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Safer Internet Day 2009
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" The wicked witch in Snow White turned to her magic mirror to see herself as the world saw her and for reassurance that she was indeed the fairest. Had the mirror not been quite so brutal in its assessment, the story might have turned out quite differently. |
Social networking is the means by which we can choose to give an image of ourselves to the world. The full consequences of what we show through this are impossible to judge. The image can become distorted and our profile tainted. By the same token we have to exercise some caution as to what might be lying behind the mirror.
One of the most publicised stories on internet safety last year was concerned with the aftermath of Megan Meier's suicide following Lori Drew's misrepresentation of herself as "Josh Evans" on MySpace. This story continues to attract much polemic as, in part, it shows how limited existing laws are on the issue of (cyber)-bullying.
Whilst other risks have corresponding legislation - however well or poorly applied - cyberbullying is not always so well covered. Drew's prosecution under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act may show how creative prosecutors might have been in their response to the creation of a false profile. Whilst sexual predation and pornography are often the risks that spring to mind when looking at internet safety issues, in the words of the latest report from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force: "Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline."
Had "Josh Evans" been real and had he written the same things to Megan, the prosecution could not have taken place under the same laws but the results would, presumably, been the same. It isn't the fraud that pushed Megan to suicide but her rejection by someone she thought she could trust.
Social networking and other new forms of communication may help the bully taunt his or her target; but to combat cyberbullying what is paramount is an awareness of the possible consequences. The bullies' excuses that what started as a prank went too far or that they never meant any harm can only be tackled by showing what harm is caused by this anti-social behaviour. Reasons enough, we hope, why Insafe through the medium of Safer Internet Day is focusing this year on social networking and cyberbullying.
Keep it fun, keep control.
Readers' corner:
Hello,
I was particularly impressed with this months' newsletter (December 2008, The mobile internet). I'd love to see more of these which inform parents of the technical details which they find themselves being increasingly unable to keep up with.
Best Regards
Brian Roche
Thank you Brian for your kind words. Over the next months we intend to focus on the following topics:
- March - Safer Internet Day events reports
- April - Privacy in the digital age
- May - Social networking is more than SNS – other forms of online social networking
- June - Internet governance from a European perspective
We hope these will be of interest to you and all our readers. We invite feedback and suggestions to: info-insafe@eun.org
If you wish to keep up with what we're reading, you can see saferinternet.org's bookmarks on Delicious. You need no account to see these and they are tagged by type (report, trend, children, mobile etc.)
| Author: |
Chris Jenkins, Insafe |
| Published: |
Tuesday, 27 Jan 2009 |
| Last changed: |
Wednesday, 11 Feb 2009 |
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