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Apart from asking us “how young is too young for Facebook?” Justin and I often work with parents who have other questions about household rules they should have in place related to their child’s use of technology. We first state that parents should provide their kids with access to these devices a little bit earlier than they think they should. The key is that THEY are the ones who introduce the technology (rather than initially learning about it from friends). By way of example, they can give their child a phone and state that for the first month, they can only call Mom and Dad. When the second month begins, they can start texting Mom and Dad.

Parents should also show their child the cell phone bill after each month so that they can begin to understand how much the service costs in order to develop fiscal responsibility at a young age. At the beginning of the third month, they can start to call and text one or two friends. Parents should gradually provide more freedom and responsibility (within limits, of course) and keep assessing how their child is handling those freedoms. They should take a step back, if necessary.

Conversations should be continual about cell phone use and abuse. Feel free to employ our Cell Phone Use Contract as well to set agreed-upon parameters for the family (such as those mentioned in our Top Ten Teen Tips for Cell Phone Safety). Try to cultivate balance and well-roundedness so that interacting and socializing on these devices does not become too much of a distraction from studying, sleeping, and other essentials. Finally, reinforce positive behavior and choices – perhaps with an iTunes gift card, or another technology-based reward (like enabling picture mail – as long as you can review the contents of their phone whenever you like and have had an age-appropriate conversation about sexting!).

Do not hesitate to sanction them when you see problematic behaviors, attitudes, or outcomes.  For example, if school grades go down, or diligence in household chores goes down, their use of electronic devices should consequently be reduced. We also suggest that parents require their teens to keep their cell phone in a designated location after a certain hour (say, 9pm). Some “cut-off” point should be identified where youth are done for the day in their technology use. This, however, is not a foolproof way to prevent technology misuse, which we will explain in the near future.

We’ve talked in great detail about students bringing their personal electronic devices at school and the complications that may result.  We have also covered standards for searching these devices, and have provided a cell phone search checklist which may help administrators in these situations. In keeping with these discussions, I wanted to take some time to focus in on seizure – or confiscation – of these devices while bracketing the thorny subject of search for a while.  Specifically, I want to be clear and state that even with a suspected or actual policy violation by a student, it may not be in your school’s best interests to seize that student’s device.

I recently chatted this out with Mark Trachtenbroit, Assistant Principal at Wheeler High School in Georgia.  He remarked that his school used to take students’ personal devices when they were displayed or used between the morning bell and the afternoon bell because that contravened the formal rules their school had in place. However, it became a huge chore, leading to many of the complications I wrote about last week and the huge hassle of trying to warehouse, label, and manage all of the confiscated devices (and deal with angry parents who demanded their kid’s device be returned).

As such, the school decided that they would no longer confiscate phones, but just apply moderate penalties to students who broke the rules.  For instance, the first violation would be a stern verbal warning.  The second violation would lead to Saturday school.  The third violation would lead to In-School Suspension.  This tended to work in that it reduced the number of negative outcomes but seemed to be a less-than-ideal solution.  Administrators felt they were, as they say, cutting off their nose to spite their face because punishing teens in this way kept them out of the classroom where they would be learning.  This directly ties into the No Child Left Behind Act and the Adequate Yearly Progress measurement that allows our US Department of Education to determine how each school and school district is doing when it comes to properly educating our students (to do well academically on standardized tests) and meeting annual targets for reading, math, and graduation.  The consequences for failing to meet these goals and targets are simply not worth risking, and it just doesn’t make sense to sternly discipline kids in the 21st Century from being kids in the 21st century.  That is, the big-picture costs of punishing teens for being tethered to their technology is not worth potentially compromising the achievement of federally-mandated requirements.

This is an extremely important point, and one that many people do not seem to understand.

Perhaps the bottom line is that you cannot keep or deter all students from using their phones at school.  It is going to happen.  You can therefore decide to be prohibitive or permissive.  You can officially ban them from campuses, or allow them during certain times (or all times).

Whatever you do, though, you will have to figure out a way to get students, educators, and parents on board, and probably approach it in a way that represents the climate you are trying to build and maintain.  This climate should be all about encouraging the positive and responsible use of technology, and dissuading its misuse and abuse.  We’ll be giving you specific advice to make this happen in weeks ahead.

