{"id":3056,"date":"2019-05-13T12:14:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T16:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3056"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:37","slug":"to-share-or-not-to-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2019\/05\/to-share-or-not-to-share\/","title":{"rendered":"To Share or Not to Share?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Professor Gaia Bernstein and a Seton Hall Law team are educating young students about the dangers of oversharing in cyberspace.<\/div><\/div>\n

A 13-year-old girl sits in the backseat of the family car snapping selfie after selfie. She\u2019s in constant motion, trying on pouts and smiles, tilting her phone high and low, whipping her hair in all directions.<\/p>\n

Her dad finds the whole thing pretty funny, so he records it on his phone and posts the video to Facebook and YouTube. Soon it\u2019s spread across the internet, racking up millions of views and hundreds of comments. Eventually, it even plays on Good Morning America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In all that sharing, was the daughter\u2019s privacy violated? And do we have an obligation to ask people before we spread their image around the internet?<\/p>\n

According to a class of fifth-graders at the Montclair Cooperative School in Montclair, New Jersey, the answer to both questions is a strong \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montclair Cooperative is among a handful of local elementary and middle schools that are welcoming fellows from the Institute for Privacy Protection at Seton Hall\u2019s School of Law into their classrooms to teach students about smartphone privacy, reputation management and digital advertising, as well as how
\nto find a healthy online\/offline balance.<\/p>\n

Fifth grade may sound a little young for all that, but according to a 2016 Nielsen report, almost half of U.S. children ages 10 to 12 already have their own smartphones. Namita Tolia, Montclair Cooperative\u2019s Head of School, estimates that the percentage may even be a little higher among her fifth-graders.<\/p>\n

As they play games or watch videos on those phones, kids are often surrendering their personal information and staring at targeted ads. Or they\u2019re posting stuff \u2014 photos, videos, tweets \u2014 that could haunt them later. (Just follow the stream of news stories about teens whose college acceptances were rescinded or lives otherwise imploded because of a single social media post.)<\/p>\n

Parents and teachers know how serious the stakes are, they know how pivotal this moment is, but they\u2019re still struggling with how to protect kids from the amorphous threat of the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t multiplication or something we\u2019ve already figured out how to teach,\u201d Tolia says. \u201cThis is a new area, and we\u2019re all searching for ways to convey it effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Seton Hall Law comes in.<\/p>\n

For Kids \u2014 and Their Parents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andrea Blumenthal\u2019s 10-year-old son, Max, usually doesn\u2019t say much about his day at school.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not a big reporter,\u201d Andrea says. \u201cSo unless I ask the perfect question, I don\u2019t really get a full picture of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

But on the first day that a Seton Hall Law fellow came into his fifth-grade classroom at Montclair Cooperative, Max couldn\u2019t wait to tell his mom about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came home and he was very excited,\u201d Andrea remembers. \u201c\u2018Mom, we took this really fun class.\u2019 He was intrigued and thought it was really useful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Institute for Privacy Protection has now brought its outreach program to six schools in North Jersey and Manhattan. Armed with a curriculum designed at Seton Hall Law, fellows lead four classroom sessions, and the institute\u2019s director, Gaia Bernstein, wraps things up with a lecture for parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have kids myself, and I see lots of parents with kids,\u201d Bernstein says. \u201cI saw how desperate they were and I saw the opportunity to reach both parents and children at the same time. If we do that, hopefully we can start a conversation \u2014 because I think this model of the parent police person trying to stop kids from using technology is not really working.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Seton Hall program doesn\u2019t cover cyberbullying or the dangers of meeting strangers on the internet \u2014 two worthy but well-tread topics. Instead, its lessons revolve around less-examined online issues like digital footprint, targeted advertising and information-gathering.<\/p>\n

