Digital Safety

Young children are watching a wide range of videos on YouTube that are chock full of advertisements, sometimes have violent footage, and offer little educational value, according to a report from academics and Common Sense Media in their annual survey of kids and media. YouTube is a juggernaut in kids’ media, and viewership has shot up during the pandemic. But the company has struggled to police the videos that kids watch, even after investing deeply in ways to better moderate children’s content once it became a political problem. The new report argues that YouTube hasn’t done enough. Researchers collected more than 1,600 videos from 191 parents that their children, all younger than 8, watched on YouTube’s main site this year. Among the findings: Ads were present on 95% of the videos in the study. A fifth of the ads were categorized as age inappropriate -- a bourbon commercial on a nail painting video for girls; another ad, during a video game clip, that asked, “should the U.S. deport illegal immigrants?”

“Protecting kids and families is a top priority for us,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement responding to the report. “Because YouTube is not for children, we’ve invested significantly in the creation of the YouTube Kids app, a destination made specifically for kids to explore their imagination and curiosity. We’re encouraged by the report’s findings that 63% of parents supervise their kids’ experience on YouTube, but continue to recommend parents use YouTube Kids if they plan to allow kids under 13 to watch independently.”

Does your school or district use a digital safety platform to monitor student communications? Jim Gray, executive director of teaching and learning at Vancouver Public Schools in Washington State, writes that he thinks there are ways for schools to use student safety platforms to help develop students into better digital citizens. In a blog post, Gray offers five strategies, including sharing with students (and their parents) that students’ online communication and actions are monitored. He also advocates that schools and parents turn questionable decisions in online communications into learning opportunities rather than "gotcha" moments.

Imagine a day when Siri or Alexa might be able to let you know you have a cold -- or something worse -- coming on. Researchers are working on a tool that leverages machine learning to detect irregularities in a person's voice that can be linked to certain ailments. The "diagnosis" isn't designed to be definitive, just more of a nudge to seek additional medical care. Privacy concerns abound, but a tool like this makes sense. Who/What has a better gauge on your current health? A doctor you haven't seen in months, or a virtual assistant that can track your movements, monitor your sleep and listen to your every cough and sneeze?

Students are at risk of digital eye strain during remote instruction, says Dr. Steven Rhee of Hawaiian Eye Center. Rhee suggests that students take a screen break every 20 minutes, for at least 20 seconds. He calls it the ‘20-20-20’ rule - for every 20 minutes up close, take a 20-second break and look at an object that’s at least 20 feet away. That’s sound advice for anyone staring at a screen for hours on end -- students, teachers or parents. Frequent breaks may be a tough ask sometimes, though 20 seconds is generally enough time out. The ciliary muscle is what helps eyes focus on objects at different distances, and too much use leads to that eye strain. The good news is that pain or discomfort felt in the moment is not permanent, even with children in the virtual classroom. But it is something to add to your list of things to remember to do!

When schools abruptly closed and shifted to remote instruction in the spring, Paget Hetherington, vice president of marketing at Gaggle, found changes in students' behavior stemming from increased stress and hardship from the coronavirus pandemic. Gaggle is a digital platform that monitors content on school-owned devices and applications for indicators of potentially harmful behavior. In an interview, Hetherington says the platform detected increased digital device use after school hours and a 21% increase in explicit content - sexual photos, pornographic images or threatening sexual assault - among minors. There was also an increase in kids reaching out to their teachers and students in their classes to report abuse in the home during the pandemic. Students reported abuse by parents, caregivers, and others -- even siblings. Four of the five highest weeks of reported abuse occurred from mid-March to mid-May. Imminent threats, defined as a life in danger or threat to the well-being of a person, increased 79% compared to previous weeks in the year when students were in school. While critics sometimes worry about the role that Gaggle and other companies have in violating student privacy, Gaggle does not monitor students’ personal email or social media accounts. Gaggle only monitors information posted and written using school computers and school-provided G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 accounts, including Docs, Email, Slides, Calendar, Hangouts/Teams, Yammer and so forth. Gaggle also has a track record of lives they have saved through their monitoring process.

No one wants to imagine that a predator will contact your child. But it's also something we need to prep our kids for if they're going to be online. How do you start that conversation? Check out this list of conversation starters and possible answers to kid’s questions. For example:

Ask your teen: What should you do if someone you don't know contacts you online?

Best answers:

• I wouldn't respond to them at all. 
• If they were persistent, I'd type, "I don't want to talk to you. Do not contact me again." 
• If they continued, I'd block them and report their user information and wouldn't respond anymore.

With even more purchasing being done online, the FBI is warning online shoppers to be on the alert for fraudulent e-commerce websites that offer what appear to be great deals but never deliver the merchandise. The sites are typically accessed through social media or search engine shopping pages, and have privately registered domains with URLs ending in .top or .club. Take a look at the FBI posting to for tips on how not to get scammed and ideas on what to do if you have an issue with one of these sites.

More than two-thirds of US parents surveyed by Pew Research Center have concerns about what is advertised to children on YouTube. Hispanic parents -- at 74% -- rated highest in concern in the "Parenting Children in the Age of Screens" study of 4,000 parents in March. The study found many parents are also acutely concerned that their children will encounter "inappropriate content" while surfing on YouTube or in th etypes of videos that are recommended to them based on YouTube's algorithms.

Party Place is a new feature on Roblox being beta tested that allows kids to create private, mini-social networks exclusively with friends to chat, hang out, and plan which games to play. The venue itself doesn’t offer any activities or games, but rather serves as a private place for Roblox users to gather — for example, for a virtual birthday party, a remote learning activity with classmates, for virtual playdates, or anything else. From Party Place, the group can chat and hang out as they decide which Roblox game they plan to play next.

For today’s younger players, platforms like Fortnite and Roblox are becoming their own version of a social network. The kids don’t just go online to play. They socialize, chat and hang out with a mix of real-life friends and virtual ones, blurring the lines between online and offline in ways that traditional social networks, like Facebook, do not. Of course this also opens up another avenue for cyberbullying, so as with all forms of social media be sure to monitor for the symptoms that your child may be a target.

Former Democratic presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang wants to see technology and media companies accept more responsibility for their impact on children, even if we don’t yet have research showing exactly what that impact is. Yang, in particular, calls for the government to drastically fund more research and step in, if needed, to incentivize tech companies to educate children, rather than entertain them and  collect ad dollars. (The children’s digital advertising market is expected to be worth $1.7 billion by 2021, according to a report from PwC.)

“Right now, the interests of parents are directly at odds with the interests of the technology companies,” writes Yang in “Our Kids are Walking Around with Slot Machines in their Pockets.” “They’re monetizing our attention and profiting off of our time. As they say, the addictive nature of smartphones is a feature, not a bug. We parents are outgunned and at a total loss.”