Now is the time to start thinking about what *you* are going to do to educate your students about cyberbullying, digital citizenship, online responsibility, and overall safety. A key to any educational effort is consistent reinforcement of the messages you want students to incorporate into their daily lives. Convening an all-school assembly on these topics once each schoolyear is not sufficient. But bringing up online issues even for just a few minutes regularly (daily!) can be very effective. No matter what your area of teaching expertise is, you can talk about digital citizenship. When it comes to educating your students about online issues, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are tons of great resources freely available on the web. You already know about our site, but in case you haven’t explored it fully, below are just a couple of examples of activities you can incorporate into your classes.

Cyberbullying Word Find. You can start a discussion about cyberbullying with a fun activity that introduces important terms and concepts to your students. After all of the words are found you can talk about what they mean and how to avoid problems. Or you could separate the word list from the sheet and announce them one at a time and briefly discuss them as they are found! One school we talked to laminated our Word Find (and our Crossword Puzzle and Word Scramble) and used them over and over in different upper elementary classes and the class that solved them the quickest one a pizza party!

Quizzes. We have three short online quizzes that you can use to assess your student’s knowledge about cyberbullying: The Facts about Cyberbullying; Dealing with Cyberbullying; and Addressing Cyberbullying. You can work through these in a computer lab or if personal devices are allowed in your school, you can direct your students to the site to complete the quizzes on their phone, tablet, or laptop. If those aren’t options, you can always print off the quiz and distribute it the old fashioned way! You can have students work in teams and give extra credit for those who get them all correct. After they are done with our quizzes, have each student (or team of students) search reputable sites online to come up with their own questions and answers!

Ideas to Get Teens Involved. In our presentations we talk a lot about how it takes a coordinated and comprehensive community effort to prevent and respond to cyberbullying. Parents, educators, law enforcement officers, faith leaders, and other community partners all have an essential role to play. But so do the teens themselves. There are a lot of great things youth can do to educate their community about cyberbullying – while learning a thing or two themselves. When working with small groups of teens I often ask teams of 4 or 5 students to come up with 2 creative ideas that they could do to educate their school and community about cyberbullying. One idea needs to be something that they *will do* within the next month and the other idea can be something that they would do if resources were unlimited. They always come up with some amazing ideas! One senior once told me that if money were no option he would get the whole school to go skydiving over the community with parachutes that said “Say No to Cyberbullying” on them. Great idea! What ideas do your students have? Get them involved and invested in creating and maintaining a bully-free culture in your school.

Pause Before You Post. Sameer and I partnered with Jostens to create “A Student’s Guide to Personal Publishing” that summarizes the issues that students need to keep in mind when posting information to the World Wide Web. You can use this guide to start a discussion with your students about some of the problems they see when looking at friends’ profiles. You can also take a few minutes to find some examples from the media where teens from your state or celebrities have gotten into some hot water because of what they have posted on the Internet. Taking the time to pause before you post anything online is always wise. If your school orders class rings or yearbooks from Jostens, ask your local representative about a complete “Pause Package” that includes a DVD, buttons, and other instructional materials.

These are just a few examples of how you can use our resources in your efforts to educate your students or children about cyberbullying and related issues. Please do explore the other resources we have for teens, educators, and parents. And let us know how you are using these and what is working! If you have any suggestions for new resources, drop us a note – we’d love to hear from you! We will share some additional suggestions in upcoming blog posts. There are a number of other great sites out there that have resources that we will highlight, so stay tuned! If you know of any, please let us know so we can spread the word. Also, if you are an educator thinking about teaching a whole class on cyberbullying or digital citizenship (at any level), stay tuned for a forthcoming blog post about what we and others we know have done that works.

