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Jun 16, 2009

The Privacy Dilemma: Balancing Privacy and Online Life
Posted by: Matthew Johnson

It's been widely said that attention is the currency of the 21st Century. In an age where media occupy an increasingly central role in our lives, the need to have that media focused on you becomes intense. For no-one is this more true than for children and teens, who now expect to be connected twenty-four hours a day and for whom the Internet and cell phones are essential parts of their social lives. An interesting Facebook page, amusing Tweets, outrageous YouTube videos, even shocking photos sent by cell phone -- most of us are aware of the ways that young people seek their peers' attention. In today's media environment, is it still possible to teach young people the value of privacy? What, indeed, does the idea of privacy even mean to today's children and teens?

With support from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Media Awareness Network has completed a thorough review and updating of its popular professional development resource Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing to better reflect today's media environment. While fears of online predators have turned out to be largely overblown, parents and educators need to be aware that there is a powerful and organized force that is trying, and succeeding, to compromise children's privacy: online marketers.

Few adults are aware of just how commercialized kids' online environments are. According to MNet's study Young Canadians in a Wired World, ninety-five percent of young Internet users' favourite sites contain commercial content. In many cases these sites blend advertising and entertainment in ways that would be unimaginable in other media. Embedded with images of logos and mascots, these sites use video, downloadable content and free games to build up exposure to branded material and inspire consumer loyalty. Knowing that kids' Internet time is largely unsupervised, they take advantage of children's inability to discern advertising from non-commercial content. MNet’s research shows that two-thirds of children surveyed who played advergames -- online games which contain branded content and serve as advertising for youth-marketed products -- did not recognize them as advertising.

The privacy concerns of these online environments arise from the data collection techniques that are used. These are found not just in overtly commercial sites such as Candystand but also popular children's sites such as Neopets. In nearly all sites aimed at youth, children must register to gain access to the full content -- giving up personal information they would certainly not tell a stranger offline. Moreover, many of these sites give incentives (such as the "Neopoints" needed to purchase items on Neopets) for completing surveys on such topics as one's favourite candy, breakfast cereal and so on. The result, for the sites' owners, is a wealth of valuable consumer data that can be used to shape marketing decisions, in the case of the overtly commercial sites, or sold to marketers for the same purpose by the others.

What should concern parents and educators is not that the information being collected by these sites is especially sensitive -- no-one can identify or track you by your preference for Hershey over Cadbury chocolate bars -- but that these information-gathering techniques train children to give up personal information without thinking about it. If they are accustomed to trading their privacy for what they want as children -- access to games and other online content or "Neopoints" to customize their online houses -- then they will likely do the same to buy the attention of their peers as teens. Of course, this can lead to unwelcome attention as well -- either at the time, in the form of embarrassment or humiliation when material meant to be private goes public, or later, when material is viewed by unexpected audiences such as employers or university admissions officers.

So does the term "privacy" even mean anything for today's youth? In fact it still does -- ask any teen if she'd want her mother as a Facebook friend and you'll learn that. What's changed is that we can no longer view privacy as an absolute: instead it has become a negotiation, in which information is traded in exchange for other things.

What parents and educators need to do is teach children and teens privacy management, the skill of making conscious and wise choices about what information to give out and why. Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, gives educators a detailed rundown of the privacy concerns facing youth today and provides strategies and resources for dealing with them. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has also sponsored a two-part lesson series, available for free download from both the MNet and OPC Web sites, that teaches students in Grades 7 to 12 how to balance maintaining their privacy with leading an active online life.

Resources

Kids for Sale: Online Privacy and Marketing, part of MNet's Web Awareness Workshop Series, explores current strategies for marketing to kids and the ways in which children's privacy may be compromised online. The workshop underlines how important it is for kids to know when they are being informed, entertained or marketed to online and also to understand how their personal information may be used. To see if your school, board or ministry has already licensed the Web Awareness Workshop Series, view our list of current licensees.

Privacy and Internet Life, a lesson for Grades 7 to 8 which teaches students how to protect their personal information on social networking sites such as Facebook, and The Privacy Dilemma, a lesson for Grades 9 to 12 which asks students to consider and discuss the trade-offs we all make on a daily basis between maintaining our privacy and gaining access to information services.

