Internet Safety

CNET 
Video game aficionados might have to enter a credit card or find another way to verify their age before playing a networked game, thanks to a new push from advocacy groups who say they want to protect minors from in-game advertising messages. In-game marketing has become so advanced that it “allows advertisers to track game [...]

CNET 
McAfee’s study, Secret Life of Teens, is a reassuring portrait of how most young people are exercising reasonable caution in their use of technology. The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, reported that “almost half of youth (46 percent) admit to having given out their personal information to someone they didn’t know over the internet,” but when [...]

New York Times 
A company called SocialShield has launched new technology aimed at keeping children and teens safe on social networking sites like Facebook. Using patent-pending “Safety Engines,” the service scans a child’s social networking profile to look for inappropriate, dangerous, or otherwise suspicious content or behavior. When it finds questionable material, parents are alerted immediately [...]

Education Week 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as many as 35 percent of teens have experienced some kind of “electronic aggression,” threats, rumors or other bullying behavior expressed through cell phones or the Internet. But if students are using their own computers and their own time to bully others, administrators’ hands are [...]

eSchool News 
The national Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and Facebook are joining forces to promote internet safety through a set of tools and resources for children, schools, and parents. The world’s largest online social network and the National PTA will work together to build a program to provide information and support about such issues as cyber [...]

eSchool News  
A federal online safety task force issued a report June 4, noting that the real world and the online lives of today’s students are overlapping. Although internet safety education is essential, the report says, scare tactics do little to influence the behavior of children and teenagers, who spend a large part of their lives [...]

Science Daily 
Four out of five children can’t tell when they are talking to an adult posing as a child on the internet, according to researchers working on software to track pedophiles online. Computer Scientists at Lancaster University have been working on a tool which can work out a person’s age and gender using language analysis [...]

Associated Press  
Facebook has launched a revamped internal site designed to help people stay safe and report threats while on the popular online hangout. Facebook’s “”Safety Center,”” which features new tools for parents, teachers, teens and law enforcement, is the first major endeavor from the social networking site and its four-month-old global safety advisory board.
Full story

New York Times 
Students’ online behavior is getting more attention as an important part of teaching children how to use the Internet. Schools in a number of states are considering the use of a free curriculum by Common Sense Media, which provides research-based lessons on a number of ethical issues associated with Internet use, including students’ [...]

Digital Education  
The report, from the Cyberbullying Research Center, used data from nearly 2,000 randomly selected youths from a large school district in the south. Of those students, it found cyberbullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide as those who hadn’t experienced cyberbullying.
The study noted a connection between all forms of bullying [...]

eSchool News
Students aren’t getting enough instruction in school on how to use technology and the internet in a safe and responsible manner, a new poll suggests. Released by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and supported by Microsoft Corp., the survey found fewer than one-fourth of U.S. teachers have spent more than six hours on [...]

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives struggled during a Sept. 30 hearing with how to stop the online bullying of children without violating free-speech rights. a House Judiciary subcommittee was told that federal law does not make it a crime to engage in “cyber bullying” that becomes destructive to its young victims. The worst [...]

A recent study found that teaching students about unsafe online behavior and cyberbullying can reduce its impact, at least in the short-term. The study, performed by Educational Technology Policy, Research, and Outreach (ETPRO), part of the University of Maryland College of Education, assessed whether a new program used by DARE and iKeepSafe was successful in [...]

Members of an internet safety task force on July 8 suggested several ways to improve cyber safety for children, focusing on three key areas in particular: education before a child gets on the internet, control while the child is online, and having set procedures if problems arise.
Click here to read the full story from eSchool [...]

An NIH study found that over a two-month period, 20.8% of children in grades 6 through 10 were perpetrators or victims of physical bullying, 53.6% of verbal bullying, and 13.6% of bullying online or via cell phones and electronic devices. Bullying tended to decline as children aged, researchers said.
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In response to findings from recent studies showing increasing use of the Internet by students  – and increased threats to student safety from cyberbullying and other dangers – the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) has laid out specific recommendations for both school leaders and policy makers.