As we have discussed several times on this blog in recent years, there are two cases that addressed issues with off-campus online speech by students that resulted in seemingly conflicting responses by the same court. They potentially have implications for how schools can respond to cyberbullying incidents, so are important to follow. To refresh your memory, Layshock v. Hermitage School District involved Justin Layshock, the 17-year-old Hickory High School senior who in 2005 created a “nonthreatening, non‐obscene parody profile making fun of the school principal” from his grandmother’s home using her computer. The school suspended Layshock for 10 days, which was initially upheld in a 2006 hearing, but later overturned by the judge in the case, saying the school went too far. In February of 2010, a panel of judges from the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in and agreed. In this case it appeared the school failed to effectively argue that Layshock’s actions caused a substantial disruption at school – the standard that was established in the seminal Supreme Court case Tinker vs. Des Moines (1969). According to Tinker, school administrators can discipline students for off-campus behavior if it can be demonstrated that such behavior resulted in a “substantial and material disruption” of the school environment.

In the other case (Blue Mountain School District v. J.S.), a 14-year-old eighth-grade student from Blue Mountain Middle School also created a MySpace profile of the principal which included, among other things, an accusation that he was a “sex-obsessed pedophile.” This student was also suspended for 10 days for violating the school’s discipline code and for using the schools copyrighted material (the principal’s picture from the school’s web site) without permission. The lower court refused to grant the student a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction ruling that schools can in fact discipline students for lewd off-campus behavior, even if such behavior doesn’t cause a substantial disruption. Another, separate panel from the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court in an opinion that seemed inconsistent with the Layshock ruling.

To resolve these disparate views, the Third Circuit agreed to review the cases collectively (“en blanc”) to offer a perspective. In short, there is nothing too surprising about the remarks of the majority opinions released on Monday. The court re-asserted that schools cannot punish students for off-campus behavior or speech without evidence of a substantial disruption at school (or a high likelihood that such a disruption will occur).

In the Layshock case, the school district conceded that the creation of the MySpace parody profile did not cause a disruption at school. So it is clearly outside the boundaries of formal school discipline. The court also listed several cases where schools were allowed to discipline students for the off-campus behavior (J.S. v. Bethlehem Area Sch. Dist., 807 A.2d 847 (Pa. 2002); Wisniewski v. Bd. of Educ. of Weedsport Cent. Sch. Dist., 494 F.3d 34 (2d Cir. 2007); and Doninger v. Niehoff, 527 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2008), noting that “each of those cases involved off campus expressive conduct that resulted in a substantial disruption of the school, and the courts allowed the schools to respond to the substantial disruption that the student’s out of school conduct caused.”

In the other case, the Bethlehem Area School District did initially attempt to argue that J.S.’s activities resulted in a significant disruption at school, though neither the District Court nor the Third Circuit Court of Appeals accepted that argument so they backed off. In the original hearing, the District Court supported the disciplinary actions of the school, not because there was evidence of a substantial disruption, but because the content of the off-campus speech was “vulgar, lewd, and potentially illegal.” This was consistent with Supreme Court decisions in Fraser (1986) and Morse (2007). In its review, however, the Third Circuit noted that in both of these cases, the speech was delivered at school (Fraser) or a school sponsored activity (Morse). As such, the vulgarity of the speech was irrelevant and therefore the singular issue is to consider is whether the off-campus speech resulted in a substantial disruption. Therefore, in a divided opinion (8-6) the Third Circuit overturned the District Court, concluding that: “…the school district violated J.S.’s First Amendment free speech rights when it suspended her for speech that caused no substantial disruption in school and that could not reasonably have led school officials to forecast substantial disruption in school.”

Judge Jordon noted in a concurring opinion, however, that: “The issue is whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker, can be applicable to off-campus speech. I believe it can, and no ruling coming out today is to the contrary.” So students can be punished for off-campus speech or behavior (consistent with Tinker’s disruption clause).

So where does this leave us. Well, the key issue to keep in mind, it seems, is whether a student’s off-campus speech or behavior results, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, a substantial disruption at school. We have little additional clarity regarding what that actually looks like, but we know a bit more about what it isn’t. Staff accessing a harassing profile at school does not constitute a substantial disruption. A student bringing a printed copy of a Web site to school at the request of staff does not cause a substantial disruption. A few students talking in class does not equal substantial disruption.

