police departments." For other, earlier, examples, see "Law enforcement on the social Web," "Police on MySpace," and
"Teens arrested for uploaded video."

Reality TV fans more at risk?

People who watch reality TV shows are more likely than non-watchers to share share more photos of themselves and "to accept friends they don't know in order to build larger networks on social networking sites," WebProNews cites new research as finding. According to the study by University of Hawaii and the University of Buffalo, fans tend to mimic the behavior they see on television, and reality TV "actors" are "rewarded for behaviors such as being the center of attention." The shows send the message that behavior aimed at gaining celebrity is a good thing, the researchers said. They added that "age and gender are not factors when it comes to the likelihood of watching reality television, but women are more likely to share photographs."

Social-media gender gap: Research

Females increasingly rule the social Web, research by the people behind reputation lookup site RapLeaf.com found. According to a blog post by its CEO, "young women are much more active on these sites then young men. And for people above 30, men - especially married men - aren’t even joining social networks. With the notable exception of LinkedIn.com usage and VCs in the Bay Area friending everyone on Facebook, married men are not hanging out on social networks. Married women, however, are joining social networks in droves. In fact, women between the ages 35-50 are the fastest growing segment on social networks, especially on MySpace." They're not just socializing, though, they're also producing media (text, graphics, photos, etc.) and decorating profiles and pages. It's not that young men don't spend every bit as much time in front of a computer - sometimes more - but young men, he says, spend those hours more in "videogames such as World of Warcraft, first-person action games," and offshore poker sites, where they can actually win and lose money. As for seeking out the opposite sex: "Now young men understand that they can’t spend ALL their time playing video games (though some do) as they still need to interact with the opposite sex. Sex is one of the strongest drivers of online usage and many men see social networks as a gateway to potentially filling that desire. Men, in general, tend to look at things more transactionally than women. Once men get married, they see increasingly less value in being on a social network." The Pew/Internet project released similar findings last December (see "Boys & girls on Web 2.0" and "Teens rule the Web").

AOL to buy Bebo

Though Bebo users probably won't notice much of a difference at first, AOL recently announced it would acquire the social-networking site very popular among teens, particularly British ones. The $850 million acquisition "reflects the high hopes that big media companies like Time Warner [AOL's parent] have for social networking, which they see as a potentially lucrative way to bring together online consumers, media owners and advertisers," the International Herald Tribune reports. This may be a sign of coming consolidation in the part of the social Web dominated by companies (there's plenty of grassroots Web too - see my item this week about mini-MySpaces and all that individuals can do on their own on the participatory Web). Speaking of which, here's Le Monde's social-networking world map, putting Bebo in the No. 1 spot in the UK and Europe, but with some qualification from Jupiter Research.

'Predator' myths exposed: Study

Despite all that parents hear, "sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase [children's] risk of being victimized by online predators," according to a new analysis by the Crimes Against Children Research Center. US society has been overreacting, the CACRC's article in American Psychologist, "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims," indicates. Another myth, the Seattle Times reports, is that "Internet predators are driving up child sex crime rates," when in fact sexual assaults against teens "fell 52% from 1993 to 2005" (US Justice Dept. figures). A third myth is that online predators "represent a new dimension of child sexual abuse," when in fact most Net-related crimes against minors "are essentially statutory rape: nonforcible sex crimes against minors too young to consent to sexual relationships with adults." Another finding by the Center at the University of New Hampshire was that "most [teen] victims meet online offenders face to face and go to those meetings expecting to engage in sex" - they were generally not deceived by the offenders about the offenders' age or intentions (only 5% of offenders posed as other teens). One more myth: that online predators "go after any child." In fact the young people at greatest risk are "adolescent girls or adolescent boys of uncertain sexual orientation.... Youths with histories of sexual abuse, sexual-orientation concerns and patterns of off- and online risk-taking are especially at risk." See also "Profile of a teen online victim," "Online victimization: Facts emerging," and Reuters's coverage of this study. Here's the article in the February-March 2008 issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

'Mom-tested' sites for tweens

It's hard to find out much about MomLogic on the Web (couldn't easily find an About Us page), but the site put its stamp of approval on five sites for preteens: Stardoll (digital paper dolls + social networking), the Whyville virtual world, Imbee blogging, Allykatzz social networking for girls 10-15, and Yamod (a kind of YouTube for kids 14 and under). BTW, Imbee is fixing a problem the Federal Trade Commission had with the site. It has settled with the FTC, which had sued Imbee for children's privacy violations. Wired reports that Imbee asked kids to "register up front with their full name, date of birth and email address. Only after the child provided the information did Imbee send an activation email to the parents. And if the parents didn't activate, Imbee held on to the tot's data anyway."