In one exercise, students have their personal information \u2014 not just name, phone number and address, but also dog\u2019s name, dad\u2019s job, and an embarrassing story \u2014 taped to their backs. \u201cThe kids got creeped out right away,\u201d Tolia remembers. \u201cI can\u2019t see what\u2019s on my back, but all these people know this information about me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt taught us that if we\u2019re not careful, our personal information could go to basically everyone who has access to the internet and they could all see it,\u201d says Andrew Mata, an 11-year-old in Max\u2019s class at Montclair Cooperative.<\/p>\n

Classes also touch on \u201csharenting\u201d \u2014 when parents, like the selfie teen\u2019s dad, share their kids\u2019 photos or information online \u2014 and talk about approaching a friend to take down photos they\u2019ve posted of you, and whether it\u2019s OK to post pictures of your friends online without letting them have a first look.<\/p>\n

In discussions about advertising in mobile-game apps, the fellows explain how seemingly innocuous prompts for an email address or ZIP Code are actually a form of privacy invasion and can lead kids to share more information about themselves than they realize.<\/p>\n

Max says his favorite activity involved reading profiles of imaginary students and, pretending he was an administrator, choosing one student to represent the school. The complicating factor: each of the potential ambassadors had done something ill-advised on the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople thought it was really interesting and we talked about it a lot,\u201d Max says. He learned that \u201cif you put information on the internet, people might see it and not think you\u2019re a good fit for a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tolia praises the program\u2019s focus on experiential learning. \u201cYou can say to a child, \u2018Don\u2019t put your information on the internet,\u2019 but they\u2019re just going to tune you out,\u201d she says. Instead, the Seton Hall Law curriculum \u201ccreated experiences for children to come to that understanding themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lessons also lead kids to make connections that Bernstein didn\u2019t even consider when she was developing the program. Shane Mata says his son, Andrew, has more carefully considered how his privacy might be at risk while gaming online ever since a Seton Hall Law fellow came to his classroom.<\/p>\n

In the popular multiplayer shooter game Fortnite, kids often play with people much older than they are, and just this past fall, a 45-year-old man was arrested for allegedly threatening an 11-year-old who beat him at the game. Since absorbing the Seton Hall curriculum, Andrew says he no longer plays on Fortnite teams with people he doesn\u2019t know in real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when it\u2019s something he talked about at school, it\u2019s real, and it\u2019s more relevant to him,\u201d Shane says. \u201cAnd the beauty of it is listening to him saying how he and his classmates started making connections: first it was [privacy around] video games, then email addresses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they first come in, they\u2019re always very sure, \u2018I don\u2019t share anything I shouldn\u2019t share,\u2019\u201d says Angela Cooper, one of the fellows. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to see them make the connection of \u2018wow, I did give personally identifiable information\u2019 \u2014 and they make the most unique connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper remembers a fifth-grader with her own YouTube channel. After starting the Seton Hall curriculum, the student told Cooper she\u2019d realized her house and street number sometimes appeared in the footage \u2014and said she was now filming only in a designated area of the house to avoid revealing where she lives.<\/p>\n

As a parent, \u201cit took a lot of pressure off,\u201d Shane says of the fellows\u2019 lessons, \u201cbecause sometimes I either don\u2019t have the time to fully explain something or I didn\u2019t even think of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

How It Began, Where It\u2019s Going<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Institute for Privacy Protection was born thanks to junk faxes. In 2016, a federal judge awarded Seton Hall Law $1.7 million in funds left over from a class-action junk fax consumer settlement. (The individual awards in such cases are often so small that many people don\u2019t collect them \u2014 but together those unclaimed payouts can add up to a big number.)<\/p>\n

From its outset, the Institute aimed to educate consumers and businesses about emerging privacy issues and, as its website put it, \u201cunsolicited invasions of their personal space through novel technologies and various forms of marketing.\u201d Like, say, junk faxes.<\/p>\n

Bernstein, a Seton Hall Law professor since 2004, was named the new Institute\u2019s director. As she thought about a first project, Bernstein says she quickly landed on kids and phones. \u201cI decided that reaching kids at this age when they get their first cellphone and parents really lose control was important,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have this moment of opportunity when they have phones but they\u2019re not too ingrained in their habits yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

