NCTE (National Centre for Technology in Education)

e-society – young people social networking online

An article by NCTE Director Jerome Morrissey, published in the Irish Independent of 18th April 2006, on the massive online phenomenon of Social Networking Websites.

Every day in the US there are at least 11 million teenagers on the internet. While there are no figures available for Ireland there are probably a half a million young people, between the ages of 13 and 23, online daily.

Being online in 2006 is a fundamentally different experience from what was possible a few years ago. The undiminished strides of ICT developments have provided inexpensive access to very sophisticated tool kits. Young people are the first to try out and use these facilities. Nothing new in this – it is not that long since the parents of teenagers frequently complained about the size of home phone bills due to excessive use by their teenage sons and daughters. The arrival of mobile phones enabled kids to creatively exploit a text messaging facility (to the surprise and delight of the manufacturers) and set a new a standard of communication for all of us.

The availability of chat sites such as MSN or Yahoo Instant Messaging has resulted in thousands of teenagers spending hours, at any one time, chatting to their friends online.

Revolutionary developments in ICT allow us to be active users of communications media. Using web tools, young people interact in dynamic and very personal ways with their close friends and family and with chosen “online friends”. The growth of blogs - personal websites where people can write up a diary or journal, rant about any topic and, more importantly, a place where your friends can find you - show that people are enthusiastic about actively sharing personal information and opinion.

Teenagers, having a heightened need to communicate and to be included in social networks, willingly exploit these online facilities and push the boundaries of use to create virtual social networks. Many teenagers see these online areas as private and free from adult and parental control but allowing opportunities for regular and instant communication with peers.

The drive towards greater personalisation and interactivity of usage has resulted in a variety of commercial websites which offer web space to anyone who asks for it. These are called social networking websites.
By filling a template and following prompts it is quite easy to produce a personal page where you describe yourself, talk about your favourite music
and films, place information of your choice, write about and give opinions about anything of interest and post your photos. Many young people have spent long periods developing very comprehensive sites - surprisingly, including lots of very personal details. These sites give a full virtual presence and a highly visible “my life online” aspect.

Friendster, with 27 million members, was launched in 2003 and soon became the most successful website at using the ‘Circle of Friends’ technique for connecting people.

Social networking sites develop from a small group of members who, having developed their own web pages, send out messages inviting their friends to join the site by developing their pages. New members repeat the process, growing the total number of members and links in the network. The value of the network for members is directly linked to the number of people in the network.

Social networking websites have grown rapidly over the past nine months. Currently, there are over 200 such social networking websites available. The largest is MySpace.com with over 65 million members in the US. These networks tend to be organized around shared common interests. MySpace.com, for example, builds on independent music and party scenes, and Tribe.net is organised around geographical location. A newer site, Tagger.com, focuses on the 13 – 19 age group.

In Ireland, Bebo,com has quickly become the most used network with, probably, more than 700,000 young members signing up over the past six months. Launched in California 14 months ago, Bebo is an online community where friends can post pictures, write blogs and send messages to one another. Member have their own personal page, on which they can tell the world about their likes and dislikes, their favourite films and music and post up photos of their lives. It has over 23 million members. The reason for Bebo’s unique success in Ireland is that it ordered its local
communications nodes or clusters of members around Irish schools using a database of Irish schools and colleges. Users joined the site as pupils/students of their school. As numbers grow it quickly becomes de rigueur for school friends to become members. Whether as present or past students, Bebo links members together by using the addresses of schools and colleges.

Issues of concern
There are a number of issues of concern surrounding the rapid growth of these internet networks. For schools, the heightened possibility for cyber bullying is dealt with by schools in their anti-bullying policies and as part of their Internet Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) which school have in place. Most third- level colleges have blocked social networking sites because they waste time and take up too much bandwidth. The schools broadband programme has blocked all social networking sites for the same reasons. Internet safety is integrated in all ICT professional development courses developed by the NCTE and offered locally through the network of Education Centres.

Webwise.ie is the key Irish site for advice and guidance to schools, pupils and parents. The site has materials and resources for both teachers and parents to assist children to develop safe online skills and a sense of responsible about what to write and post on websites.

Teenagers primarily use out-of-school computers and other internet enabled devices to go online. A recent NCTE survey shows that 94% of school students have internet access at home through one technology or another. The NCTE has advice for parents on both www.ncte.ie and on www.webwise.ie . The NCTE works with the National Parents’ Councils on developing and promoting advice to parents. As with all other internet safety issues the single biggest positive impact on children’s online behaviours is brought about by active engagement by parents in the online activities of their children. The chances of teenagers sharing their online experiences with parents will be greatly reduced if they think that telling about a problem will result in them being banned from using the Internet.

As in society generally, there are informal ethical rules for how to behave when relating to other people on the Internet. These include being polite, using acceptable language, not harassing or upsetting others. Online bullying can have more severe consequences for the victim because it is so difficult to escape from. The code of practice adopted by Internet Service Providers and mobile phone operators oblige companies to involve the Garda� when illegal activity is reported to them.

Of concern to the young people themselves should be the realisation that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet - once they post their material on the web, control is lost and it is open to the possibilities of mis-
use and manipulation for any purpose. Neither is there anonymity on the web. Material posted which may be judged illegal, racist or inappropriate can subsequently become a legal matter.

Another issue of concern relates to the responsibilities of the developers/owner of these websites. While most of these sites have a registration process for membership it is not sufficiently thorough to ensure the identity of the applicant. Many have rules for members in relation to content and online etiquette. They all offer some method of reporting. However, they are far from doing anything significant or effective as regards identifying and removing inappropriate content. There are no filtering systems in place to filter out pornographic or potentially illegal content. These web hosting companies should employ dedicated security officers and financing independent watchdogs to monitor content. The companies who own these sites are hugely profitable. Last year, NewsCorp paid $580 million to purchase MySpace.com.

In Ireland, schools have been unwittingly linked with the Bebo site as a result of the latter’s use of schools’ addresses to build communities. I believe that this puts a greater responsibility on Bebo to monitor content and to be particularly vigilant about identifying and removing, in a speedy manner, all comment which appears defamatory, racist, of a bullying nature or otherwise illegal or harmful to others. This vigilance should include the identification and removal of age - inappropriate material as Bebo accepts members from thirteen years of age. Complaints must be dealt with quickly and effectively. This should mean the removal of the offending material. Sites such as Bebo should establish practices and procedures with the Hotline in Ireland in relation to reporting illegal and harmful content.

Social networking sites and the opportunities they offer for personalisation and for interactivity are in the early stages of development and usage. Relatively static virtual personal presences on the internet will be replaced with dynamic sites which provide easy tools to edit, produce and publish good quality multi-media content. Our engagement with new media will be much more interactive and production orientated as we move away from being passive consumers of traditional media content.

The “C” in ICT is finally gaining prominence as the most important and provocative dimension of what we have called the Information Age. Surely, from now it is more correctly referred to as the Communications Age.

National Centre for Technology in Education

e-society – young people social networking online

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