Facebook changes ad system

Amid growing flak that its new advertising system reduces users' privacy, Facebook made some changes this week. Now users can "opt in" to having their online shopping broadcast to friends; before they had to "opt out" - a problem if they didn't know their purchasing decisions were being broadcast and they were, for example, buying holiday gifts and wanted their friends to be surprised). "The move comes a week after MoveOn.org, the non-profit public policy advocacy group, joined a growing chorus of critics of the new service," the Financial Times reports. Facebook did stop short of allowing users to opt out of the system altogether, the FT added. The system is "part of an effort to boost revenue growth by tapping into the deep social connections between Facebook users" - aimed at making social networking attractive to advertisers by tapping into the viral-marketing idea that friends are influenced by what their peers buy. Among other concerns was that of a University of Minnesota law professor. Citing his view, a New York Times blog asked the question, "Are Facebook's Social Ads Illegal [in New York]?" And consumer privacy advocates are pushing for greater control for consumers of their personal data on the Internet (see this at the Center for Democracy and Technology).

Clear-eyed look at Net risks

Rarely do we see balanced reporting on the subject of children's online safety. So it was good to see USATODAY's Janet Kornblum looking at both the real risks and the misconceptions that have developed about how teens are victimized online. Not that dangers don't exist, but "some worry that parents are falling victim to 'predator panic' and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether," she reports. She also cites the view from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Center's director, David Finkelhor, told her that - contrary to impressions from news outlets such as NBC Dateline - "overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005," and the vast majority of those involve abusers the victims know in real life. For more from Dr. Finkelhor, see "Profile of a teen online victim." [For other articles along these lines, see "Social-networking dangers in perspective" and "Abduction by online predators rare."]

'Kickstart' for students

Yahoo has a new niche social site for college students that's supposed to be more professional than social but not quite as professional as LinkedIn.com, a PC World blog reports. Apparently a profile on "Kickstart" is designed to be more like a resume than a place for friends' "pokes" and comments. The site's photo upload page reminds users, "You'll want to use a professional-looking photo, since your future boss may see this."

Parental concerns key

eMarketer points out how important parents' views of social networking are to this social-Web business. It cites the research of Parks Associates as showing that "virtual world advertising in the United States will increase tenfold to $150 million by 2012 from the 2006 level. That spending could be cut, however, if parents deny permission for teens to visit virtual worlds. And parental approval is not a given, since some aspects of virtual worlds are still discomfiting for parents." What Mattel's BarbieGirls.com does is require girls to pick a username, password, and age range ("the choices are 5 or under, 6-7, 8-9, 10-12, 13-15 and 16+"). The also have to provide a parent's email address, "which is used to send an automated permission request. Once the parent approves, a child can access the site." Of course kids can find workarounds: It's impossible to verify that the email address really is the child's parent's, and the message "simply asks the recipient to affirm 'that you are the parent of the child')." And proof of the child's age can't be required because children don't have ID cards or personal information in any national database against which sites could check (a scary thought - see this on child age verification). [eMarketer this fall issued a very expensive lengthy report on kids' virtual worlds.]

Social networking for avatars

If people feel like a little extra layer of anonymity in their social networking, they can always have their avatars socialize for them. "Koinup.com is a social-networking site akin to MySpace, but for virtual worlds such as SL, IMVU, and The Sims," reports SecondLifeInsider.com. "There are a few such sites, but most of them are devoted to a particular platform, rather than the all-inclusive Koinup." Meanwhile, CNN has the big picture on social-networking niches.

'What kids like to do online'

Fun article at Slate.com by mom and author Emily Yoffe, who polled her 11-year-old's peer group about the question implied in the headline. Among other things, the "focus group" confirmed (qualitatively, anyway) my suspicion that one of the appeals (for the kids) of online play is that it's just kid stuff right now - Mom or Dad can't possibly know about all the sites they use and if s/he does, s/he doesn't have time to keep up with all their ins and outs. It'll be a while before we catch up with our digerati, kids know very well.

Anyway, with the group, Emily visits several tween-targeting virtual-world sites that have some things in common, including buying stuff for your avatar with virtual money. "To purchase this fake clothing and furniture [in virtual world sites] requires fake money, and to earn it, players are required to play a series of arcade-style games. What better lesson can we teach our kids: If you've just blown through your home-equity loan, you can always avoid bankruptcy by spending a couple of days in Vegas." The kids, she found, don't ask Mom or Dad to pay for the paid version of these sites because that would only "draw undue attention to [the kids' online] leisure activities." So her daughter and friends currently prefer a site by General Mills called Millberry.com.

