Reflections on 25-years of online safety advocacy

Note: This is a work-in-progress, subject to editing and changes

by Larry Magid

Twenty-five years ago, in 1994, Ernie Allen, then the CEO of the National Center for Missing Children hired me to write a booklet called “Child Safety on the Information Highway.”  We released it at a Comdex press conference, which was at the time the world’s largest computer show. The room was nearly empty. There was little interest in our little booklet.

A few weeks later, there were news reports about a teenage boy who traveled from Seattle to San Francisco to meet an adult male who he had encountered online. That set off a media frenzy and an intense interest in our booklet.

A couple of years later, we published a new booklet, Teen Safety on the Information Highway and, with support from AOL CEO Steve Case and pioneer internet registrar Network Solutions, I started SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com. ConnectSafely.org, the non-profit organization I help start, was founded in 2005.

Then and now

This year marks the quarter-century anniversary of that first internet safety booklet and, looking back, a lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same.

Technology, of course, has changed dramatically. Even though the Internet was a reality in 1994, it was still in its infancy in terms of the number of people online and the way we connected. Nearly everyone back then used a dial-up modem to “go online,” and most were using online services like AOL and CompuServe.  And people logged on from home, school or work. Smartphones hadn’t yet been invented.

In 1994, “going online” was something you actively did – like driving to work or getting on a bus. Today, the internet is not only in our pockets, but on our wrists, in our door locks, our cars, our jewelry and sometimes sewn into our clothes. It’s attached to and could soon be embedded into our bodies. And those online services, which were tightly controlled, are no longer gate keepers. Today we are free to access millions of websites and apps, many of which are incredibly useful, most of which are benign but some of which are malicious.

Connectivity, hardware and software

Connectivity and hardware have obvious come a very long way since 1994, but so has software. Back then databases, spreadsheets and other desktop applications could help us store, organize and in some cases analyze information so that we humans could make better decisions. Today, as Artificial Intelligence is becoming a reality, the software is doing all of that and more – including making those decisions for us. Software is also tracking what we do online, sometimes just to display ads that might interest us but sometimes to create profiles that can be used to track us over time and, in some cases, feed us targeted fake information in an attempt to surreptitiously influence our behavior.

We’ve also seen technology enter worlds that – for decades – managed to pretty much escape automation. Physical security – once dominated by armed men on the street and other staring at monitors from cameras, is now largely automated, with software not only detecting risk but responding to it as well. Cars are increasingly automated and on the verge of becoming completely autonomous.

New tech brings both opportunities and risks

There is a lot we don’t know about the future of technology, but here is what we do know. With every new product and product category, we have both new opportunities and new risks.

Cybersecurity used to mean protecting our computers against viruses which, in the worst case, could wipe out our data. That’s still a risk, though we’re now calling it ransomware, but the risks are so much greater when it comes to our privacy, security and even our democracy.

I’ve been around long enough to remember a visit by John McAfee who inserted a floppy disk into my PC to protect it against the Michelangelo virus. But today’s devices not only don’t have disk drives, they increasingly don’t have screens and keyboards. There is no simple way to inoculate your door lock, your thermostat or your car from today’s versions of viruses. We’ve all heard stories about cameras being hijacked, thermostats being turned into home spying devices and cars being re-routed by white-hat hackers making the point that almost anything is vulnerable.

And it’s not just our personal devices that are vulnerable. Millions were affected by comprised payment terminals at Target in 2013 through no fault of their own.

Not just about protecting kids

The internet safety field has mostly been about protecting vulnerable populations and, for decades we pretty much defined that as kids and teens. That group still has risks (as well as opportunities) but my organization, ConnectSafely, is retooling itself to serve other populations – young women, seniors, LGBTQ individuals, social and political activists, religious minorities and anyone else who may be “different” or simply stands out, which is why we recently hired a Human Rights Director.

The risks are also evolving. At one point we mostly worried about predators and inappropriate content. Both risks still exist but we’ve learned that the likelihood of a child being harmed by a person they met online is relatively low compared to other risks, including those from adults they know in the physical world. Inappropriate content is still a concern to parents, and there are both technological and educational approaches to help protect young children, but the reality is  that as children enter their teens, they do better by applying the “filters” that run in the computer between their ears rather than on their devices.

Social media, of course, has brought additional risks to the forefront including cyberbullying and harassment but also the risk of people spending too much time online, engaged in compulsive behaviors that some refer to as “addiction.”  While addiction is not a correct word, it colloquially describes some problematic behaviors, including the compulsion to constantly be in contact, sometimes described as FOMO (fear of missing out). There is also the issue of people feeling the need to be constantly on display and how we perceive our own image and the images of others, sometimes leading to feelings of inadequacy as we compare our lives to the seemingly (and typically false) near-perfect lives of others as they portray themselves online.

