FOSI European Conference 2011 - social networks, education, privacy

I spent a long but interesting day yesterday at the FOSI  European Conference 2011, subtitled: 'Every European a Digital Citizen'  Speakers and moderators were excellent, and the day overall achieved a mainly positive outlook on the status and developments in safety for children online.  In contrast to previous events, it deliberately avoided having panels on sexting, and cyberbullying etc in order to have more "forward looking conversations". If you'd like to check out the live tweets, #fosieu2011 was the hashtag.

Here are some of the highlights for me, in the order in which they appeared, and apologies to any interesting speakers omitted, but in the interests of keeping this post manageable, I just selected a few.

Research updates from EU Kids Online) and Ofcom 

If you don't know the work of EU Kids Online (from the London School of Economics), then you should check it out: comprehensive studies across 25 European countries, involving thousands of participants.  Sonia Livingstone was presenting the latest studies on kids and social networking -  short report on it here.

Some takeouts:

• 38% of 9-12 yr olds have a social networking profile (20% on Facebook)
• 35% of older SNS users have more than 100 contacts – often contacts who have no connection with the rest of their lives.
• The UK is fairly typical of Europe: the likelihood of a child using SNS ranges from 20% for nine year olds and grows to around 90% for 16 year olds.
• Half the parents surveyed do not restrict their child's use of SNS.  Interestingly, Southern European parents are much stricter on this than their Northern European counterparts.
• Over a quarter of 9-12 year old SNS users have their profile ‘set to public’, only just different from the proportion of 13-16 year olds.
• Almost half of the younger Facebook users, and a quarter of the older Facebook users say they are not able to change their privacy settings. Since not all children can manage privacy settings, it is possible that those whose profiles are set to ‘public’ have not done so on purpose. (Note that if you lie about your age to get round the minimum 13 years restriction on Facebook registration, and say that you are 18 or over, you will lose the default 'private' setting that Facebook applies to all 13-18 year old accounts.)

On this topic: during the conference, the question arose: if we're not keeping the kids out of Facebook (or wherever), then should we try to improve safety measures, age verification techniques etc - or should we resign ourselves to it, and make site more appropriate?  
What do you think?

The European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme facilitates self-regulation by the major providers. The resulting guidance recommends that:

• Services should be age appropriate, with measures in place to ensure that under-age users are rejected and/or deleted from the service.
• Privacy provisions should ensure that profiles of minors are set to ‘private’ by default, and that users can control who can access their full profile and be able to view their privacy settings at all times.
• SNS should encourage and enable users so they can safely manage personal information.
• SNS services should provide an easy-to-use mechanism for children to report inappropriate content or conduct by other users.

You can read all the EU Kids Online research findings from their various projects here.

Alison Preston from Ofcom presented some findings from Ofcom's latest 'UK children's media literacy' report (an overview of media literacy among UK children and young people aged 5-15 and their parents/carers based on two waves of research, conducted in Spring and Autumn 2010). As you would expect, many findings tallied with the EU Kids Online research.  Interesting to note was:

• The rise of alternative devices to access the internet: use of a games console/player in this way rose from 18% of 12-15s in 2009 to 23% of 12-15s in 2010. Use of a mobile to access the internet rose from 14% to 23% for 12-15s.
• Children aged 5-7 use the internet for an estimated 5.2 hours in a typical week, compared to 8.4 hours for 8-11s and 15.6 hours for 12-15s. Hours have risen since 2009 for 5-7s and 12-15s though are still less than the time spent watching television.
• 48% of parents think their child knows more than them about the internet, rising to 70% of parents of 12-15s.
• Three in ten parents of 5-15s (30%) who use the internet at home are very or fairly concerned that their child may be giving out personal details to inappropriate people, with concern increasing with the age of the child. The same is also true for parental concern about cyber-bullying.
•  

FOSI: Off the GRID - Latest Global Picture of Online Safety

David Miles from FOSI took us through the development of the FOSI GRID: a world-wide resource for those interested in Internet safety.  Here is where you can look at safety legislation, research and organisations by glocal location.  It's free to register and access: take a look around.

