Cyber Safety Expert Visits

CORRECTION APPENDED

Cornell University Assistant Professor Sahara Byrne presented audience members with evidence suggesting that internet risk prevention strategies are most likely to be effective when they allow children to take an active role in their own protection.

Byrne, who teaches in the department of communications, spoke at the Berkman Center For Internet & Society at Harvard Law School yesterday afternoon as part of a weekly luncheon series to facilitate the discussion of pressing media issues.

Byrne presented a nationwide survey of parents and children illustrating average levels of support and opposition for various internet protection strategies. She said that disagreements about implementation within a household are triggered by personal characteristics of the parents and children.

“An authoritarian parenting style predicts a lot of disagreements and runs the greatest risk of having a child trying to get around their parents’ strategies,” Byrne said. “Agreement on any [risk prevention] strategy is predicted by households that report pretty good communicative relationships with their children.”

Byrne also noted that an authoritative parenting style develops more trusting relationships between parents and children.

“[These] children would rather talk to their parents about internet safety than have a filter that watches their every move online,” Byrne said.

Byrne said that children’s values and beliefs could also predict resistance to attempts from their parents to protect them on the internet. The strategies resulting in the least amount of disagreement were the most effective because they empowered the youth to protect themselves while providing legal or academic consequences for online misconduct.

The Cyber Safety Campaign developed by Boston Public Schools requires that all teachers become Internet safety certified through i-SAFE, “a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the online experiences of youth everywhere,” according to its Web site.

—Staff writer Barbara B. Depena can be reached at barbara.b.depena@college.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

An earlier version of the Dec. 16 news article "Cyber Safety Expert Visits" incorrectly attributed quotes to Danah Boyd—a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at the Berkman Center—instead of another speaker at the event. Boyd did not say that Boston has been working on a cyber-safety project with funding from Microsoft. The article has been changed to reflect this inaccuracy.