The Internet can feel like a jungle to the uninitiated—full of weird sights and sounds, a little terrifying, and very hard to navigate. We gave a talk to parents at the incredible BB&N high school last week, and to commemorate the event, I put together a list of 8 essential links for parents who want to understand their childrens’ world a little better. So: click around! Explore! It’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

Learning 2.0: 23 Things
This list of 23 services and activities to try out on the Internet provides
a guided, exploratory tour of a small slice of what the Internet has to
offer. The best way for parents to better guide their children through the
ins and outs of the Internet is for the parents to understand it better themselves. Completing these fun digital adventures is a huge step toward understanding the capabilities and dangers of the Internet.

Net Family News
Make sense of the latest developments in children’s privacy and activities online. Net Family News publishes a blog and a weekly email newsletter that address these issues and explain their relevance and implications for
parents.

Connect Safely
Great forums where parents can ask questions about children’s privacy and activities online. Also associated with Net Family News. Includes a prominent focus on cyberbullying.

Parent.Thesis Blog
Two tech-savvy parents explore the ways that technology intersects with
their lives and the lives of their children. A great way to learn about
cutting-edge technologies.

Totally Wired
Although Anastasia Goodstein no longer updates this blog, it remains an invaluable resource for parents seeking to understand the online worlds of
their children. Note especially the right-hand list of links; categories
like “Where Teens Blog” provide an unusually comprehensive collection of
sites that parents should be aware of. This list of links serves as an
essential jumping-off point for any parent hoping to delve into
understanding the online realities their children face.

PBS Frontline: Growing Up Online: Parenting in the Internet Age
Frontline’s recent documentary, “Growing Up Online,” provides an essential (if somewhat alarmist) view into the digital world that children encounter on a daily basis. The documentary’s site also serves as a thorough compendium of resources and information on the topic. This particular page offers expert perspectives on how to conceptualize the task of parenting when so much of young people’s activity occurs “invisibly” online.

Why Youth Heart Myspace
This classic talk by Berkman fellow danah boyd provides an essential primer on the appeals of social networking. Though this talk was later expanded into an academic paper, the notes to the original presentation provide an engaging introduction to the matter.

A YouTube Primer for Parents
Short video, from 2006 but still relevant, telling parents what they need to know about YouTube.

In light of recent discussions about managing online reputations, how about something you can’t really control – gossip. JuicyCampus.com is a website aimed at becoming a compendium of gossip at college campuses. The gossip posted is, unsurprisingly, is often malicious and hateful, leading to some backlash in the media.

It’s true that the postings on JuicyCampus aren’t much different from gossip whispered in dorm rooms or graffitied onto bathroom walls. The crucial difference though, is their form. The Internet allows for both better anonymity and permanence, which makes it all the more hurtful for victims of gossip. JuicyCampus.com has at least disabled search engine indexing of its posts, but the site is otherwise more sympathetic to its anonymous posters than potential victims. It promises total anonymity and does not associate log IP addresses with posts, so there is no way to trace the author of a post. There is also no clear channel to request the removal of a post.

JuicyCampus hasn’t quite caught on at my campus, but I had heard about it before through ads on Facebook. In fact, I think this link with Facebook makes it all the more dangerous. Like the social networking site, JuicyCampus is organized in networks by college, making the information most “relevant” to you. While unknown names could just be glossed over once upon a time, it is now takes only a few clicks to match up a name with a face.

JuicyCampus currently targets college students, but I can see such forums becoming available to middle- and high school-aged students as well. Call me pessimistic, but I really don’t see anything good coming out of such a site. Yet JuicyCampus is well protected under free speech, as the Communications Decency Act absolves websites of responsibility for content posted by users. Since the media backlash, JuicyCampus’s founder, Matt Ivester, has posted an open letter his blog asking posters to be less mean. I hate to say it but when it comes to gossip, “juicy” is mean. Is there a reasonable solution to anonymous Internet gossip? Or should we grows accustomed and grow thicker skins? How do we balance freedom of speech and privacy? Let’s hear your thoughts!

Thanks for Catherine Bracy for the tip.

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