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August 9, 2007
A Timely Report in Time for School
Just in time for Back to School, a good report from the National School Boards Association.
"One of the commonly accepted mantras is that the Internet is a very dangerous place for kids—especially social networking sites, where innocent youngsters can be approached by strangers offering them virtual candy—hence the recent moves by sites such as MySpace to tighten up access controls for younger users. A new study from the National School Boards Association suggests strongly that many of those fears are misplaced and that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information.
Funded in part by Microsoft, News Corp. (which owns MySpace). and Verizon, the study paints a picture of Internet safety that differs significantly from that commonly depicted by the mainstream media." (Found via Ars Technica)
Here's an article on the report and a few additional commentaries afterwards.
Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown
By Eric Bangeman published: August 08, 2007
You can link to the original report PDF here (12 pages).
From Cory Doctorow: "National School Boards Association (a nonprofit that represents 95,000 US school-board members) did a comprehensive study of students' experiences with the Internet, especially with social networking sites. They determined that the much-touted risk of online stalkers and predators was basically nonexistent (0.08 percent of students surveyed had ever gone to meet a stranger without parental permission). The best part is their recommendation to schools: stop fearing the Internet and embrace it as an incredible tool for instruction.
In light of these findings, they're recommending that school districts may want to "explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes" — and reconsider some of their fears. It won't be the first time educators have feared a new technology, the study warns. "Many schools initially banned or restricted Internet use, only to ease up when the educational value of the Internet became clear. The same is likely to be the case with social networking.
"Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression — but student may learn these lesson better while they're actually using social networking tools."
Social networking may be advantageous to students — and there could already be a double standard at work? 37% of districts say at least 90% of their staff are participating in online communities of their own — related to education — and 59% of districts said that at least half were participating. "These findings indicate that educators find value in social networking," the study notes, "and suggest that many already are comfortable and knowledgeable enough to use social networking for educational purposes with their students."
There's further commentary at Mashable here.
I like this quote from the report:
"Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression — but students may learn these lessons better while they’re actually using social networking tools."
I've written a few articles (here and here) about this and it's great to see the NSBA taking up the cause. Of course the work done by ALA, YALSA and the Illinois Library Association adds to the corpus.
Stephen
Posted by stephen at August 9, 2007 9:38 AM