Kids experiencing less bullying, sexual assault: Study

Schools, keep up the good work! A new national study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that bullying, sexual assault, and other violence against US children ages 2-17 "declined substantially" between 2003 and 2008, the University of New Hampshire's CACRC reports. The study's lead author, David Finkelhor, credits schools' and other prevention efforts to reduce bullying and sexual assault as part of the explanation for the declines, though adding that "children's victimization is still shockingly high." In the past year, physical bullying decreased from 22% of youth to 15%, and sexual assault from 3.3% to 2%, the CACRC study found. Certainly we all have more work to do – and not just schools: The authors "did not find declines in physical abuse and neglect by caregivers, but [they] did find a decline in psychological abuse. Thefts of children’s property also declined, but robbery was one of the few offenses to show an increase." This page at the UNH site has a link to the full study, "Trends in Childhood Violence and Abuse Exposure," in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Here's coverage today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; thanks to Cobb County School District risk-prevention specialist Patti Agatston in the Atlanta area for pointing the Journal-Constitution article out. Later added: the Wall Street Journal's coverage.

Teenage brain: Fresh perspective

For a long time, most adults have assumed that teens take risks and act impulsively because their brains aren't fully developed. It's the explanation we hear a lot for their "immaturity." And although some very reputable publishers have reported on the "teenage brain" - e.g., PBS Frontline, Harvard Magazine, and the National Institute of Mental Health – one academic researcher I know even calls this "pop science." Well, a new study at Emory University really reinforces the pop-science perspective and could end up turning the developing-brain theory upside down. It found that "the brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers," Scientific American reports. At least two observations undermine the theory that the impulse-control, executive part of the brain develops later than the emotional part, it says: "First, American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." Certainly nothing's completely clear yet, but the term "teenage brain" already feels dated and a little disrespectful.

Digital risk, digital citizenship

It's becoming increasingly clear that - in a highly participatory environment such as the fixed and mobile social Web - risk and citizenship are directly related. Risk-prevention experts show how online community mitigates risk. Inner thoughts are expressed outwardly, and peers notice a friend in crisis and get help by any means possible. Online social networks are powerful tools for peer help and protection. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has data back several years showing how effective social network sites are as sources of referral (see a post of mine from back then, "The social Web's 'Lifeline'").

Helping one another is one vital aspect of digital citizenship. Researchers such as Harvard education professor Howard Gardner (second link below) are now turning up important findings on how youth function in digital communities. Their work is the kernel of the digital citizenship instruction and practice that will increase safety and trust in an environment that increasingly mirrors the "real" world (for youth, the fixed and mobile social Web is not something separate from "real life"). How will digital citizenship increase online safety? It includes the ethics, civility, empathy, social norms, and community awareness that can mitigate aggression and other results of online disinhibition. We know from the work of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH, for example, 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 their analysis in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine). In any case, digital citizenship by definition teaches the community awareness that protects individuals, enables collaboration, and promotes civic engagement.

Both of these features illustrate the clearer definition of "online safety" that has emerged since the end of last year, with the help of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. The ISTTF's report, which summarized all online-safety research to date, showed that 1) not all youth are equally at risk online, 2) the youth most at risk offline - of sexual exploitation, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, etc. - are those most at risk online, and 3) young people's psychosocial makeup and family and school environments are greater predictors of real-life risk than the technologies they use. Now we're finding that the use of those social technologies is not only not the best predictor of risk, it can be 1) an avenue to help both immediate and enduring and 2) a means for learning and practicing good citizenship.

In other words, yes, dysfunctional, anti-social behavior is acted out online as well as offline but so is the exact opposite behavior - and the latter can be reinforced for the well-being of individuals and society (see "Geeking out for democracy" at media scholar Henry Jenkins's blog.

The two features:

"A summit for saving lives"

"Learning how to navigate virtual communities: Key to digital citizenship"

A summit for saving lives

I learned so much last week at a two-day gathering in Washington called a "Summit to Save Lives." SAMHSA, the US government's Substance Abuse & Mental Health Administration, brought together activists in the areas of suicide prevention, healthcare, social media, online safety, and government to develop strategies for growing the presence in all social media of information and help for anyone thinking about or affected by suicide. And this was not just about prevention, but online intervention and postvention (e.g., help for survivors) as well. [Please see the links list below for a sampler of the amazing people and organizations present.]