The issue of privacy has become paramount and is now getting the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. The European Global Data Privacy Regulation is a sweeping example of how regulators seek to deal with what is often considered to be a wholesale attack on individual privacy. California and other states have passed online privacy laws and there are many in Congress seeking to pass national legislation to protect consumer privacy. At this point the question isn’t whether Congress will act but when and what and whether it will be something that truly protects consumers while giving industry the flexibility it needs to both innovate and monetize products.

Youth as protectors of youth

Of course, adults want to protect children, and that’s a good thing. But, especially with teens, it’s important to empower young people to protect themselves and their peers. Peer programs like #ICanHelp, Beyond Differences and MyDigitTat2 are led by adults but much of the support is from the kids themselves. When it comes to dealing with cyberbullying, kids can often be more effective than adults, especially when it comes to providing support to other youth who have been bullied. Plus, empowering people to help themselves and other has lasting effects, teaching resilience and problem solving strategies.

What are the risks:

• Harassment and bullying
  • Although a minority are engaged in this behavior, most people have encountered these problems as a bystander if not as a victim. Harassment and bullying ranges from annoying to dangerous with lots of gradations in between. At its worse, it can literally be terrifying and there are cases where it has escalated into physical violence.
• Posting material that could harm your reputation
  • Many people have seen others post things that are embarrassing or stupid. This could be something you post that is mean, that shows you doing something illegal or inappropriate or something about your past that perhaps you might not want to share
• Security
  • Security and data breaches affect everyone. There are things you can do to protect your security but sometimes it’s out of your hands.
    • Identity theft can affect anyone and children are far from immune. They are sometimes targeted because they have clean credit ratings. Another form of identity theft is impersonation, which can occur if someone gets hold of your device or log-on credentials and can harm others in your name.
• Privacy
  • Similar to security, everyone has to be concerned with their privacy. And, like security, there are things you can do but you are impacted by policies that are beyond your personal control.
• Spending too much time online
  • There is not medically accepted evidence of “addiction,” there are clearly a lot of people who spend more time engaged in online activities then they consider to be healthy
• Emotional impact & FOMO
  • Sometimes you encounter things that make you feel sad or even jealous, such as people attending parties that you weren’t invited to, engaging in fun activities, having success at work, school or sports, looking better than you think you look or anything else that may bring you down. Of course, people typically post only the good photos of themselves and share happy experiences. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily any better looking, more successful or happy than you are.
• Legal and financial risks
  • What you post online can be used as evidence if it indicates that you have broken a law or a rule or policy of your employer, school or organization. There are also financial risks from scams and impulsive purchases or investments.
• Exposure to inappropriate or unwanted material
  • It’s pretty easy to find just about anything online, including sexually explicit material, hate speech and fake information. Parents should think about the best way to protect their children from possible harmful affects of inappropriate material
• Online predators and physical molestation
  • There have been cases of children and teenagers being harmed by adults they encounter online and they can be horrific, but they are relatively rare. Children are far more at risk from people they know.

 

Public health model for online safety

Public health officials have, for years, had a three-tiered approach to keeping people healthy: Primary, secondary and tertiary.  Primary is aimed at everyone, secondary is aimed at people exhibiting specific risk factors and tertiary is aimed at helping people manage an illness they already have.

That same approach applies in the online safety world:

1. Primary aimed at everyone: Digital citizenship, media literacy, digital civility
2. Secondary aimed at high risk individuals who may be involved in cyberbullying, sexting, uncivil interactions
3. Tertiary aimed at people who are experiencing involved in relatively severe or high-risk situations where there is some of type of trauma or high-risk

In other words, it’s not a one-size-fits all model.  Providing general education about safe use of online technology is a good strategy for nearly everyone and there is certainly no reason to scare people with little or no risk with repeated stories of all the horrible things that can happen to them. Still, there are some people who do have higher levels of risk and they should be provided with the support they need.

In a talk she gave many years ago, former IKeepSafe executive director Marsali Hancock, compared online safety education to a well-child visit with a pediatrician. The doctor doesn’t sit the child and parents down to lecture them on the risks of all the horrible diseases that the child could (but most likely won’t) ever suffer from, but to talk about how to keep them safe and healthy with such things as wearing seat belts and bike helmets and washing their hands. That is a primary intervention, appropriate to all children. And similar primary intervention in online safety includes general education on how to protect your privacy and security and how to increase civility among your online contacts.

Digital civility

The internet is both a cause and an effect of what is going on in the world, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which. Clearly, we are living at a time of division, which is evident from watching cable news or simply listening to the speeches of our political leaders. Some of that has filtered down to ordinary folks, which is certainly evident in many Twitter and Facebook feeds.