MNet's Media Issues page on Information Privacy contains background information on the ways information privacy is compromised online, Canadian and American privacy legislation, voluntary privacy codes in industry and how online marketers target children.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner recently launched a youth-oriented Web site titled myprivacy.mychoice.mylife which includes information on building a secure online identity, tips on protecting your privacy online and a blog on privacy issues.

Comments | Categories: Advertising & Marketing, Privacy, Resources, Professional Development | Print

Mar 18, 2009

Public or private? Facebook and the Stefanie Rengel case
Posted by: Matthew Johnson

With the tremendous success and spread of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, along with home-broadcasting sites such as YouTube and Flickr, many people have become concerned about what effect they will have on our attitudes towards privacy. Now a new question has arisen: whether Facebook postings violate the Youth Criminal Justice Act if they identify suspects or victims covered under the act.

The first of two trials for the accused murderers of Stefanie Rengel, who was killed in January of 2008, is about to conclude. Unusually, although both she and those arrested for her murder were under eighteen, her identity has been released to the media. Normally, if a suspect is under eighteen the Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits the publication of any information that might reveal their identity, including the identity of the victim:

110. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a young person, or any other information related to a young person, if it would identify the young person as a young person dealt with under this Act.

111. (1) Subject to this section, no person shall publish the name of a child or young person, or any other information related to a child or a young person, if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.

Section 111 does allow the publication of the victim’s name if his or her parents allow it, which Stefanie’s have done. The two accused killers have been referred to in the press only by their initials, as is common practice if the accused is under eighteen. In this case it is little more than a formality, though, because both Stefanie’s name and that of her suspected killers were published more than a year ago – on Facebook.

Against the law?

Opinions differ on whether postings to these Facebook groups – whose audience can vary based on the privacy settings chosen by the group’s creator – would count as publication under the law. It’s an issue nobody seems to be in a hurry to decide: Peel Constable Wayne Patterson, questioned by the Toronto Star, described it as “a good question,” adding “I guess it all boils down to whether Facebook is eventually determined by somebody that it is a publication.” Meanwhile Alain Charette, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, told the same publication that the YCJA does apply to Facebook, and that “If it’s about a violation, it’s in police hands. If police get knowledge of that, it’s for them to take it from there.”

In fact, this is not the first time the question has been raised of whether online postings count as publications: the Usenet group alt.fan.karla-homolka was blocked by numerous Canadian universities during the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials in 1993, due to fears that the universities might be violating a gag order against publication of the details of the crimes by allowing access to the group, which carried postings including just such details. No definitive ruling was ever made however, leaving it unclear whether the universities’ fears were well-founded.

A growing problem

The Internet of 1993 reached few enough people that we could afford to leave the question for another day. With sites like Facebook growing at a rate of 250,000 new users a day, though, it has become clear that controlling information – even in cases like the YCJA, where it is done for arguably the best of intentions – has become much more difficult than it once was. The courts are still deciding just how much privacy can be expected on social networking sites; a Toronto judge recently ruled that even posts whose distribution is limited to Friends only must be disclosed if they are relevant to the case. (This ruling actually came from a civil trial, in which postings on the plaintiff’s Facebook page were introduced to counter his claims of having been seriously injured in an accident, but the precedent would apply to criminal cases as well.)

Complicating matters still further is the fact that many of these sites’ users are, themselves, young people: as Martha McKinnon, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth, told the CBC, most Facebook users do not know enough about the law to know that they are breaking it: "Neither the federal nor provincial government have invested any resources into educating the public about why we have these confidence provisions [in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.]"

Facebook itself has taken no official stand on the issue: speaking with relation to a similar case, spokesperson Simon Axten said that existing tools on the site, which allow people to report offensive content or groups, are sufficient. Those complaints, however, are handled by Facebook administrators and are judged on the basis of whether or not the site’s terms of use have been violated; these administrators are unlike to have much knowledge of Canadian law and the YCJA in particular (it is legal to publish the names of accused youths in the US).

So are those Facebook users who posted the identities of the accused breaking the law? To date no charges have been laid, and after a year it seems unlikely that they will be. At the moment we seem to be in an odd situation where respected, responsible news outlets such as the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star have to abide by the law, but Internet postings do not. As seems more and more often to be the case, technology is at least one step ahead of the law.

For Classroom Discussion

• Why does the YCJA protect the identities of young offenders?

