Cyberbullying, Sexting and Geotagging

Many parents have a hard time deciphering the sound controls of any mobile device—let alone attempting to understand the digital world of cyberspace where their child is currently a permanent resident.

That’s what Dr. Lawrence Filippelli, an Internet safety expert, told parents, teachers and a few students at a forum Tuesday night at East Providence High School.

Filippelli, the principal of Scituate Middle School, doubles as the district supervisor of the Crisis Response Team for Scituate School. This role calls for direct coordination with local and state law authorities.

As part of his lecture, he talked about Internet safety, cyberbullying and sexting, terms that didn’t even exist until recently. Ever-changing and improving progress of technology enables younger and younger generations to maneuver through cyberspace, in most cases without understanding the potential implications of their actions.

Filippelli shared a story about two middle school girls who posted a picture of themselves on a Myspace page, with no privacy setting, clad in bikinis and whipped cream, and posing with a male whose head was cropped off in the photo. After notifying both sets of parents, two completely different reactions ensued.

One girl’s parent brushed it off and questioned why he was looking at her daughter’s personal page. The other parent enforced strict punishments, banning the computer and phone from his daughter. Both girls wound up missing and involved with the 19- year-old in the photograph, regardless of the parent’s form of punishment.

Geotagging, another new term, is the ability for your mobile device to pinpoint the location where your photo was taken, so when a photo is uploaded to a personal website, the metadata within the photo is inscribed within.

“Kids have no idea,” said Filippelli.

Nor do most parents know this new technology exists. This advancement allows predators, or any stranger, to find the location of any picture posted on sites such as Flickr, Facebook and Myspace—even without the consent of the photographer.

Filippelli also explained how easy it is to create a fake Facebook page by selecting an appealing photograph of a stranger from the Internet and making it your own.

“A predator loves a kid who has 600 [Facebook] friends and a wide open page,” explained Filippelli. “This is a sign that the user of the account rarely screens a person before accepting a friend request and will mostly likely accept one from a stranger, including a sexual predator.”

At one point in the lecture, Filippelli showed a slide with pictures of a Polaroid camera and an iPhone. He asked a student in the audience to identify what the first image was.

Her response: “A printer?”

He asked another student.

“One of those cameras that prints the pictures right away?” the student responded.

Clearly there is not only a cultural shift underway but also an incredible transformation in technology, where physical photographs are things of the past. What kids don’t understand is the indefinite life of a digital image. Even if an incriminating photograph is deleted from a website or mobile device, the data can live on in cyberspace forever.

He also shared a story and video about an 18-year-old girl who “sexted” a picture of herself to a boy. It quickly went viral, sent out to hundreds of students at her high school and surrounding schools. Eight months later, the girl committed suicide in response to contact bullying and abuse from peers.

It’s never too late for parents have “the other talk” with their kids about the amount of mature use the Internet calls for, Filippelli said.

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