As for avatar friends in these virtual worlds (e.g., ClubPenguin), one child "thought the befriending feature was something of a sham. First of all, these penguin friendships were too meaningless even for kids who do much of their real-life socializing online. Second of all, because she wasn't a [paying] member, Ellie was embarrassed to invite people to her barren igloo because it looked 'pathetic'." Many parents will sympathize with Emily's conclusion about the sadness of on-screen play replacing the old hands-on kind we pre-Digital Age types engaged in. But the nostalgia in this response, plus too much exposure to very negative media and political hype about online risks, may keep us from helping our kids take advantage of the benefits of the social Web for youth.

'The Naked Generation'?

"We are the Naked Generation," writes Caroline McCarthy of herself and her peers born in "1980-something." She blogs at CNET that - unlike Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie - "we didn't have 'socialite' already on our resumes, so we turned to the Web." It is "more than just our stage; it's our dressing room, our cocktail lounge and, most notably, our PR department." The Naked Generation, she adds, is smart and knows it, "so they think they can use online exhibition as an advantage rather than an embarrassment. The word to highlight there is 'think'." A lot of adults reflexively believe her - adults who don't understand the full scope of what's going on in MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, and so many other blogging and social-networking sites. The problem with McCarthy's view and that expressed in a more academic article on online self-exposure - "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism" - is that they generalize way too much, and they fuel parents' fears because they continue to fix our attention on only one aspect of the social Web. Despite her eye-catching phrase, McCarthy's not actually talking about a whole generation. She's talking about one group of social networkers and bloggers - those who, for whatever reason, are into self-exposure - and one aspect of Web 2.0. So is researcher Christine Rosen, when she asserts that "the creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives is the main activity in the online social networking world." Certainly there is over-self-exposure in social sites. Some users do use them as popularity contests, for self-marketing, and toying with lightweight "relationships." But to say those are basically what social networking's all about is a massive generalization. Social networking is whatever any user wants it to be. A profile or blog is a reflection of oneself, or whatever persona a user is projecting in a given moment. That can be good, bad, or anything in between, but it's very individual. For the bigger picture, see "25 perspectives on social networking," by Malene Charlotte Larsen, a PhD student in psychology and communications at Aalborg University in Denmark. [Readers, unlike most bloggers, I usually post stories as I find them without editorializing - I hope you don't mind that I was really being a blogger with this post - Anne.]

Facebook courted, criticized

It was a big news week for Facebook this week. First, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Microsoft was discussing buying a small chunk of Facebook. It would be a minority stake of about 5%, valued at $300 million to $500 million. "But Microsoft must first outgun Google, which has also expressed strong interest in a Facebook stake," the Journal adds. On the downside for Facebook, New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo said his office "issued subpoenas to gather more information about the Palo Alto company's policies and procedures after an undercover investigation found that Facebook was slow to respond to complaints about sexual solicitations of underage users," the Los Angeles Times reports. Facebook said in a statement that Facebook took the attorney general's concerns "very seriously" and would work with him and other attorneys general, the Times added.

Social networking in the workplace?!

Yes. By default*, for starters. But for some corporations (future employers of our kids, parents), social networking's already in the workplace, at the boss's behest or otherwise, and for some it's only a matter of time. "Thousands of employees of Shell Oil, Procter & Gamble, and General Electric have Facebook accounts. A Facebook network of Citigroup employees - only those with Citigroup e-mail accounts can join - has 1,870 users. Procter & Gamble employees use Facebook to keep interns in touch and share information with co-workers attending company events," InformationWeek reports in a long look at the subject. But of course "how the social networking model is applied to business will determine whether it becomes the next office collaboration tool or the latest Web app to get blocked at the firewall." Half of companies restrict social networking on their networks right now. For those who use it, InformationWeek says, uses "include viral marketing, recruiting, peer networking, and even emergency coordination and communications." A couple of specific examples: Some companies sell products that enable businesses to create their own social networks, some of which "can be used to create communities where customers can interact, like Nike's Joga.com, a soccer-oriented social network…. McDonald's employees and some partners will soon be able to create their own profiles on the company's Awareness (formerly iUpload) social media platform, from which they can blog and participate in communities." Motorola "already supports thousands of internal wikis and blogs, and a social bookmarking initiative is under way, too." It will add a "social networking layer" that will "let employees create profiles and let people see what information fellow employees have authored and tagged." Microsoft is definitely in Web 2.0 mode, with 300,000 internal blogs and wikis. [* By "by default," I mean social networkers simply work there and their corporate firewall doesn't block social sites.]

Oz panel to study social-site safety

Australia's federal government announced it has appointed a task force "to investigate the safety of social networking sites and the danger they pose to Australian children," Australia's ABC News reports. "The Social Network Consultative Group is part of the Government's $189 million NetAlert program." The panel will also consider "strategies," including legislation, that might make social networking safer.