A point David made from his global perspective: the same problems of privacy, bullying etc are common worldwide - and this is actually good in terms of finding solutions. And I was pleased to hear that the UK is the largest net exporter of effective practice around esafety.

FOSI also announced its new project: First Ladies Initiative for Online Safety (FLIOS) .

"FOSI is asking First Ladies around the world to join the Initiative by promoting education efforts within their countries and engaging in a cross-cultural dialogue to raise global awareness and spur international cooperation. Through the Initiative, First Ladies will encourage safe and responsible online use through a combination of tools, rules and schools. The Initiative is a means of linking the First Ladies in a common cause that not only directly impacts their own countries, but also, like the Internet, transcends national borders."

I do get the idea, and it's a good one - but i have to say:  as a Brit unused to the whole 'First Lady' concept, I have to admit it felt a little, well, sexist maybe ...?

Keynote by Prof Tanya Byron

Tanya's speech was not about safety, but about the use of technology in schools (or lack of it). She's a passionate advocate of engaging children through the use of the internet: teaching them in ways they find relevant and exciting, allowing them the freedom to craft their own paths and negotiate potential risks for themselves.  No huge surprise that she was fairly scathing about the cautious and quasi-Luddite approach of many schools, and the learning opportunities missed that would help to educate some of the UK's hard-to-reach or learning-disabled youth.  She recently had a meeting with the UK coalition's Education Secretary Michael Gove to give him her views: we gather it didn't go especially well ...

Panel: Privacy 2.0 - Getting the Balance Right

This panel - moderated by Jennifer Hanley (Manager, Legal & Policy, FOSI) with John Carr (Executive Board, CHIS), Jim Halpert (Partner, DLA Piper), Justin Weiss (Senior Director, International Privacy & Policy, Yahoo!) and Dave Coplin (Director of Search, Microsoft UK) - was timely, as the privacy debate is hotting up right now. 

Some background:
In the US there are three pieces of legislation in play: Do Not Track 2011, Do Not Track Kids 2011 (which amends COPPA, limits advertising and data collection to/from minors) and the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011  (Senators Kerry and McCain).  For details, see this article which summarizes the bills  )

In the UK, it's been a few weeks of debate on super-injunctions and Twitter leaks, with calls for the PCC to regulate media Twitter accounts.

The European Union is calling for the 'Right to Disappear': the ability for a person to erase their digital footprints. The Christian Science Monitor  reports that the EU also wants companies that “process” user data to have to prove somehow that “they need to collect the user data for which they ask”, which could be a significant burden on companies about which there’s little or any research. “Viviane Reding, the EU’s justice commissioner, is pushing for tougher privacy safeguards in an effort to give Internet users more control of their personal data that is collected, stored, mined, and could potentially be sold by companies like Facebook, Google, or any of the vast number of sites where users upload photos, provide private details, and, every once in a while, post something embarrassing”

User education and site transparency need to be prominent in any privacy mix, as users struggle to employ the privacy controls responsible sites already provide. The new rules, expected to go into effect later this year, put the EU out in front of other countries, including the US.  Criticism is coming from American technology companies and some advocates who come down on the side of freedom of expression online over the right to privacy.

Interesting points made in the panel discussion included whether the right to 'disappear' our own data includes the right to erase data about us posted by others?  There's a clear freedom of expression issue here ...

Some other soundbites from the panel include:

John Carr: There are not enough incentives for companies to engineer technical solutions to assist with verifying age / identity
Justin Weiss: Lots of information is collected anyway as part of normal web browsing; people have issues if it is used covertly
Dave Coplin: Privacy should be built in by design rather than security bolted on after the product has been developed
Justin Weiss: Don't repeat the privacy buzzwords. Understand the technology.

There was much more of note during this conference, too much for this post.  It would be great if other bloggers covering it could post links in comments below so we could go over more of the subject matter?  Stephen Balkam, FOSI's CEO, promises that videos from the sessions will be posted on the FOSI YouTube channel.  If I hear they're up, I'll update this post. 

Finally, thanks to FOSI for an excellently organised conference, with fluent, engaging and knowledgeable speakers, and some great moderation of the panel sessions.