The Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track of Harvard University Berkman Center's Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative is creating a Compendium of youth-based Internet safety programs and interventions. We are requesting organizations, institutions, and individuals working in online youth safety to share descriptions of their effective programs and interventions that address risky behavior by youth online. We are particularly interested in endeavors that involve educators, social services, mentors and coaches, youth workers, religious leaders, law enforcement, mental health professionals, and those working in the field of public or adolescent health.
Program descriptions will be made publicly available. Exemplary programs will be spotlighted to policy makers, educators, and the public so that they too can learn about different approaches being tried and tested. Submissions also will be used to inform recommendations for future research and program opportunities.
Deadline: December 21, 2009
Project Background:
The Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is exploring policy issues that fall into three substantive categories that emerge from youth media practices: 1) Risky Behaviors and Online Safety; 2) Privacy Publicity, and Reputation; and 3) Youth Created Content and Information Quality. The goal of the Initiative is to consider how research on the intersection of youth and technology can and should be used to inform policy. This Initiative is co-directed by John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and danah boyd, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and affiliated with MacArthur’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative.
The Risky Behaviors and Online Safety track of the Initiative is focused on four areas of concern that affect the safety and health of youth:
• Sexual solicitation of and sex crimes involving minors
• Bullying or harassment of minors
• Access to problematic or illegal content (including pornographic and violent content)
• Youth-generated problematic or illegal content (including sexting and self-harm sites)
Numerous commissions and task forces examining youth online safety research have been conducted to date. Results suggest that young people who face victimization and negative experiences online are likely facing challenges offline as well. One of the major gaps in our understanding is a comprehensive, centralized list of youth-based internet safety programs in existence. To address this gap, we aim to compile a compendium of such programs. While we believe that technology companies and parents can and should play a role in addressing this issue, we are purposefully focusing on youth-based programs for this effort. In particular, we would like to explore the role of educators, social services, mentors, youth workers, religious leaders, law enforcement, and mental health professionals.
In addition to a description of the program, we would like to solicit your ideas on how these programs could be scaled to address the issue of youth Internet safety more broadly. Submissions will inform the Youth Policy Working Group’s Report. We plan to highlight specific solutions that we feel are especially promising.
Submissions that discuss successful solutions or interventions will be disseminated as part of the Compendium. Please note however, that we reserve the right to exclude submissions if they do not adequately describe the endeavor or if the Working Group raise concerns about the submission itself.
Submissions:
Deadline: December 21, 2009
Submission Length: 2-5 pages
Send Submission to: ymps-submissions@cyber.harvard.edu
Submissions should be documentations of solutions, projects, or initiatives that address at least one of the following four areas being addressed:
• Sexual solicitation of and sex crimes involving minors
• Bullying or harassment of minors
• Access to problematic or illegal content (including pornographic and violent content)
• Youth-generated problematic or illegal content (including sexting and self-harm sites)
We are especially keen to highlight projects that focus on underlying problems, risky youth behavior, and settings where parents cannot be relied upon to help youth. The ideal solution, project, or initiative will be grounded in research-driven knowledge about the risks youth face rather than generalized beliefs about online risks. Successful endeavors will most likely recognize that youth cannot simply be protected, but must be engaged as active agents in any endeavor that seeks to help youth. We are particularly interested to hear of solutions that address youth who knowingly and consciously engage in risky online behaviors, regardless of why. Given the strong correlation between risky behavior and online dangers, we feel as though it’s critical to find solutions that address at-risk youth.
This call is intentionally vague because we are hoping to elicit a wide variety of different types of interventions, solutions, and projects. Change can take many forms. That said, some of the types of endeavors that we imagine are out there are:
- Educational curricula and classroom toolkits
- Public services announcements
- Social services outreach programs
- Collaborations between educational organizations, governmental agencies, and corporations
- New structures for incident reporting
- Best practice frameworks for professionals doing intervention work
- Teacher training tools
- Help lines or websites that connect at-risk youth with mental health professionals
At the end of the day, what we want to know is: What is out there? What is working? What might be scalable? And what good ideas out there might stand a chance of being effective? The possibilities are endless, but we are trying to map what might work. Please do not feel as though your solution needs to be listed above. We really want to hear about the diversity of solutions that are out there.
Submission Format & Content:
Submissions should begin with a brief (~100 word) abstract that describes the project or intervention and what problem it solves. Submissions should also cite research-based literature that documents the problem they are seeking to address. For a good overview of literature in this space, see Andrew Schrock and danah boyd’s “Online Threats to Youth: Solicitation, Harassment, and Problematic Content.”: http://www.danah.org/papers/ISTTF-RABLitReview.pdf
Given the diversity of challenges surrounding risky behaviors and online safety, there are many possible sites where solutions can be implemented or interventions executed. Venues like schools, youth clubs, museums, libraries, and religious institutions could all be sites where change happens. Even websites may be a site of change. There are also a variety of different agents of change that could be involved: educators, youth workers, mentors and coaches, mental health professionals, police officers, social workers, etc. Peer-to-peer programs may also be viable possibilities.
The submission should include:
- Details of where the intervention takes place
- Who the agents of change are
- What can be done within the scope of that group, institution, or site?
- Why this is the ideal place for an intervention to be made or a solution to be implemented?
- A description of your organization and the expertise of the people involved in your project
- A description of what differentiates your project from other projects out there.
- Contact information and pointers to where readers can learn more about your organization and project.
The bulk of the document should focus on the project, solution, or intervention itself. The target audience should be general and the goal should be to provide enough information to help the reader assess the viability of such a project should it be implemented in their community. Aim to help the reader understand your project in its context.
Additional issues that you may wish to address in your description include:
• Population: Describe the solution or intervention’s target population. What age? What country? What language? What demographic makeup?
• Adult Involvement: Describe the adults involved. What is their role? How are they vetted? Do they need specific skills? What kind of parental involvement is necessary?
• Institutional Involvement: What institutions are involved? What role do they play? Why do they participate? Why should this institution be involved?
• At-Risk Populations: How do you specifically address at-risk populations? What incentivizes a young person to participate? How do you handle situations where parents are not involved?
• Evaluation and Success Metrics: How do you evaluate your approach and measure its success? Who does the measuring? What is a reasonable measure of success?
• Case Study: Describe a case study. What happened? What worked? What didn’t? What lessons were learned? How was the solution or intervention improved accordingly?
• Self-Evaluation: Evaluate your own solution or intervention for its strengths and weaknesses. How can it be coupled with other solutions or interventions to be more effective? What are pitfalls that others should know about?
• Scaling Challenges: What are the challenges in scaling up your project?
• Resources and Economic Considerations: What are the costs to implementing your solution, both in terms of financial costs and people resources? How do you raise that money? Who is currently supporting your efforts?
• Legal / Policy Considerations: Does your solution or intervention require any particular governmental engagement? What legal or policy challenges do you face? Discuss the issues in both the U.S. and international contexts.
For More Information:
We thank you for your time and contributions. For more information on the project, see: http://cyber.harvard.edu/research/digitalnatives/policy
Should you have any questions, please contact us: ymps-submissions@cyber.harvard.edu