Here is just a partial list of info and insights:

The need: Some 33,000 people in the US took their own lives in 2006 (the latest figure available) - 91 people a day. And last year there was a 436% increase in the number of online suicide crises (people in suicidal crisis reaching out online), the reason for great interest at SAMHSA in social media. The normal range of dark thoughts in human beings is deeper and wider than most people know, I learned, and people need to be reassured of that - in many cases they don't have to believe they're in crisis and act that out.

Help on the social Web: The SAMHSA-funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800.273.TALK) has 2,000 friends in MySpace, 1,100 fans in Facebook, and has had 16,000+ views through the YouTube Abuse and Safety Center, but that and other projects aren't enough....

More help coming: SAMHSA and others in the fields of mental health and suicide prevention want to be everywhere - all online spaces - where there are people even thinking about suicide as well as friends who can help them. Because of social media, the range and number of helpers are growing. And even though the very social-network sites where they want to reach out are blocked at SAMHSA and other government agencies, the summit showed their determination to get past bureaucratic resistance. [Fortunately, they can use their cellphones at work - they recognize text-messaging as an important channel too.]

Users make the difference, Chris Le, CEO of Emotion Technology in Austin, told us. And Gallup, which has been doing research for SAMHSA, told us that "thousands of social-network-site users are active in educating and supporting fellow users to prevent suicide."

Other key risk prevention: I learned that RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network), the US's largest anti-sexual assault organization, now has a national sexual-assault online hotline that goes to great measures to protect callers' anonymity and privacy. Why online? Because teens and 20-somethings are online, and 80% of all rape victims are under age 30. Why anonymity? Because the vast majority of sexual exploitation involves people the victims know, and it's vital that abusers don't know when victims are calling for help. Also: "More teens use the Web to find health information than to download music (75% vs. 72%)," RAINN told us. Other risk-prevention communities: Summit participants represented work with soldiers and veterans, youth, gay and lesbian youth, and native Americans and other ethnic communities.

To Write Love On Her Arms: You have to read this organization's story, really, to understand what it's about, because it's based on the story of a young woman in crisis, as written by someone who helped her - and who founded this organically growing organization on that story of hope. I saw heads around the room nodding as founder Jamie Tworkowski illustrated how people respond to honest messages of hope and inspiration (see NBC News).

Non-conventional media: I have been involved with social media for so long that I forget how revolutionary new media like social networking, tweeting, and texting are and how mysterious they can seem to those who, like me, didn't grow up even with email. I realized many people think...

1) social media are complex, sort of interactive conventional mass media in which people "get the message [or education] out" rather than the more appropriate approach: create a space and be an unintrusive, caring, credible, presence that people find, "friend" or "follow" and send friends to if or when needs arise
2) online community is somehow something in addition to and separate from people's offline social groups, instead of a visual representation of people's offline social networks
3) messaging has to be perfect before it's published, rather than - in the more spontaneous and social nature of new media - put out there as a kernal developed in collaboration with users. Social media is about creative networking and social producing, not the we're-the-experts, unidirectional style of mass media.

Next steps: As I listened, immersed for two days in a culture and language new to me, it occurred that these organizations had already taken the biggest next step. They were right then engaged in social-media development. As they spoke and acknowledged each other's work, they were networking as individuals, organizations, and interest areas. And just as "social networkers" do on the Web, it's just a matter of giving digital representation to the networks that are already in place. The Lifeline's pages in MySpace and Facebook are perfect examples. Now they can include links to, e.g., RAINN, The Trevor Project, the Hispanic Communications Network, Indian Health Service, Active Minds, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and other sources of help. In social media, ideas and work grow organically - we learn as we go as individuals and organizations. There's something unnatural about ideas being preplanned and presented perfectly right out of the gate, as in old mass media. And there's safety and help in approaching both the medium and each other in this humble, open, authentic way - one that's based on and represents the respect and trust already in place in the "real world" network. Thank you, SAMHSA!

