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The Importance of Anonymous Social Media Post
Reporting

We’re familiar with the slogan, “If you see something, say something.” This is a powerful message, something to think of when you’re scrolling through posts, photos, videos and tweets on your phone and computer.

The community must be vigilant and flag content that causes discomfort. Posts from family and friends offer a glimpse into someone’s life even if they aren’t seen in person very often and sometimes; in addition, there are cries for help.

Facebook has created and made available many resources within their Facebook Safety Center.

In this section of Facebook, users can read more about policies and access tools to make their Facebook experience better. There is also a Parent’s Portal offering expert advice and guidance. Online bullying has also become more prominent and Facebook has also provided teens, parents and educators with tools to help prevent bullying via the Bullying Prevention Hub.

In addition to videos and articles that have been published in partnership with many child experts, as well as the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence, Facebook enables users to control their Facebook experience.

Users can easily customize their news feeds to “Snooze” friends for 30-days or the ability to “Unfollow” friend’s posts,  which means posts aren’t visible in news feeds but Facebook friendship will remain intact. Posts that a user finds annoying can be easily controlled with these 2 Facebook resources.If a post, video, photo or comment is more offensive in nature, it is advised that it is reported directly to Facebook. This can be done by selecting the 3 dots on the upper right hand of the post and selecting “Give Feedback on This Post”. From there, it’s easy to select a reason and provide additional information. Alternatively, users can fill out a form here. A single report is enough for Facebook to review the content. They don’t just remove it if it was reported a certain amount of times but only if it violates Community Standards.

On Instagram, the process is also similar. Seeing a potentially threatening or suspicious photo or video should be flagged immediately. Users can click on the top right 3 dots and select “Report” which will bring the next screen to select “It’s Spam” or “It’s Inappropriate”. Additional reporting options can be found here.

The Facebook team, which also owns Instagram, has a team of experts dedicated to reviewing content. Many of their backgrounds come from enforcement areas like child and women’s safety and hate speech. The team is global and can review over 40 languages with the help of technology and human review.

Twitter also makes saying something about a tweet easy to do by enabling users to click on the top right and choosing, “Report Tweet” in addition to the other features to control tweets from users. Additional information is located here.

Vanishing content, like what is found on Snapchat, may be difficult for users to report; however Snapchat does have reporting options in place for this reason. When viewing a story, the user is encouraged to press and hold the content to which an option for reporting will show. Alternatively, a form can be filled out online.

Screenshots of any posts – vanishing or not – are always recommended even though the platforms do feature the ability to retrieve deleted posts.

It is always recommended to contact local law enforcement if there is an impending threat to an individual or a group of people. All of these social media platforms do work closely with law enforcement, including government agencies to investigate reports. A reminder that any reports filed do stay anonymous. Don’t dawdle if there is dubious content being published by a friend or family member in the news feed.

Nude Photo Scandal at RHS Highlights Dangers of Social Media

Originally posted by James Kleimann on Ridgewood Patch

Daniel Fishbein held a news conference Thursday to address the transmission of nude photos of high school girls through social media.

The Ridgewood community should use the scandal involving the distribution of nude photos of high school girls through social media as a teaching opportunity, Superintendent Daniel Fishbein said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Multiple sources have told Patch that numerous RHS girls (mostly freshmen) sent nude photographs using the social media application SnapChat to male students, one of whom posted the images on Instagram for all the Internet to see. There was also a video of a dance depicting two high school girls simulating sex acts, sources said.

Most of the male students involved in the scandal are upperclassmen, according to individuals familiar with the situation.

The incidents occurred off school grounds and after school hours.

Students say the Snapchat nude photos first surfaced earlier in the school year, but high school administrators first were made aware last week following a verbal spat between two girls at the Campus Center. The altercation–over illicit videos and pictures–prompted what is now an ongoing police investigation, sources said.

“If this came to our attention a week-and-a-half ago, that’s when we would be having this news conference,” Fishbein said to a dozen news reporters at the Education Center Thursday afternoon. “As soon as it came to our attention…we deal with these things for the health and safety of the students and to educate our community.”

