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D
Site Visit Synthesis
D.1 BACKGROUND
The committee conducted site visits in a number of places, including
Austin, Texas (April 3-4, 2001), Greenville, South Carolna (April 17-18,
2001), San Diego, California (May 2-3, 2001), Blacksburg, Virginia (May 8-
9, 2001), Coral Gables, Florida (May 31, 2001), and various towns in Con-
necticut (Reading, Shelton, Bristol, Kent, and Hamden in the period June
1-2, 2001~. During these site visits, members of the committee spoke with
students in junior and senior high school, as well as school teachers, ad-
ministrators, librarians, and technologists. In addition, the committee
spoke with public librarians (branch managers, children's librarians, ref-
erence librarians) and technical managers from library systems. When
possible, the committee also visited after-school programs and other ven-
ues in which young people had Internet access, and spoke with both
children and responsible adults. Finally, the committee held a number of
open sessions in which parents and other interested parties could talk to
the committee.
D.2 RECURRING THEMES
Though the individuals to whom the committee spoke cannot be taken
as being drawn from a representative population, a number of themes did
occur repeatedly during the various site visits.
· Pornography was a concern of many students and school person-
430
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APPENDIX D
431
net, but only one of many. Teachers were more concerned about inaccu-
rate and misleading information on the Internet, and with keeping stu-
dents in school "on task." Both students and responsible adults were
quite concerned about violence (especially "how-to" sites) and hate.
· Meeting people face-to-face that one had encountered first online
in a chat room or through instant messaging was a standard practice.
While only a small a number of students acknowledged having done so,
all thought it was an unremarkable, commonplace occurrence. In gen-
eral, they recognized in an abstract manner the dangers of doing so, but
thought that they could tell if they were dealing with an untrustworthy
individual and said that they would never provide personal informa-
tion to an individual they regarded as untrustworthy.
· High school students expressed a number of common sentiments,
including the following:
They often needed for research purposes information on Web sites
that were blocked by the school filter ("improper blockings.
They rarely or never complained to teachers about such blocking
because they could get information anyway through home access.
Many of the sites improperly blocked by the school were needed
for senior high school purposes, but may have been appropriately blocked
at the junior high school and elementary school levels.
They had been exposed to Internet pornography, especially through
spam mail, but had no interest in receiving such mail and deleted it as fast
as they could get it.
They were not particularly affected by Internet pornography be-
cause the entire media environment in which they live is highly sexual-
ized. However, a number of students noted that what was upsetting
about pornography was not so much the material itself as the likelihood
that their parents would "freak out."
They were frustrated by losing control of their computers, men-
tioning especially spam mail and mouse/rapping.
· Most of the schools that the committee visited had installed filters,
and many libraries had done so as well. However, when asked what
benefit filters offered their schools and libraries, teachers and librarians
invariably pointed to the political and management benefits not a single
teacher or librarian said that his or her students or patrons were better off
with filters in place. The primary political benefit of filters was that they
eliminated parental complaints, while the primary management benefit
was that they eliminated the need for teachers and students to constantly
monitor student and patron usage.
In schools, acceptable use policies (AUPs) were also common. How-
ever, students received little or no instruction in how to comply with
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432
YOUTH, PORNOGRAPHY, AND THE INTERNET
them. Students signed AUPs (sometimes with parental signatures re-
quired as well), but they noted that the AUPs were just one more form to
be filled out at the beginning of the year, and they were not given much
attention, were often not even read carefully, and generally were not
internalized in any meaningful way. In practice, AUPs seemed to be a
tool with which a school could discipline a student for some behavior that
was not explicitly forbidden but that nevertheless was inconsistent with
school policy.
In no school were media literacy and Internet safety part of the formal
curriculum. Librarians did note that they spent some time teaching stu-
dents how to evaluate sources and credibility, but they were unable to
spend more than a class period on this subject in the course of a year.
· Most libraries with filters noted that the filters solved problems
caused by adults accessing pornography on the Internet on public access
terminals and making a nuisance of themselves. Furthermore, they made
staff more comfortable, because staff were no longer forced to confront
patrons about violations of posted AUPs. Librarians were also concerned
with staff having to make value judgments about what is and is not por-
nography, particularly when it comes to deciding what a customer can
print and receive; they don't want to be "policemen" in the library; they
believe the library should be used for educational purposes; and, they
don't want to formally monitor what people are doing online.
· Both parents and students commented on the gap in knowledge
between them. For example, many students reported that they can change
their parents' parental preferences (on AOL) for themselves and have
access to their parents' accounts, or that their parents don't know what
privileges are associated with their screen names. In general, those stu-
dents with home access have the most expertise, and hence the most
knowledge about how to circumvent adults, know what is available on
the net, and know where to find what they should not see. Parents ac-
knowledged the knowledge gap as well, pointing out that they were un-
comfortable working in an area in which they could not presume superior
knowledge and experience and thus did not know how to properly in-
struct their children in this area. Moreover, many did not know much
about the nature of the issues their children face on the Internet (appar-
ently because of the significant differences between using the Internet as a
social medium (the experience of their kids) and using it as a business
medium (their own experience).
In general, the parents to whom the committee spoke understood the
responsibility they had as parents to provide supervision. However, they
were also aware to some extent that providing supervision does not nec-
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APPENDIX D
433
essarily mean that a child will absorb the lessons that such supervision is
intended to impart. They understood the time-intensive nature of appro-
priate supervision and knew that they (and especially other parents) were
unable or unwilling to provide supervision; nevertheless, they generally
expressed considerable hesitation to involve the government in this prob-
lem (a view that was expressed by both liberal and conservative parents).
Representative terms from entire chapter:
provide supervision
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