You're 15: Who's Watching You Online?

On Networking Sites, Predators, Police And Parents Track Teens' Activity

(CBS) 
Balz-Verzal makes sure her daughter doesn't divulge too many personal details, but that's not the case with many parents. There's a generation gap when it comes to online know-how according to Aftab, who has taught hundreds of parents the intricacies of teenage social networking.

"Even if a parent uses computers and the Internet, they have no idea how kids do … a parent is likely to be alienated from a teen's Internet use, no matter how in touch they are,” she said.

Other factors can exacerbate the disconnect. Language barriers can separate parents from children in immigrant families. Parents too poor to have a computer in their home have no way of monitoring children who go online at school.

In Cajuste's case, her mother — a Haitian immigrant — worked several jobs, said Roselle, N.J., school board president Yves Aubourg. As a result, Judy was often cared for by her grandparents, who speak very little English.

Another consideration is the sheer size and scope of the Internet. Surfing the Web and chatting online can't be compared to a teen activity familiar to many parents — going to the mall with friends.

“In a mall there are a couple hundred people. On the Internet there are millions,” said Rob Nickel, a veteran of the provincial police force in Ontario, Canada. Nickel specialized in undercover work catching predators online and now lectures parents on Internet safety. “We street-proof our kids, but on the Internet they don't know the consequences,” he said.

Catherine Saintilien, a community-center organizer in New Jersey who is acquainted with the Cajustes, said the lack of neutral or kid-friendly public spaces push younger teens to their desktops.

“In the summer months, for more than 10 hours they might be in the house by themselves if they don’t have a place to go, and it is very tempting to go online,” she said. “There is no place that's safe for our kids anymore.”

But experts say it is natural for the new technology of one generation to become the focus of adult anxieties.

"Social networking is just the latest in a slew of technologies, going back to radio, that shocks one generation and is taken for granted by the next,” Jenkins, an MIT professor, says.

Police

Parents and schools fear what they don't understand in the case of tech-savvy teens — especially when violent crimes or illegal activity can be tracked back to a teenager's computer. Patrolling MySpace and chat rooms has become commonplace for detectives and school liaison officers — and MySpace is helping them make busts.

In April, Kansas police discovered and thwarted a plot for a Columbine-style school shooting involving five boys, after seeing a MySpace posting citing the planned violence. It was at least the fourth Columbine-style plot this year revealed through MySpace or Xanga, according to the Boston Globe.

In the same month, a 15-year-old New Jersey girl was charged with harassment when authorities found what they called a hit list of 17 people, mostly peers, on her Web site.

"A big part of my caseload is juveniles who are committing crimes against their friends," said Wistocki.

Kellermann says 500 agents work primarily on cyber crime. With the FTC saying that 10 million Americans' identities have been stolen, the recent boost in federal resources makes sense.

MySpace has also stepped into the crime-fighting arena by helping investigators to uncover users' identities. In April, MySpace announced the hire of former federal prosecutor and White House cyber stalking adviser Hemanshu Nigam to serve as its chief security officer.

The Pentagon is joining local police departments in setting its sights on MySpace. The New Scientist magazine reported last week that the National Security Agency is "funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks." The plan, the New Scientist reports, is to add online data, including pictures and links to other people, clubs or hobbies to its phone analyses.

But teenagers who have grown up online are adept at getting around domestic surveillance systems and Web censors.

"Hacking on the Internet is just a new vehicle to being mischievous," Kellerman said. "Kids love to know what other people are thinking. Kids know they can screw other people up pretty badly."

And pretty easily. Trojan horse viruses that are easily downloaded from sites in Eastern Europe can be used to spy on someone else's computer from afar or to even to issue commands — like turning on a Webcam in a child's bedroom.

Even without knowledge or intent, teens can stumble into illegal activity.

When investigating a child pornography case in Illinois, Wistocki found a teen who was "just curious and looked for teen sex on [file sharing program] Limewire, and ended up downloading child porn files," Wistocki said. "Download it and you're guilty. It's just like drugs, if you're guilty of possession."

"Unfortunately, many parents don't find out what their children are doing online until the FBI appears at their door with a search warrant," Martha Stansell-Gamm, head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, wrote in Newsweek.

The concerns of schools and parents have spread to Capitol Hill, where legislation dubbed the Deleting Online Predators Act ( Read proposed bill) seeks to block teens' access to social-networking sites when in school or public libraries. The bill would block not only MySpace, but also Friendster, Google's Orkut, AOL and Yahoo instant messengers and even messaging-friendly Xbox 360.

Closer to home, parents, police and schools are mobilizing to educate one another on cyber crime both by and targeting teens. Wistocki gets a hand from local schools in teaching parents both about MySpace and keeping their computer safe from hacking. Nickel, in educational lectures across Canada, is adept at using scare tactics, such as tracking down a local woman's whereabouts, to demonstrate why he advocates keeping tight reigns on children's Internet use.

But the societal ethics of so much surveillance — police, domestic or educational — of teens are still undefined, Jenkins said.

"If the only training is police training parents to police their kids on MySpace, it keeps it a criminalized environment. No one knows how to guide kids through these spaces. There's a lot of surveillance going on, but not a lot of guidance," Jenkins said. "That's the challenge of the present moment."

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