Not 'the new Dr. Spock'

The headline of a recent CNET interview with MIT professor Henry Jenkins suggests he might be, but - though he isn't a pediatrician or child development specialist - he is one of the US's top experts on social media. So he knows a lot about how young people's social producing and creative networking with digital media. Referring to research showing that "57% of teens online have produced media and about a third of them have produced media that they shared with people beyond their immediate friends and families," Dr. Jenkins told CNET that those 57% "are kids who are learning to share knowledge, to collaborate over distances, to work with people from diverse backgrounds, to participate in a global culture - those are really powerful things that are emerging in this generation. But they're also facing dilemmas about intellectual property, cyberbullying and how to navigate these environments." It's challenging to parent them as they do this navigating, he says, challenges that "are not anything their parents taught them how to deal with. They don't have a language to talk to their kids about a lot of the issues they're facing online." It's becoming more imperative to learn enough about social networking to try to talk with our kids, I'd say, because - if we try too hard to control or even ban it, communication breaks down and kids go underground. They have so many workarounds and opportunities to connect without our knowledge. "Turning your home into a surveillance culture where you don't trust your kids is dangerous because you're going to make it harder to communicate with your child," Henry told CNET. "So part of what I've argued is that the kids don't need someone looking over their shoulders, they need someone watching their backs." For more on his research and views, see "Participation: Key opp for kids."

Facebook & MySpace in Oz

Social networking growth patterns in Australia makes for an interesting case study for parents looking for a bigger picture. MySpace has 3.8 million profiles in Australia, while Facebook has 141,000 Australian members. But Facebook grew by 273% in Australia between April and June, putting it in that country's top 5 online communities and "outpacing the industry leader," Australian IT cites Hitwise as reporting. Hitwise found that 18% of Facebook visitors arrived there directly from Hotmail, "where they may have received emails from friends asking them to join Facebook," and "nearly 10% came directly from a MySpace page." They're not abandoning MySpace, though, Hitwise added - there's just "a lot of crossover." "Twenty-three percent of MySpace traffic came directly from Google Australia."

Teen jailed for posting nude photo

A 19-year-old was sentenced to 30 days in prison for posting a nude photo of his ex-girlfriend on MySpace, the Associated Press reports. "Anthony D. Rich pleaded no contest Tuesday to child abuse and attempted child abuse. Prosecutors reduced the charges from sex crimes that could have branded Rich a sex offender for life." He was 17 when he posted the photo of the 15-year-old girl after they broke up. The AP reports that the girl consented to having her picture taken but not to having it posted.

Social shopping from back-to-school retailers

To lure more young customers, retailers are trying to make online shopping a more social experience. They're creating "elaborate online worlds that may have little to do with their products [and] employing video-sharing, social networking and even virtual reality to target the teenagers who drove sites like YouTube and Facebook to popularity," the Washington Post reports. Examples: At Sears.com you can create your own avatar, or virtual self, and virtually try on Sears clothes; "Wal-Mart started a Facebook group about dorm-room style"; and J.C. Penney and American Eagle Outfitters will have new short films in their sites every week.

NJ AG's wider social-Web effo

This is one of the more unusual stories I've seen in the news about a state attorney general dealing with teen social networking: Instead of focusing only on MySpace, as many attorneys general have done (at least on the public airwaves), New Jersey's seems to be more practical. Attorney General Anne Milgram "has asked a dozen Internet social-networking sites to find out whether convicted New Jersey sex offenders have created profiles on their sites," FoxNews.com reports . The sites are Xanga, Facebook, Community Connect, TagWorld, Bebo, MyYearbook.com, Tagged, Friendster, LiveJournal, Imeem, Hi5 and Gaia Online. The AG's office found "at least 269" sex offenders registered in New Jersey in the latest list MySpace provided attorneys general. Of the 269 … 109 are either on probation or parole," and one has been charged with a parole violation, the AG's office told Fox News. What is not known is how many other sites have the technology to detect and report registered sex offenders on their sites. General Milgram said New Jersey would help the sites in their searches.

College social networking good or bad?

Is it good or bad that social-networking eases the transition from high school to college? The Washington Post looks at that question, citing "experts" as saying that, in addition to making things easier with online "introductions," over-reliance on tech "can also hamper their adjustment by making it easy for some students to hold too tight to the life and friends they've left behind." With cellphone texting, social sites, and IM, they can not only meet roommates-to-be to find out if they're bringing the microwave, they can also relax back into friendships back home, which can leave them "less emotionally available to confront new challenges, test their beliefs or engage in serious introspection - what college was once thought to be about." My guess is, they'll be challenged one way or another, but what do you think? Post your thoughts in the ConnectSafely.org forum!