What is this ‘Web 2.0'?

And what does it have to do with parenting?

By Anne Collier

Let's pause for a moment and see where we are. We've talked about a handful of Hot Topics here in Staysafe so far – where do they fall in the current state of online safety? Well, with a broadband, high-speed Internet in a rapidly increasing number of US homes, we are in fact talking about all these things in the context of Web 2.0. Yet another term we throw at you. Let me explain.

“Web 2.0” is just shorthand for the new phase of the Web we're experiencing. It's ever more...

• Multimedia – video, audio, photos, text – whatever medium people prefer
• Mobile – accessible increasingly anywhere, on multiple devices (desktops, laptops, game players, cellphones, and video music players, wired and wireless)
• Multidirectional – one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many: the viral, peer-to-peer, or P2P, form of communications, with the line between publishing and communicating blurring
• User-driven – the Web as the land of everybody-published content, including kid commentators, videographers, organizers, marketers, retailers, hackers, etc.

This development has huge implications for young Web users as well as their parents (some of this may sound extreme for what's happening at your house so far, but sometimes it's helpful to look at the extreme scenario and then adjust for your own family reality).

First the kid part. Young people are doing great things with this convenient, highly accessible medium for self-expression. They're writing, editing, and uploading their own songs, videos, and commentaries for peers to critique and pass around. They're broadening their horizons by communicating with peers who have similar interests in other parts of the world. They're launching their careers early by developing portfolios and storing them online (for free) and networking and extending their networks of contacts long before they graduate from college. The Internet is allowing them to stay in touch with and maintain large circles of friends from wherever they are, cushioning big changes. Researchers and psychologists say they're using the Web as a relatively safe place to try on different personas, interact, and figure out who they are in an important process of self-actualization.

But of course, as with everything about technology tools (or any tools that require proper safety training), there are downsides to all this. Often everybody – not just their peers, but parents, police, predators, the entire Web public (all those Ps!) – can see what they upload online. Kids don't think so, but in most cases, this is good, a necessary protection until they learn to use the Web wisely and protect themselves. (A lot of the teen behavior we're seeing on Web 2.0, researchers say, has been going on forever – it just has never been so accessible to parents and the public before.) The key is, not just police, school officials, and prospective employers but parents too need to get up to speed on this part of their lives!

ID theft and spyware. What does that have to do with these Hot Topics? Web 2.0 makes these more ubiquitous, more downloadable – more a problem for the computers kids use if they're not using them with supervision or at least without the necessary security tools (firewall and virus and spyware protection). Supervision was a lot easier when we knew exactly where kids accessed the Net and when it was on a desktop plugged into the family room wall. Now kids can access the Net on smaller, more mobile devices, including phones and game consoles and handhelds (we've just started hearing reports of viruses for phones) - and for good ol' laptops and desktops, malicious Web sites they can click to from email, IMs, and profiles are proliferating. For example, unsupervised or uneducated surfing of kid-friendly game or clip-art and emoticon sites by kids can leave their computers very vulnerable to spyware or Trojan-horse software that can cause computers to be taken over by malicious hackers. There are smart, basic steps to take to protect the computers your kids use – see this page on PC defense in the Staysafe Toolbox

Games, blogs & bullies. All the media coverage of predation on social-networking and blogging sites is the scariest-sounding part of Web 2.0 for the vast majority of kids and teens. Yes, pedophiles have begun to show up in game chat and online environments beyond the sites in the headlines – arrests have been made. But the next wave of concern, and one that will be felt in much greater numbers, is peer stuff. A very broad heading because it has to cover just about everything young people have done for eons – with peers, for peers, because of peers, and under peer pressure. The list is very long, as every parent knows, but it includes cyberbullying (online social harassment), uploading explicit photos to show off or get reactions, uploading videos of property being vandalized, party photos taken and uploaded via camera phones, digital gossip via instant-messaging, dissing teachers and threatening schools, etc., etc. All of the above have been covered in the news media, sometimes with tragic results (e.g., see "Teen photos & a police officer's story" in NetFamilyNews).

The parental part. When parents do check this Web 2.0 scene out, they often find it's not pretty. As Tim Lordan of GetNetWise.org points out, quite often it's even more shocking than the view from the doorway of the average teen's bedroom after having denied oneself the pleasure of this view for several weeks. But it's much more important not to overreact in this case – not to be like a deer in the car headlights, so paralyzed by what we see that we immediately start banning what, to them, is a crucial part of their social lives. That may sound like a teen's “Oh, Mom, can't you just chill?!” But it's also pure parental logic on Web 2.0.

Here's what I mean: More than ever in this current online environment, whatever jeopardizes parent-child communication can jeopardize kids' well-being. They can more easily simply move on, go "underground," find workarounds if they feel shut down or defiant, if we're not making an effort to "get it." On Web 2.0, a child can establish five new accounts with five new screen names in her favorite site, or new accounts at five others – there are hundreds of other blogging and social-networking sites (the FBI says it has a list of some 200, which it doesn't make public; Wikipedia.org lists and links to more than 4 dozen).

Three factors make our engagement so important on Web 2.0:

• Tech tools for Web 1.0. There still are tools that can help, but they were developed for a Web 1.0 environment, and they're a smaller piece of the solution pie on a Web that can be accessed in so many places and on so many devices. Filtering software was developed when we were concerned about what they could download. Now we're just as concerned about what they upload – there are no filters for that. Monitoring software can help (some products block personal information from going out, but that's just info like last name, phone number, etc. But – again – it's less effective if used surreptitiously so that trust and communication are at risk. For tech solutions, it's a constant catch-up game – kids are always out in front.
• Laws haven't caught up either. Laws aren't much help in many cases where Web 2.0 is the “accessory.” For example, prosecutors aren't yet sure what to do about children themselves “distributing” sexually explicit images of themselves that might be considered child pornography. The Internet is causing lawmakers to rethink many laws and has courts in quandaries, from copyright law to child-protection law. And parents are shocked when they discover that Internet companies are currently under no legal obligation to take down a minor's content at his/her parent's request.
• Web 2.0 defies control. That's a pretty extreme statement, but it's simply describing the nature of this free, user-driven, everywhere Web. Even though social-networking companies are talking about establishing child-protection best practices, even that safeguard is a ways off. Parents concerned about their kids' content could have a second full-time job just emailing companies with requests that profiles or blogs be taken down –if they know their children's screen names or Web addresses. Job 1 is to ask them if they're blogging or have a social-networking profile or “space” and talk about how they like to use the service.

All those factors add up to one key take-away: Keep those parent-child communication lines as open as possible. What kids are doing online is disturbing to a lot of parents, but if we overreact, we're potentially shutting down the best, most enduring protection kids can ever have: communication and cooperation with the people who love them.

Anne Collier is editor of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents of online kids.