Social Networking Cyber-bullies

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Some would argue that, in order to more rigorously protect children, social networking sites should be more aggressive in their use of age verification. After all, age verification procedures effectively limit access to adult sites; but then, adults have various forms of government or business-issued identifications, such as driver’s licenses and credit cards. The problem in this case, is that there are no similar forms of identification for minors!

So, at base, there’s no accurate way to verify the age of any young internet user who wants to claim another age in order to visit a social networking site.

Most youth, over about the age of 10, know that it’s possible to lie about their age to register on a site governed by age restrictions. And, social networking sites are highly attractive to students in middle school, many of whom are under the age of 13. Many underage students register on these sites, often with the permission of their parents, but then, there are probably just as many who register without their parents’ permission.

It is important to note, when considering the usefulness of available technologies, that students can often use their school district’s internet service (either on-campus, at school, or off-campus, at public libraries) to access online communities or electronic communication services where they can engage in cyberbullying. So, it’s probably a mistake to think that a filtering technology will, or even can, prevent cyber-bullying or trash-texting from happening.

A school district’s filtering software can be set to block access to popular online communities, but a moderately intelligent middle school student can easily set up a home computer system that will provide the capability to circumvent the school computer to get to these sites or simply access a proxy site that will facilitate bypass of a filtering system…

Don’t believe me? Prove it to yourself. Conduct a Google search for yourself on the words bypass Internet filter to see how easy it is for students to find instructions on how to defeat any blocks established by a school district using filtering technology.

And, as if that weren’t already enough to be concerned about, it’s important to remember that students can also engage in cyberbullying by using cell phones or PDAs while at school. Anyone can easily access their online social networking profile using their cell phone.

Now, it appears that most school districts have policies prohibiting students from using cell phones during class, but in many schools, there are active programs teaching students to use personal digital assistants (PDAs) for educational purposes (mathematics, chemistry, descriptive statistics, etc). And, all the while, the prices of these devices are dropping rapidly.

The major emerging concern is how parents and schools will manage student use of technology, when many students have wireless personal digital devices that they use in the classroom for legitimate educational activities — but, that function outside of the school’s filtering environment and can also be used to engage in online social aggression.

In the UK, there has been a growing, and nasty, trend over the last year for teenagers (mainly) to film unprovoked attacks on innocent victims using their cellphones. The resulting video footage or images are then distributed to friends in an almost cult like fashion. This has become known as the happy slapping craze.

I see that the Washington Post is today running a story about online ‘Fight Club’ postings. While these, it would appear, are organized street fights between consenting adults, the worry must surely be that happy slapping will eventually crossover to the online fight club scene…

Tags: cell phone number reverse look up, social networking, criminal background check, cell phone, cell trace

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