In these modern times, when people hear the word "beard," they sometimes think of someone being used, perhaps unknowingly, to cover up the sexual orientation of a friend.
However, once anyone under 20 sees this series of public-service announcements from LG, in which James Lipton from "Inside the Actor's Studio" attempts to be a good companion to troubled teens, they will, hopefully, think "beard" before sending a text featuring a picture of their private parts.
You see, LG did a little research and discovered that nasty or sexually explicit texts weren't being sent so much by bullies, but by "tabloid teens." You know, those who might have helped Yahoo's business enormously by trying to find every last piece of information about Tiger Woods' alleged missteps with various misses.
Such teens believe that gossip is their source of influence and social power, but it doesn't necessarily yield the finest of results. Which is why LG would like the rapidly typing youth to "give it a ponder" before they send, as Lipton so sweetly describes it in one of the spots, "a pic of your junk."
In an attempt to help, Lipton gives them his beard for them to stroke. On their own faces, you understand.
The spots have a tough task, as they are asking kids to don Lipton's famously ephemeral facial hair in order to adopt a little temporary maturity at a moment of some excitement.
But LG is still determined to knock a little sense into these people wherever it can get to them.
The rather lovely Give It A Ponder Facebook page has delightful entries from, for example, a lady called Lynn Hood who says, "Oh, that I had a beard this magnificent to stroke while I ponder." And, the GiveItAPonder.com site offers even more amusement.
U.S. teens together apparently send 20,000 texts per second, so one can only hope that this delightful campaign puts at least a tiny dent into their craniums.
Once it makes some intelligent inroads with teens, perhaps LG might try to influence the poor judgment of politicians. Perhaps, indeed, LG could get the folks on Capitol Hill to text us their thoughts and receive our approval before they ever articulate a single word in public. Just a thought.
In 1994, when I wrote Child Safety on the Information Highway, the first widely disseminated Internet safety publication, I advised parents not to let kids put personal information or photos online and--because of what turned out to be an exaggerated fear of predators--I urged them to avoid online conversations with strangers. Back then, along with trying to keep kids away from porn, Internet safety was mostly about protecting children from dangerous adults.
But starting around 2005, a new phase of the Web--often referred to as "Web 2.0"--prompted some Internet safety advocates to focus on ways kids could get in trouble for what they post on social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. It was in that year that Anne Collier and I founded BlogSafety.org (later renamed ConnnectSafely.org) so we could provide a forum for discussing safety issues on the interactive Web. It was also around that time that politicians and the media, especially the TV show "To Catch a Predator," started whipping up fears of predators trolling the Web for vulnerable children.
But statistics show that the likelihood of a young person being harmed by an online stranger is quite rare, and sexual solicitations and harassment are most often from peers. And to the extent it has occurred, it affects teens, not young children. Based on studies by the Crimes Against Children Research Center, the overwhelming majority of crimes against youths continue to take place in the "real world," mostly by adults known to the child.
Teens interact with 'real world' friends
That doesn't mean that the Internet is a risk-free zone. It's just that young people are far more likely to be harmed by other youth or the consequences of their own online behavior than by adult criminals.
Their interactions are largely with people they know from the real world. As danah boyd (she prefers a lower case d & b) observed in her doctoral dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics (PDF), "teen participation in social network sites is driven by their desire to socialize with peers. Their participation online is rarely divorced from offline peer culture; teens craft digital self-expressions for known audiences and they socialize almost exclusively with people they know."
This understanding of youth risk led to a whole new phase of Internet safety education focusing on such things as cyberbullying and urging youth to avoid posting material that could be embarrassing or get them into trouble with authorities and potential future employers. Recently, the focus has turned to the emotional and legal consequences of "sexting,"--kids sending nude pictures of themselves via cell phones or the Web. But as Collier observed in NetFamilyNews.org, we run the risk of "technopanics" over sexting and bullying.
What we've learned from observing how kids use the Net, mobile phones, gaming devices, and other interactive technology is that there is really no distinction between online and offline behaviors. Technology is woven into their lives. They don't go online, they ARE online. So it's really about youth safety--not Internet safety.
It's about helping young people make wise choices not just in how they use technology, but in how they live their lives. Internet safety is more than just the absence of danger. It also includes finding ways to use technology for learning, collaboration, community building, political activism, self-help, and reaching out to others.
These are not just philosophical arguments. They're pragmatic because preaching about safety or trying to lock down the Internet doesn't protect kids. Trying to instill fear--especially based on myths--actually increases danger because it causes kids to tune out good advice.
