Girl Scout study

[Nancy Willard <nwillard@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>]

I have had some requests for more information on the Girl Scout study.
Sorry, I should have included this before.

The cite is Whitney, R. (2002) The Net Effect: Girls and New Media. Girl
Scout Research Institute. URL:
http://www.girlscouts.org/about/PDFs/NetEffects.pdf.

Another disturbing finding of this study is that although 30% of girls
reported that they had been sexually harrassed in chat rooms only 7%
told a parent. Now, most of the girls did appear to have the ability to
deal with the harassment,but a significant problem appears to be that
girls are not reporting issues that emerge that make them uncomfortable
because of their fear of adult overreaction and punishment.

This is why I have great concerns about the simple reliance on the basic
safety instruction of "if something happens that makes you feel
uncomfortable, tell an adult." They are not going to tell, because we
(adults) do not understand and may punish them.

The other very disturbing data, from an educator perspective, is that
only 29% of girls reported learning about safe and unsafe behavior from
a teacher. And overall, the information they are receiving about safe
and unsafe behavior is "in the form of prohibitive statements rather
than proactive advice about real-life situations that can occur for them
online." The conclusion was that girls are "forced to navigate
potentially difficult or emotional situations online with little
pertinent and useful information..."

But schools are now in compliance with CIPA by installing filtering
software, so we have taken care of all of this, right? (being facitious
in case you are not familiar with my extensive statements on these
matters.

Nancy

Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.

Center for Advanced Technology in Education
University of Oregon, College of Education
E-mail: nwillard@oregon.uoregon.edu
URL: http://netizen.uoregon.edu

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