It also appears that vulgarities directed toward school officials from an off-campus location are not automatically subject to school discipline. Now, if that speech substantially and/or materially disrupts the learning at school, it may be fair game for sanction. It is interesting that free speech advocates are touting this as a victory for students, suggesting these opinions are evidence that there are no conditions under which schools can discipline students for their off-campus speech. This is clearly an incorrect interpretation of the facts. We have long known that students have free speech rights. We also know that those rights are constrained a bit while at school and where the speech substantially disrupts the school environment. That hasn’t changed.

It is important to also point out that both of these cases involved students who were targeting staff. I would be very interested to see if the opinions changed if all players involved were students. If a student creates a Facebook parody profile about another student, could the target’s ability to learn at school be substantially disrupted? It sure seems so. But it remains to be seen whether the higher courts would agree with this rationale.

I encourage you all to read the full versions of the opinions (over 100 pages in total). Layshock is available here and Blue Mountain is here. And feel free to weigh in with your thoughts.

This is a common question I receive from many parents: “At what age should I give my child a cell phone or allow them to be on Facebook?” Of course this is not an easy question to answer since every child is different and parents themselves are probably in the best position to determine the most appropriate age. That said, I usually advise parents to think about allowing access to certain devices or web environments a little bit earlier than they might think is the right time. The issue really is that parents need to be the ones who introduce the technology to the child, not the youth’s peers. If parents wait too long or try to convince themselves that their child has no interest in Facebook, then odds are good that the child will learn about the site from a friend and set up a profile without the parent’s knowledge.

I recently spoke to a teacher who is a parent of a 5th grader who asked my opinion about whether her son should be on Facebook. I told her that it probably wasn’t a good idea. It is a violation of Facebook’s terms of use, and agree with them or not, parents shouldn’t encourage their children to break the rules. Thankfully there are many other emerging sites that are designed exclusively for tweens, such as togetherville, which interfaces with Facebook. Admittedly, it is difficult to get younger social networkers excited about these alternatives since “all of their friends are already on Facebook.”

And some data suggests that they are right: Consumer Reports recently reported that as many as 13% of Facebook’s American users are under the age of 13 (about 7.5 million kids). And half or more of the students I speak to Facebook hasn’t completely ignored their rules, however, as they reportedly remove tens of thousands of under-aged youth every day. Of course if a user lies about his or her age when setting up the profile, it is very difficult for Facebook to know whether someone is underage so they rely on reports of violators.

This leads to another question I get: “If I see a person on Facebook who I know to be under 13, should I report the user?” This too is a complicated question. My response used to automatically be “yes.” If they are violating the rules, they should not be on the site. I have tempered my response a bit in recent months, informed by insights from colleagues, educators, and Internet safety experts. In general, whether or not to report an under-aged user depends on whether you have a concern about them being on the site—based on what you know about the user and/or what you see on his or her profile. If you are worried that their activities on Facebook could lead to significant social, educational, physical, or other problems, then you have an obligation to report (to the site or the youth’s parents, or both). If you see a 12-year-old whom you know well who is on the site and they have their privacy settings adjusted so that all of their information is protected to the maximum extent possible, perhaps it isn’t necessary to report the user. You still might want to take the person aside and talk about some of the concerns you have (posting too much personal or identifiable information, meeting someone in real life who they only know online, including gossiping or harassing content, etc.) to encourage him or her to continue making good decisions about their online activities. As Larry Magid, tech journalist and internet safety advocate points out, changing the rules to allow younger users on Facebook would create opportunities for the site to incorporate protections that just aren’t in place when kids lie about their age. This is certainly a perspective that should be considered.

Overall, parents should provide gradual and guided access to technology. Maybe, for example, you give your son a cell phone at age 10, but to start the only persons he can call are mom and dad. After a couple of months if he demonstrates appropriate behaviors you can add selected others. Then add texting. Show him the cell phone bill every month so he knows his contribution to the family expenses. Stress that the phone is a privilege that can be taken away with misuse. If he makes a mistake, take a step back. If he is texting at the dinner table, explain to him why this is unacceptable. If he is talking to friends all hours of the night, confiscate the phone for a while. I suspect that if more parents were actively involved in encouraging the responsible use of technology, even at a relatively young age, there would be fewer and less serious problems later in their adolescent lives.