Filters as fences
Sure, there are technologies that can keep kids from using social-networking services or visiting inappropriate Web sites. But, like fences around swimming pools, the use of filters at home and school can't protect them forever. That's why we teach kids to swim. Not only does knowing how to swim help prevent drowning, it empowers them to thrive in the water instead of fearing it. The same is true with technology. Filters and other parental control tools often make sense for young children, but as kids mature into teens, we must pull back on the technological controls in favor of self-control.
In an e-mail interview, Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and author of Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation observed, "sadly, too many parents think that using technology to track their children's keystrokes or restrict access to certain Web sites is sufficient parenting. It is not. Parents must be involved with their children's virtual lifestyles developing trust, being aware of any potential problems, learning about the technologies they use, and communicating often."
This post is adapted from an article that first appeared in the Palo Alto Daily News.
Conde Nast is throwing in the towel on Flip.com.
The teen girl social-networking site, which launched in February 2007, will shut down on December 16, according to an e-mail sent to users Tuesday. Members who used the service to create scrapbooks were advised: "any flipbooks that you would like to save before this date, we suggest you print them," according to MediaBistro.
Flip.com, which reached a membership of about 300,000, originally focused on shared "flipbooks" that members could create using photos, videos, and other content. However, the site had difficulty competing with the likes of MySpace and Facebook, and morphed in January into a set of distributed Web apps designed for existing social networks' developer platforms.
According to MediaWeek, Conde Nast is also closing the message board YM.com, which is what remained of the one-time YM teen girl magazine.
"The idea is that we're encouraging people to go to TeenVogue.com," a representative of Conde Nast's CondeNet told MediaWeek.
Texas college freshman "Kiki"--she asked CBS News not to use her real name--hopes to become an online star with her "How to Cheat on a Test" video.
"This method of cheating, it will work," she says in her online video.
She told CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg, "Um, like, I didn't know it was going to be kind of controversial."
There are more than 3,000 "how to cheat" videos on YouTube alone. Some are silly, using elastic bands. Others get creative with clothing. The most sophisticated turn soda bottle wrappers into detailed cheat sheets.
"It's a 21st-century form of showing your friends how cool you are," said John Palfrey, the author of a book about the digital generation.
There are worse videos online--showing drug use and fighting--but these cheat videos encourage bad behavior in otherwise good kids.
"I don't think I have any regrets. It's just, like, I posted that video for fun, you know, I was really bored one day and wanted to post it out of amusement," Kiki said.
"James," a ninth-grader from New Jersey, posted a series of cheat videos. He makes no apologies, but he doesn't want to be identified, either.
"Do you worry that anything you're doing is wrong or going to have some consequences later?" Sieberg asked him.
"I think it might, if people figure out this is me," he said. "But if they don't, I think it's fine."
Policing YouTube is virtually impossible. Thirteen hours of video are posted every minute. Guidelines ask for "no bad stuff," and if there are enough complaints, the video could be taken down.
But YouTube itself doesn't screen for immoral or illegal behaviors, making it easy for adolescents to indulge their worst impulses.
"Young people are going to wake up some years later and say, 'Gosh, I wish when someone Googled my name they didn't see that.' And it will be sort of like a tattoo on their arm, something they want to remove but will be very, very hard to get rid of," Palfrey said.
And is James afraid of getting caught?
"No. I don't think that's ever going to happen," he said.
James has had second-thoughts and has taken his videos down, perhaps worried about consequences down the road.
"I actually want to become a lawyer," he said.
He may want to brush up on his ethics first.
Gaia Online, a virtual world targeted at teens, on Monday said it has raised $11 million in a series C round of financing from Institutional Venture Partners.
The round brings its total financing to more than $32 million. Its previous investors include Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Time Warner.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company, founded in 2003, is among the most popular virtual communities for young people online, with reportedly more than 5 million monthly visitors (or 350,000 people who log on daily) who play games, socialize, and buy virtual goods in its marketplace.
Last year, the company , a Stanford University professor, to be its chief economist.
Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia, said the company plans to use the funds to continue developing the site. This summer, for example, Gaia said it will introduce a casual (and free) Flash-based massively multiplayer online game, or MMO, that has been in development since last year.
The funds are surely meant to help fend off a throng of rivals, such as Teen Second Life, and ensure that Gaia capitalizes on a growing population of teens in virtual worlds. Researchers estimate that the audience of teens in virtual worlds will more than double, to 20 million members, within the next three years.
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