Related links

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 1.800.273.TALK

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

RAINN (mentioned above)

SAVE.org (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education)

JeffreyJohnston.org (honoring a boy who committed suicide by raising awareness)

TheTrevorProject.org, which operates "the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth"

JedFoundation.org, "preventing suicide and emotional distress" among college and university students

To Write Love on Her Arms (mentioned above) - first online presence was on MySpace here

CopeCareDeal.org - "a mental health site for teens" from the Annenberg Foundation

ActiveMinds.org - "changing the conversation about mental health," with chapters on more than 200 college and university campuses

SPANUSA.org (for "Suicide Prevention Action Network")

The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment

Inspire, which started 10 years ago in Australia, is now "creating opportunities for young people to change their world" in the US

In the federal government: Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Service, and SAMHSA

Toward fixing teen risky behavior in social sites: Study

A professor of pediatrics said she was a little surprised by how much information about risky behaviors teens post online - information for all to see but that their doctors struggle to get out of them. In a random selection of 500 MySpace profiles of people who say on their pages they're 18, Dr. Megan Moreno at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her co-authors found that "54% of the profiles contained information on risky behaviors" - 24% of them about sexual behaviors, 41% about substance abuse, and 14% about violence, the Washington Post reports, citing a just-released study in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"The good news," the Post says, citing a second study by the same researchers, "is that a simple intervention - in this case, an email from a physician - made some of the teens change their risky behaviors" - a significant number, in fact. For their second study, described in the same medical journal article, the authors sent emails to half of the owners of 190 randomly selected MySpace profiles of people saying they were 18-20. They were signed by Dr. Moreno. "She called herself 'Dr. Meg,' identified herself as an adolescent medicine doctor and researcher, and urged them to check out her academic Web page," the Boston Globe reports in its coverage of the studies. "'You seemed to be quite open about sexual issues or other behaviors such as drinking or smoking,' the message said. 'Are you sure that's a good idea? After all, if I could see it, nearly anybody could.' The message invited them to consider revising their profiles to protect their privacy. It also raised concerns about sexually transmitted diseases and pointed them to a Web site offering free testing."

And the response was? "Three months later, 42.1% of the ones who received the email had changed their profiles, dropping references to sex and substance use or moving their profiles from public to private," the Globe reports. So does the New York Times in "A Note to the Wise on MySpace Helps."

That's great news. Besides rules and tools, which not all teens respond to positively, other means of changing risky behavior are emerging, such as this kind of targeted, relevant educational messaging and social norming (peers' positive influence, as illustrated in a substance-abuse-prevention program at University of Virginia, Charlottesville). I think, as did Dr. Moreno, we need to get past the surprise adults have at teen risky behavior online. It's not new, it's just more public (which is a problem these studies help address), and it's actually developmental behavior, since neurologists tell us that the part of the brain that understands cause and effect and the implications of actions, the frontal cortex, isn't fully developed till people are in their early-to-mid-20s. Which is why, child development specialists say, risk assessment is a primary task of adolescence (and why adult guidance needs to be in the picture).

There's a lot more good thinking expressed or linked to in the Globe article, including:

The view from Dr. Michael Rich of Children's Hospital Boston that "social-networking sites [are] venues where young people channel their images and ideas, connecting with peers as they try on different identities - the way their parents might have done on the telephone. Where they can get into trouble is believing what they put on their profiles remains anonymous, outside their circle of friends," the Globe paraphrases him as saying. See also related articles in this same (January '09) issue of Archives, including It also links to an editorial in the same issue of Archives by the study's other authors he said.

The view that "using such sites [e.g., MySpace] to promote health messages is promising," in "Social Networking Sites: Finding a Balance Between Their Risks and Benefits," an editorial by Dr. Kimberly J. Mitchell of the Crimes Against Children Research Center and Michele Ybarra of Internet Solutions for Kids (in this same latest issue of Archives).

More than 90% of US teens have Net access, and about half of those use social-network sites, USATODAY reported in its coverage of the studies. Citing background information in the Archives article, the Post added that "MySpace boasts more than 200 million profiles, according to the studies, and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18."

Related links

"Teenage Brain: A Work in Progress," National Institute of Mental Health , and "The Teenage Brain," Frontline, PBS .

The Internet effect: What about the Net is actually changing the equation now, what distinguishes socializing online through sharing comments, photos, and videos about ourselves from the old-fashioned, less public socializing we've done for a long time? Social media researcher danah boyd sums it up in four factors: persistence (it's hard to take down); searchability (people you don't know can find it); replicability (it can be copied and pasted elsewhere, without our knowledge); and invisible audiences (what's most prominent in the above studies) - see this interview with danah in AlterNet.org.