• How might it serve the interests of:
   o Young accused
   o Young victims
   o Family of victims or accused
   o Society at large

• Do you agree with these reasons?

• Why might people have chosen to reveal the identities of the victim and the accused on Facebook? Do you agree with those possible reasons?

• What powers should government have to control the publication of information online?

• Should those powers be greater within the justice system? Why or why not?

• Given that Facebook is an American company, should material it carries be subject to Canadian law? Why or why not?

• Should people be charged for posting information about young offenders or young victims on sites like Facebook? Why or why not?

Classroom Activities

• Have students research (or provide them with background on) the reasoning behind the creation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, particularly its provisions for identity protection.

• Conduct a debate or town hall meeting on the conflict between the interests of the state and the community in keeping some information private and the right of individuals to publish or read whatever news they wish. (In the town hall meeting version, each side might have several members, representing the different interested parties: the courts, lawyers and youth advocates on the one side, for instance, and broadcasters, civil liberties advocates and Internet companies on the other. Some groups, such as friends of the accused or victim, might well have representatives on each side.)

MNet Resources

Lessons

Perceptions of Youth and Crime (Grades 7-12)

What Students Need to Know about Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (Grades 5-10)

Free Speech Versus the Internet (Grades 10-12)

Comments | Categories: News, Privacy, Internet | Print

Dec 03, 2008

Learn to Play, Play to Learn: Building a better educational game
Posted by: Matthew Johnson

Educational games have had a troubled history. At their worst, they have been neither educational nor games; even at their best they have faced scepticism from educators, game designers and especially children. The standard response to being given an educational game – This is supposed to be fun? – might be compared to finding a Brussels sprout at the centre of a Tootsie Pop. Teachers, meanwhile, are rightly concerned that the educational content of these games might be outweighed by the entertainment value. Already loaded down with curriculum that has to be delivered, many educators feel they don’t have the time to spare on anything but direct instruction.

Media Awareness Network’s study. Young Canadians in a Wired World (YCWW)—the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of its kind in Canada—convinced us that there was a need for a comprehensive Internet literacy resource that could be used in Elementary and Intermediate classrooms. The research showed that young people are actively interested in learning more about their online environments. In focus groups, young people articulated that what they need from adults is more information about the kinds of content they find online so they can make informed choices about what they choose to see, as well as training in how to protect their online privacy and how to avoid undesirable content. The interest is highest among the children in Grades 4 to 6; this is a particularly important time to learn these skills because kids in these grades are playing on commercial game sites that actively seek to collect their personal information, and, by Grade 6, students are exploring edgier Web sites.

These were our concerns as we began the development of Passport to the Internet, an Internet literacy tutorial for Grades 4-8. As we listed the areas we hoped to cover—understanding safety, marketing and privacy issues, authenticating information found on the Web, managing online relationships and dealing with cyber bullying—it quickly became clear that Passport to the Internet would be a very ambitious project. With the amount of content it would need to deliver, Passport to the Internet had to be sufficiently interactive that students would play through each of the modules with little encouragement from their teacher. Could we achieve this without sacrificing its educational value? Was it even possible for a game to teach complex skills like these?

Given the relatively brief history of educational games, it might come as a surprise that the question is an old one. One of our oldest games, chess, was traditionally seen as a preparation for war, and in 1989 David Perkins and Gavriel Salamon designed a thought experiment to test whether or not it actually did so. They imagined that a small country, home to the world’s greatest chess master, was invaded by its larger neighbour. The citizens of the invaded country immediately put the chess master in charge of their military, reasoning that his skill on the board would transfer to the battlefield. In designing this scenario, Perkins and Salomon raised the question of just how we learn: is it more important to develop skills with broad application, that might move back and forth between related fields (such as chess and war), or were the skills specific to each context more important? In his book Schools For Thought, John Bruer revisits this problem, applying recent advances in cognitive theory to show that neither answer is entirely true: the chess master will not automatically be a great strategist in the real world—the two situations are too different—but some of his specific skills may transfer to the new context.

The word “transfer” is key to understanding why some educational games work and some don’t. In cognitive theory, it’s used to refer to the ability to apply skills acquired in one context to another. In general, the more similar two contexts are, the easier it is to transfer from one to the other. Learning Spanish grammar, for example, will help you learn Italian grammar, but not Russian grammar, because Spanish is similar in structure to Italian but not to Russian. The catch is that strategies which are applicable to the most contexts are also generally the least useful: cognitive scientists call these weak methods. Conversely, those skills most dependent on specific understanding of a particular context, called strong methods, are the most effective—but are also, for obvious reasons, the hardest to transfer.

