[LM_NET] NSBA Social Networking Study

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@CSRIU.ORG>]

I have been planning to start my blog after Labor Day. But I am going to try
to get it up by Tuesday and post the following. After this, I will simply
post the URL. I would wait until Monday to send this, but I am trying to get
off on a 2 day camping trip and .... <sigh> Summer is going by too fast.

On Tuesday, August 14, The National School Board Association and Grunwald
Associates will release a report Connecting and Creating: Research and
Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking. The report is
currently available at: http://files.nsba.org/creatingandconnecting.pdf. It
will be released publicly on Tuesday and this URL will go away, but the
report will be on the main site.

I am really hesitant to release this assessment because normally I hold the
work of the National School Board Association (NSBA) in high regard. But I
also hold to the standard of "telling it like it is." And the manner in
which this report has been drafted and some of the conclusions made in this
report are highly disturbing. Some of the conclusions are helpful.

This report was drafted by Grunwald Associates. If you look closely at
Grunwald's site, you find immediately what Grunwald's primary business
activities are providing "our clients with the highest quality market
research and strategic consulting services to help grow their businesses."
http://www.grunwald.com This study was underwritten by MySpace/News Corp,
Microsoft, and Verizon. The concern of "bias" should come immediately to
your forebrain.

Of greatest concern regarding this report is the lack of ability to look at
the underlying data. When academic researchers conduct a study they release
the data so that others with expertise in the field can evaluate how the
study was conducted and independently assess its results. It is not possible
independently evaluate any of the board, and occasionally disturbing
conclusions contained in this report, because the arrangement made by
Grunwald and NSBA allows Grunwald to control the distribution of the actual
data. As you can see on this page,
http://www.grunwald.com/surveys/sn/index.php, gaining access to the actual
data requires coughing up $9,000 - $12,000. Who has this kind of money?
Corporations seeking the youth, parent, and school market. Who was this
study primarily conducted for? I will let you guess.

The Helpful Findings

The most helpful finding of this report are these (page 7):

"Nearly nine in 10 district leaders (87 percent) say ³strong educational
value and purpose² will be a requirement for them to permit student access
to any social networking site."

"Large proportions of district leaders say that a strong emphasis on
collaborative and planned activities (81 percent), strong tools for students
to express themselves (70 percent) and an emphasis on bringing different
kinds of students together (69 percent) would be required for them to buy
into social networking for school use."

"But most also would insist on adult monitoring (85 percent) ..."

In other words, school administrators are thinking clearly about these
technologies and have school priorities and appropriate mechanisms well in
mind: educational purpose and monitoring.

Possibly Helpful Findings

One section of the report that is really difficult to fully evaluate without
access to the data relates to youth safety online. This report concluded
(page 6): "The vast majority of students, then, seem to be living by the
online safety behaviors they learn at home and at school."

I agree with this conclusion. However, I have concerns about how the data
was collected. In the field of youth risk online, (and there is no basis to
believe that anyone from Grunwald has any particular expertise in this field
and some reason to suspect that they do not) it is well known that some of
the earlier standards expressed related to Internet safety are not fully
understood. For example, it turns out that providing certain kinds of
personal information online has no relationship whatsoever to receiving
sexual solicitation. http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV77.pdf.

As it is impossible to ascertain exactly what questions were asked and what
the actual responses were, it is impossible to effectively evaluate the
findings. However, two points must be made: 1. This report is reporting
results that differ from the results reported by other researchers. 2. This
circumstances under which this report was drafted provide ample concern for
the possibility of bias in how the questions were drafted and the results
evaluated and reported.

(Please note, sometimes in this field, the bias is on the other side. A
recent Crimes Against Children Research Center study reported that 13% of
young people received unwanted sexual solicitations or approaches in the
past year. But "sexual solicitations" included what was essentially unwanted
sexual communications, most came from other teens. The major public
statement made has been that one in 7 youth have been sexually solicited
online. What was not reported publicly was that in 69% of these incidents,
the youth said they did not report to anyone because the incidents were "not
serious enough." But the researchers made their data fully available so this
external evaluation could be made!)

A Possible Helpful Finding - But The Most Harmful Conclusion

A possibly helpful finding, that led to very concerning conclusions by NSBA
and Grunwald, was in the section addressing "non-conformist students"
(starting page 2). 

Note the glowing language used to describe these "non-conformists:"

p2. "...are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors
and skills that indicate leadership among their peers." (What is "cutting
edge" and how did they define "leadership?")

p4. "These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and
21st century skills, including communication, creativity, collaboration and
leadership skills and technology proficiency." (Please tell me the basis
upon which this has been determined?)

p9. "Pay attention to the nonconformists. The survey findings identify this
group of students as highly engaged and skilled at social networking and as
an influential leadership cadre among their peers." (How was skill and
influence measured? Self report? This is not an effective measurement for
influence.) 