Fishbein sent a letter regarding the incident to students and parents on Wednesday afternoon, stressing that parents need to be partners to prevent the production and distribution of illicit images.

“We can use this situation as a learning experience, an educational experience,” the superintendent said Thursday, adding the event has become a distraction at the high school. “We certainly teach our students about the danger of social media.”

Ridgewood police have been investigating the scandal with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and have established an amnesty period for students to delete the images/video without fear of prosecution. The amnesty expires Monday morning at 7 a.m.

If found with images after Monday morning, students could be charged with “delinquency complaints” and adults with possession of child pornography, authorities said.

Ridgewood Police Chief John Ward said he did not know the exact number of girls who participated, but confirmed there were several of them. The police chief said he was not at liberty to comment specifically on whether an Instagram gallery containing the images went live, but said the amnesty clause only applies to those who are possessing or forwarding the images.

The students involved in the scandal will be spoken to individually, Fishbein said, adding that counselors are available to distressed students.

In response to a reporter’s question about a “non-chalant attitude” from some students, Fishbein called it a fairly normal adolescent reaction.

“Remember, they’re growing up in a different time than we were. This is a battle in a long war. You can say that with technology, you can say that with drug and alcohol education. Again, we try to partner with parents because in this case the incident happened outside of school after school hours…”

Fishbein didn’t know how widespread the practice is, but acknowledged many students use SnapChat and Instagram.

“To say this is rampant, I wouldn’t know if that’s accurate or not accurate. But these things do occur in this village and in other municipalities…We don’t know everything that occurs at every house in this community and that’s where it occurred.”

“Usually things are kept secretive for some period of time and then they do come out and we do address it,”  Fishbein said.

Although there’s a clear danger with misusing technology, many students use it responsibly, he remarked. Super Science Saturday offers a glimpse of the ingenuity of Ridgewood’s students, he said.

“There is some evil but the vast majority of it [technology] leads to creativity. I hope someday someone from this community cures cancer or something like that.”

For Kids, Snapchat and Instagram Alternative to
Facebook

Originally posted in CBSNews.com

Relieved your kids aren’t posting embarrassing messages and goofy self-portraits on Facebook? They’re probably doing it on Instagram and Snapchat instead.

The number of popular social media sites available on kids’ mobile devices has exploded in recent years. The smartest apps now enable kids to chat informally with select groups of friends without bumping up against texting limits and without being monitored by parents, coaches and college admissions officers, who are frequent Facebook posters themselves.

Many of the new mobile apps don’t require a cellphone or a credit card. They’re free and can be used on popular portable devices such as the iPod Touch and Kindle Fire, as long as there’s a wireless Internet connection.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, more than three-fourths of teenagers have a cellphone and use online social networking sites such as Facebook. But educators and kids say there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Facebook for teenagers has become a bit like a school-sanctioned prom – a necessary rite of passage with plenty of adult onlookers – while apps such as Snapchat and Kik Messenger are the much cooler after-party.

Educators say they have seen everything from kids using their mobile devices to circulate online videos of school drug searches to male students sharing nude pictures of their girlfriends. Most parents, they say, have no idea.

“What sex education used to be – it’s now the ‘technology talk’ we have to have with our kids,” said Rebecca Levey, a mother of 10-year-old twin daughters who runs a tween video review site called KidzVuz.com and blogs about technology and educations issues.

Eileen Patterson, a stay-at-home mom of eight kids in Burke, Va., said she used to consider herself fairly tech savvy and is frequently on Facebook, but was shocked to learn her kids could message their friends with just an iPod Touch. She counts nine wireless devices in her home and has taken to shutting off her home’s Wi-Fi after 9 p.m., but Patterson calls her attempt to keep tabs on her kids’ online activity “a war I’m slowly losing every day.”

“I find myself throwing up my hands every now and again,” Patterson said. “Then I’ll see something on TV or read an article in the paper about some horrible thing that happened to some poor child and their family, and then I try to be more vigilant. But the reality is, I’m …stupid” when it comes to social media.