Transfer is, of course, important in all educational situations. One of the greatest challenges facing any teacher is to get students to transfer what they learn in the classroom to other situations. This is especially important in educational games, because by definition their worlds—like a chess board—are artificial; any similarity to real-world contexts has to be designed in. It’s entirely possible to acquire mastery of a game without learning any skills that can transfer to other contexts.

Why use games for education at all, then? Because players do acquire mastery, often with amazing commitment and speed. Many writers, from game designers such as Will Wright (Sim City, Spore) and Scott Osterweil (Labyrinth) to academics such as Henry Jenkins and Constance Steinkuehler, have noted that computer game players learn how to succeed at games through an application of the scientific method. As Wright puts it, “Just watch a kid with a new video game. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn't a random process; it's the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, they begin to master the game world. It's a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis.” As well, games are well-suited to independent learning because they can allow students to learn at their own pace: each student moves through the game separately, progressing at whatever speed best suits her.

In designing Passport to the Internet, then, we knew there were several major issues we would have to address for it to be successful. The most important was the question of transfer: could we really teach Internet literacy skills, or would users only learn how to succeed at the game? We decided for this reason that the core of the game would be simulation – the modules would reproduce genuine online environments as closely as possible. Our module teaching privacy management skills, for instance, is a simulated social networking site that combines elements of Facebook and MySpace. Because of this choice we were able to teach specific skills that would transfer directly to the actual Internet: a student could, for instance, use the exact same techniques used to analyze the game’s fictional Web sites to judge real ones.

Because the teachers who will be administering Passport to the Internet in the classroom are not necessarily experts in the skills we hope to teach (though we offer a detailed Teacher’s Guide to provide background), we provide as much of the educational content as possible on demand, to be accessed by the students when they want it rather than delivered beforehand. We created a Help tool that lets students get information on any active items on the screen; but only when they decide they need extra information.

There were, of course, many other factors influencing our design decisions. As always, two of the most important were money and time: both limited our options in terms of how much we could do and how we could do it. An early plan, for instance, to have an unlockable “bonus” module had to be dropped due to time constraints, and the fully functional search engine simulator had to be narrowed significantly in scope. We were also concerned with making the tutorial appropriate to students’ cognitive development: because the age range – from as young as eight to as old as thirteen – covered so much cognitive growth, we knew we had to have two different age levels in the game. This was most important in the authentication module, where the older students analyze Web sites on a much more complex and subtle level. Older students also face more sophisticated tasks in other modules, such as being a witness to cyber-bullying instead of a victim.

The landscape is littered with educational games that have failed for a variety of reasons: those that were insufficiently entertaining, those that had too little educational value, those where the match between the game and the content was too distant and arbitrary, and those where there simply wasn’t enough time and money to make it work. Every designer has compromised on one or more of these, and we are no exception. We believe, though, that by being mindful of these concerns we have made Passport to the Internet a rich and powerful tool for teaching Internet literacy skills.

Passport to the Internet is available through a licensing arrangement as a stand-alone resource or as part of the MNet’s professional development program Web Awareness Workshop Series. For more information you can check out an overview , or to preview Passport to the Internet, contact licensing@media-awareness.ca.

Passport to the Internet partners are: Inukshuk Wireless Learning Plan Fund, TELUS, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Toronto Catholic District School Board, London Public Library, and Nortel LearnIT.

Comments | Categories: Privacy, Internet, Professional Development, Resources, Cyber Bullying | Print

Oct 13, 2006

You are what you own
Posted by: Warren Nightingale

“Hi. What do you own?” These are the first words visitors encounter on the Web site Zebo (www.zebo.com) which is self-advertised as the “world’s largest repository of what people own”. Zebo is latest spin in the world of social networking. While most social networking sites are devoted to personal interests, Zebo is dedicated to people’s possessions.

Users of the site are encouraged to make master lists of everything they own and what they want to own. Users can search peoples’ profiles by their possessions and can shop directly on the site. Four million people have joined the free site since January, 2006.

For the classroom

Show extended entry >>

Comments | Categories: Consumerism, Privacy, Internet | Print

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