Power of Hope is interested in participating in the “”Puget Sound Off”
digital youth commons project with the YMCA” (see below). I’m told that Metrocenter is involved, and that Chris Tugwell is your point person.

We enforce a long-held rule about youth and adult participants in our camps and programs NOT contacting each other post-program, as a safeguard for the youth. I’ve heard this is a general rule in the youth work field - but since I am not a person with a social work background, I don’t know for sure.

It seems evident to me that the new paradigm of social networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook and others), and the Internet itself, makes it possible for almost anyone to contact anyone if they’re determined. My worry with this proposal is that we (youth-serving organizations) could inadvertently facilitate a way for adults to contact youth by encouraging youth to post their art, music, etc. and get involved with the community, making it easy for anyone to contact them. This is a Catch-22 of course, because the point is to have youth and youth voice be more visible and engaged in the world.

Are you aware of a “No contact” standard in the youth work field? If there is one, how do we assure the safety of youth by assuring their privacy?
———–
David’s comment back to Chris (and now to this group blog)

It’s good to have him interested and raising these concerns. Obviously we’ve been talking about safety issues, we’re concerned too and yes it’s a Catch-22. I’d suggest that:
1) We ask Deen if he could research the standard he raises. We’ve had a fair bit of consideration about privacy, but the secondary connection issue is challenging and worth talking through more. What are the potential pathways to contact?
2) Let’s put on paper a more specific set of safety goals. We know them generally and these are guiding our policy development, but the more we can communicate this the better and Michael is reflective of what others will be looking for.
3) We constitute a youth safety committee or advisory group for ongoing oversight and advice on this.

I don’t know that we’ll be able to address all safety risks, but the important thing is to be as cautious as we can to protect our users and know where the risks are and how to keep an eye on these areas. As he says, it will be a continuing balance between access to data, safety and privacy, and what the technology can do. We will also use the resource of our Chief Information Security Office in making these decisions.

I’ll work with Vicky and Deen initially to add more detail to the workplan on policy and web development to cover the process for addressing this. How about we meet with Jennifer and Michael in January? I think we need to prep something for them.

How does that sound?
- David

“Hi all,

I met with Michael Harris from Power of Hope (PoH) yesterday. They are a youth-serving organization - they mostly do summer camps. Toby has contacted him about the pugetsoundoff website.

I was meeting with him about the PoH website; it’s a coincidence that I’m also working with them. He discovered a link to a youth’s MySpace page that was 2-clicks from a link on his own (PoH) website, and became extremely concerned.

This led to a discussion about their policy of completely banning any and all youth/adult correspondence outside of officially sanctioned program work. The concern was that by providing a link to a youth’s MySpace page, the organization was helping make it possible for an adult to contact this youth through their MySpace page. Even though MySpace is a third party and the issue of whether to have a MySpace page at all is up to the youth and his parents, the idea of linking to it was a concern.

I wanted to give you a heads up about this - I’m sure you’ve all been discussing it already. For me it was a big surprise; it wasn’t like that for me when I was a youth. In fact my life was really enriched by my relationships with adults who were not my parents or relatives. But I suppose that was before the age of the internet.

I told him that the PSO website plans to leverage the social networking platforms like MySpace and Facebook, but that the site will never provide any personal contact information for kids. He was curious which youth-serving orgs were part of the planning for this and how they’re resolving these issues. I showed him the YouthNoise website, including how it is possible for any user of this website to contact an author (who is a youth) by sending them a message, but that the person never sees the youth’s address.

Chris, I gave him your email address and phone number - he might contact you - I got the sense he’s exploring the issues himself and trying to work out what he feels is appropriate for Power of Hope in terms of the online arena.

And finally, I wonder about whether YouthNoise and other youth sites actually do link to MySpace pages etc. But clearly they’re not preventing youth from being contacted in any way by adults. They have a private emailing feature you can send email to their users. But are these emails pre-screened for appropriateness? etc. Has anybody already looked into this?

best,
-Samantha”