Mobile apps refer to the software applications that can be downloaded to a mobile device through an online store such as Apple’s iTunes. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there are some 800,000 apps available through Apple and 700,000 apps on Google Play.

Among the most popular mobile apps among kids is Instagram, free software that digitally enhances photos and posts them to your account online. The photos can be shared on other social media sites such as Facebook, which bought Instagram last year. Then there’s Snapchat, among the top 10 free iPhone apps available. Coined by the media as the “sexting” app, Snapchat lets you send a text, photo or video that self-destructs within 10 seconds of being opened.

Kik Messenger also allows unlimited texting for free and offers anonymity to its users. Able to run on an iPod Touch or Kindle Fire, Kik allows vague user names – for example, a nickname or a string of random digits – that won’t reveal a person’s real name or phone number.

But as with anything online, each of these apps comes with serious caveats.

Snapchat, for example, acknowledges on its Web page that its messages aren’t guaranteed to disappear: Anyone receiving a text or photo can use their 10 seconds to capture a “screenshot,” or photo of their device’s screen, and save that image to their phone. Video also can be downloaded, although Snapchat says it alerts senders when their data is saved.

Instagram is generally considered pretty tame as long as kids adjust their privacy settings to limit who can see their photos and don’t post nudity, which could subject them to child pornography laws. But Levey points out that many parents don’t know their kids are on Instagram until there’s trouble – usually when kids post photos at parties, and other kids who aren’t invited see them.

Dale Harkness, a technology director at Richmond-Burton Community High School in Richmond, Ill., said parents often will hand their kids a mobile device without understanding exactly what it can do. He estimates that even without the latest social media app, the average high school student probably transmits some 150 texts a day.

“It’s not anything that every parent and grandparent hasn’t already seen,” Harkness said. The problem, he adds, is the actions “get documented, replayed and sent around,” and kids “forget how fast it moves and how far it goes.”

That was the case at Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, N.J., where a male student allegedly took a screenshot of nude pictures sent to him by female classmates via Snapchat, then posted the pictures on Instagram. According to a letter to parents by the school district’s superintendent that was later posted online, police were warning students to delete any downloaded pictures by Monday or face criminal charges under child pornography laws.

There are general security concerns too. A recent report by a cyberthreat research company, called F-Secure, found that some of the new social networking sites have become ripe targets for spreading malware and propagating scams.

In January, the FBI arrested a 27-year-old man in Los Angeles who allegedly hacked into hundreds of social media and email accounts, including Facebook and Skype, and found naked photos and personal passwords that women had stored online. He used the naked photos to try to coerce women into disrobing for him via Skype and threatened to post their private photos to their Facebook accounts if they refused to comply, according to the indictment.

Also worth noting is that almost every mobile app available collects some kind of personal data, such as a person’s birthdate or the location of their phone, and shares that information with third parties for marketing purposes. While a new regulation by the Federal Trade Commission this year is aimed at keeping advertisers from tracking kids younger than 13, most social media apps require that a person promise to be at least 13 when they sign up, thereby exempting themselves from the tougher privacy restrictions.

Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is co-chairman of a House caucus that examines privacy issues, said he’d like to see legislation that would give kids under 15 the right to delete photos or texts that wind up elsewhere online. The prospect, however, is unlikely in a Congress dominated by debates on federal spending and gun control, and raises practical questions about how such a law could be enforced.

“I believe that our children have a right to develop, to grow up and to make mistakes,” Markey said. “Nobody should be penalized for something they posted when they were 9 years old.”

Several consumer advocates actually recommend exposing their kids to social media sites earlier than age 12, when they’re more receptive to hearing lessons about online etiquette and safety.

For example, Levey links her kids’ devices to her iTunes account so she’s aware of any program they download. She also requires that her kids “friend” her on every program and follow certain ground rules: protect your passwords, set your privacy controls and never transmit inappropriate pictures or words.

Levey thinks a big hurdle for parents is getting over the idea that they are kids’ privacy by monitoring online activity. In fact, she said, it can be the kid’s first lesson that nothing online is truly private anyway.

“If they want privacy, they should write in a journal and hide it under their mattress,” Levey said.