The big news these days about kids and the Internet is nude photos. Teens take photos of themselves in the all-and-all and e-mail them to their friends, or soon-to-be ex-friends, depending on where the photos end up.
Before that, we heard about sickos on chat sites trying to meet naive girls.
Shocking stuff, but oddly, it can lull adults into complacency. As long as the kids are not e-mailing racy pictures or planning a rendezvous online, they’re OK, right?
Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology thought there was a lot more going on than just the stuff of headlines, so they embarked on an ambitious one-of-a-kind survey of 40,000 Rochester area children to find out their full range of activities in cyberspace. Kids, of course, play games online, chat with friends and download or listen to music. But they also steal one another’s passwords, pretend to be other people, lie about their age or gender, embarrass and bully others, buy or sell schoolwork, pirate music and movies, ask for nude photos and circumvent filters and security measures.
Several Monroe County schools and two in Ontario County, Canandaigua and Victor, took part in the survey, a move that took a certain amount of courage given that parents may not have liked the line of questioning. For example, the survey asked seventh- through ninth-graders: “Has someone online asked you for pictures of yourself without your clothes on?”
Now, the schools’ commitment and the researchers’ labor has yielded a window into the secret life of children, who apparently are allowed more privacy than they can handle.
Among the regional findings:
• About one quarter of children in kindergarten and first grade who encounter something online that makes them uncomfortable do not report it.
• About 10 percent of all the second and third graders in the study, or about 550 children, reported that they had been “told or shown private things about someone else’s body.”
• One in four students in seventh through ninth grade admitted to some sort of misbehavior online, be it pretending to be someone else, bullying, cheating or hacking.
• One in three students in 10th through 12th grade who were victimized in some way online knew the offender as a “friend.” (The quotes are ours; we find it disturbing that students’ definition of friend would include back-stabbers.)
• Fifteen percent of the 10th through 12th graders surveyed (or 1,077 kids in the Rochester region) said they have invited an online stranger to meet in person.
The results go on. You can read more at www.rrcsei.org.
In the coming months researchers will dig deeper in the data, looking, for instance, at the profile of children most likely to bully or to try to hack networks.
Most schools that took part have their individual results by now, and administrators and school boards have no reason not to post them online. First, much of the misbehavior goes on at home, so it’s not a reflection on the school. Second, kids are kids; results are not drastically different from one district to the next, according to one RIT researcher.
What’s more, posting the results may have an immediate effect on one of the more troubling findings: Parents generally don’t monitor their children’s activity online. If they really knew what kids were up to these days, they would sure keep a closer eye on them.
Link to article-
What you don’t know can hurt your kids - Rochester, NY - MPNnow
Ohhhh it's time for my quarters worth on this one...
They state above " First, much of the misbehavior goes on at home, so it’s not a reflection on the school. Second, kids are kids; results are not drastically different from one district to the next, according to one RIT researcher."
I will reply to that part first, parents today aren't allowed to have a dish in the sink, toys on their lawn, or ground their kid from a school trip without government intrusion.
(See earlier posts)
WTF do they want from parents today?
If you look at your child in what "they" see as an abusive tone, (pfttttttttt) which would then give them the right to remove your child and collect a hefty federal funding incentive for "protecting" your child from YOU that horrible monster what would "they" like the parents to do?
Tell me has anyone else noticed since 1996 Adoption and safe family act.. that children are totally out of control?
Did you know that parents can lose a kid to our system even if the school is at fault for losing the results of your child's mandatory eye test for medical neglect. Then it can take upwards of 6 months to a year if ever to get your kid back (ask Rolando Bini Director of Parents in Action. ( Link Below) if that didn't happen to him.
Parents in Action Defending the Family, the Cell of Human So...
Parents in Action Defending the Family, the Cell of Human Society. Parents in Action Padres en Accion To Protect, Protejer, Preserve, and Preservar, ...
More horror stories from Rolando on Utube... AOL Search results for "rolando bini utube"
So when the day ends and you've given this some thought, you tell me...
WTF do they want from us.. to raise respectable children or to turn a blind eye?
Isn't it time that if a parent wants to punish his/her child for acting out he should be allowed to do so by the powers that be? (shaking my head- thinking - what will the future be like when these kids start reaching an age when they are accountable to no-one but themselves and they don't have a clue where to begin...
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