After developing a curriculum with faculty fellow Najarian Peters, selecting student fellows, and piloting the program in the summer of 2017, Bernstein took it out for a full debut in the 2017-18 academic year at five schools. Today the Seton Hall fellows have gone into about 20 local classrooms and taught more than 500 kids.<\/p>\n

Ever since The Washington Post and CBS This Morning ran stories on the program, Bernstein has been getting more requests than she can possibly meet. (The Institute selects only four fellows each year to go into classrooms, and on top of that, Bernstein and Adjunct Professor of Legal Practice Julia Hernandez are constantly updating the lessons to keep them relevant.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to spread this curriculum as far as possible, but without compromising its integrity,\u201d Bernstein says. She\u2019s still figuring out exactly how to do that, though. She may create some curriculum summaries, or perhaps offer more public webinars like the one she and Peters presented last summer.<\/p>\n

Montclair Cooperative was one of the schools that got in on the program early \u2014 and with an administrator like Tolia, it\u2019s not surprising they did. She\u2019s a head of school who points out the misnomer of \u201csmartphone\u201d (you\u2019re really carrying around a mini computer more than a phone, she says), who has banned all cellphone use during the school day, and who champions experiential learning.<\/p>\n

When Tolia heard that Seton Hall Law was piloting a school program centered on online privacy, she eagerly volunteered as a test school. Since then, Montclair Cooperative has also welcomed fellows for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years.<\/p>\n

The experience has prompted Tolia to consider how her school can further help parents tackle online privacy issues. She\u2019s considered weaving some of the information into a Back to School Night talk or organizing times for parents to meet up and compare their concerns and strategies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very inspired,\u201d Tolia says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been largely silent on the subject, but we really need to start giving more guidance as a school about what the kids are ready for when, what the dangers and pitfalls are, and the mindfulness around everyone in the family using phones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m appreciative that Seton Hall is taking curriculum development for young kids seriously,\u201d she adds. \u201cThat\u2019s unusual. This is a really pure-hearted endeavor. I could see lots of schools being inspired by the way they\u2019re doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Molly Petrilla is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Too Much of a Good Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to its school outreach efforts, the Institute for Privacy Protection also runs conferences related to privacy issues. So far, the meetings have covered regulation of privacy and social media, artificial intelligence and the law, and secure voting.<\/p>\n

This past October, the Institute hosted a \u201cKids\u2019 Technology Overuse\u201d workshop and brought in psychologists, doctors, technologists, activists and educators from all over the world. Gaia Bernstein, director of the Institute for Privacy Protection, says she\u2019s passionate about the idea of technology overuse \u2014 and lessons on it are woven through the School Outreach curriculum. (Students are asked to estimate how much time they spend on their phones and then actively track it.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also challenged to put down their devices for a full weekend day and report back on whether they could do it and how they felt.) Right now, Bernstein is working on a book about tech overuse that she hopes to finish by the end of this year. While other books have examined the issue from a psychology perspective,<\/p>\n

Bernstein says she\u2019s the first legal scholar to tackle it.\u201cChild psychologists think about this as an individual issue, but I\u2019m thinking about it as a social problem,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s more like cigarettes or the fight against junk food. I see this as something not necessarily within an individual\u2019s control. And because of that, we need to have some legal interventions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Gaia Bernstein and a Seton Hall Law team are educating young students about the dangers of oversharing in cyberspace. <\/p>\n

Continue ReadingTo Share or Not to Share?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4073,"featured_media":3065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,258,5,12,8,15,17],"tags":[241,242,243,240],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-articles-2015-2019","category-faculty","category-features","category-leadership","category-pirates-in-print","category-scholarship","tag-privacy","tag-privacy-protection","tag-seton-hall-law","tag-sharenting","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3169,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions\/3169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}