But here is what the report also discloses about these non-conformists:

p2-3. "(They) report breaking one or more online safety or behavior rules,
such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures,
sharing personal information with strangers or pretending to be someone they
are not." (I am not comfortable in concluding that all of these listed
behaviors are unsafe or inappropriate, but the conclusion of these
researchers was that these users were engaged in more inappropriate online
behaviors.)

p3. "Nonconformists are significantly heavier users of social networking
sites than other students, participating in every single type of social
networking activity surveyed (28 in all) significantly more frequently than
other students both at home and at school ‹ which likely means that they
break school rules to do so."

(So, they are showing signs of addictive access behavior - although we do
not know how much because there is no data reported. There was a Korean
study about teen cell phone use that found that the teens who were most
addicted to cell phone use also scored very high on scales of depression and
social anxiety. 
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/24/MNGVKJ12341.DTL)

And these students are regularly breaking school rules. Unfortunately, the
researchers did not assess or report how frequent it is for students to
bypass the filter to access social networking sites from school - a finding
that would have been exceptionally helpful for school planning to address
student Internet use and clearly should have been assessed and reported.)

"Yet they are significantly more likely than other students to have lower
grades, which they report as ³a mix of Bs and Cs,² or lower, than other
students." (In other words, their grades are not high enough for them to get
into most colleges.)

The report also calls these students "influencers." This term requires
further analysis. On the web site, we find more insight into what is meant
by "influencer." Here: http://www.grunwald.com/surveys/sn/topics.php

"€ Online influencers, including:
€ ³Networkers² (kids with large networks of friends online)
€ ³Promoters² (kids who tell many others/week about new sites and features)
€ ³Recruiters² (kids who bring many others/week to a favorite site or
sites))
€ ³Producers² (kids who regularly play authoring roles online)
€ ³Editors² (kids who regularly rate or edit others¹ content online)"

And here http://www.grunwald.com/about/index.php "Our clients often ask us
to help them leverage our research results and insights to develop
innovative online services. Examples include creating viral marketing to
reach kid and family ³influencers, ...²

In other words, "influencers" are individuals who are highly active online
and are influencing other users in the kinds of market-related activities
that commercial web sites and their advertisers want them to be engaged in.

Did the researchers ask any questions about the students' activities in
community social service projects or extracurricular activities that are
expanding their horizons and make a determination about "leadership"
qualities based on this?

No, what the researchers considered to be behavior that was to be valued and
applauded as "leadership" was clearly addictive online access on commercial
sites. And those students who demonstrated this addictive online access were
engaging in inappropriate behavior AND had lower grades!

Hopefully these students are not truly "influencers," because they are
clearly demonstrating behavior that is of significant concern. ""Leaders"
and "influencers" of other students? We should certainly hope not. Their
behavior may good for commercial advertisers, but will likely not be good
for overall student achievement and well-being.

And this report appears to encourage schools to provide greater student
access to social networking so that other students can follow the lead of
these addicted access students.

It is helpful to know that excessive online activity is associated with a
higher level of engagement in inappropriate online behavior and lower school
grades. I have always said that addictive access behavior is a risk itself,
as well as an indicator of other risk. And clearly schools to need to pay
attention to these "at greater risk" students. But to consider these
students to be leaders and demonstrating an "extraordinary set of 21st
century skills" and recommending that school follow their leadership is
stretching the bias to a breaking point.

So here is what I think:

Social networking technologies clearly have significant educational
potential. I do not expect the popular social/commercial social networking
sites to ever offer many valuable educational activities. But the
technologies that underlie the operations of these sites can be used
effectively - with effective professional development and monitoring - for
educational activities to prepare students with the skills they will need
for their careers and life in the 21st Century.

Sometimes, access to the commercial sites can serve a very educational
purposes. For example, campaign footage shown on YouTube that has had a
significant influence on voters. Teachers and students should be able to
access these social/commercial sites for specific educational objectives.

I do believe that many young people are making good choices online and are
not at much, if any risk. There is clearly a need for greater accurate,
non-fear-mongering, assessment of youth risk online, along with an
assessment of risk and protective factors. Youth risk online must be viewed
from the perspective of adolescent risk - the young people who are more "at
risk" in the real world also appear to be more "at risk" online.

It is essential that we help young people gain balance in the use of these
technologies and other important life activities - including getting
together with friends in person, physical activities and athletics, arts and
music, social service - oh, yes, and chores, school work, and sleep. This
study appears to demonstrate a clear relationship between excessive online
use and school failure.

School administrators have their priorities right. They are highly
supportive of the use of social networking technologies for effective
high-value educational activities, with a requirement of effective adult
monitoring. This bodes well for the future, because it is in the context of
these activities, that students can learn how to use these technologies in a
manner that results in value to someone other than commercial advertisers
and can gain a better understanding of responsible use.

NSBA needs to reexamine its priorities and relationships with researchers
and commercial web sites. NSBA should refocus its activities to those that
are supporting student education and well-being. Not providing additional
insight for commercial companies and advertisers seeking to target the youth
market online. 


Nancy
-- 
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
http://cyber-safe-kids.com
nwillard@csriu.org

Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social
Aggression, Threats, and Distress (Research Press)

Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the
Internet Safely and Responsibly (Jossey-Bass)

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