safety in online volunteering programs
involving youth as
online volunteers
This information was last updated on November 28, 2000
If your agency is interested in involving youth as online volunteers, the Virtual Volunteering Project strongly recommends that you evaluate your current involvement of youth volunteers in offline situations. What safeguards do you have in place already to protect participants in your programs? How do you screen volunteers at your agency and anyone who will be working with youth? How do you supervise youth volunteers, particularly in activities that will bring them in contact with adults? Does staff at your agency understand the unique (and risk relevant) emotional characteristics and development issues of youth? Does your staff have experience working with youth in face-to-face service situations?
If your agency staff has trouble answering these questions, or does not have experience involving youth as volunteers OFFLINE, your agency is probably NOT ready to engage in such activities via the Internet.
Remember: volunteers and staff who work with children are subject to the same police/reference checks as in offline situations. Before bringing adults and children together in ANY service situation, on or offline, contact your local police department about the laws in your state or province regarding screening people who work with vulnerable populations. Also, contact your local Directors of Volunteers in Agencies (DOVIA) to find out about the situations in which these laws apply (for instance, it's usually not required to do criminal background checks of volunteers who work with groups of children in staff-supervised settings, if the volunteers will never be working one-on-one with a child, or if they will never be alone with the children without a staff member present and witnessing all activity).
Because online volunteering involves a great deal of reading, typing and either technical expertise or online research experience, youth online volunteers will usually be in their late teens (although the youngest online volunteer the VV Project has involved was 14). Your program and guidelines for involving youth as online volunteers should address this age group accordingly.
Although there have been some highly publicized cases of abuse involving computers, reported cases of harassment and abuse because of a child's online activities are infrequent. Of course, like most crimes against children, many cases go unreported, especially if the child is engaged in an activity that he or she does not want to discuss with a parent. "Child Safety on the Information Highway," by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, notes "The fact that crimes are being committed online, however, is not a reason to avoid using these services. To tell children to stop using these services would be like telling them to forgo attending college because students are sometimes victimized on campus. A better strategy would be for children to learn how to be 'street smart' in order to better safeguard themselves in any potentially dangerous situation." (see the entire article)
Instead of filtering software and preventing youth from using the Internet altogether, youth online safety expert Parry Aftab of CyberAngels says parents and program managers should come up with a list of sites that they want children to visit. "Instead of saying 'don't go there, this is really bad,' come up with some really great places they want to go to. With the exception of 13-year-old prepubescent boys, you'll find that most teen-agers will much prefer going to some great sites that maybe MTV is doing or Nickelodeon is doing."
The best way to assure that youth online volunteers are having positive online experiences is for both the volunteer manager and parents to stay in touch with what these volunteers are doing, to create an atmosphere of open communication where the youth is encouraged to share their online activities, and make sure youth know what they should do if they encounter something inappropriate or illegal online. Both parents and program managers should frequently ask youth what they are doing online, in a non-confrontational way. Ask them what their favorite sites are, what they've liked most, and if anything has made them uncomfortable.
Creating a system where e-mail exchanges and chat room participation is monitored and archived is quite easy to do, and does ensure a great deal of safety. However, most programs that involve youth online archive messages for review only as needed, and instead rely on the screening and training of all participants, rather than online monitoring of e-mails, to ensure safety. Many programs consider monitoring e-mail exchanges as a form of electronic "eavesdropping," something that can adversely affect the trust between participants, particularly adults and youth. The course you take regarding monitoring e-mails depends on organization's culture, and your existing screening techniques.
If you do choose to monitor all e-mails, you will need trained staff or volunteers to supervise and review these online activities regularly. Also, you will need to make sure all participants understand that each message is reviewed.
You should also make sure youth understand that your e-mail exchanges and chat room system are only for your program; that online systems sponsored by other organizations, on other web sites, are not the same and, probably, not as safe.
Volunteer managers can help parents of online volunteers understand online safety by passing on the excellent materials prepared by various organizations, such as CyberAngels, the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (see below).
Volunteer managers should encourage parents to spend time online themselves, exploring web search engines, chat rooms and newsgroups. Also encourage parents spend time with their children while they're online, showing parents what they do and teaching parents how to access the services.
As a result of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPA), passed by Congress in 1998, the Federal Trade Commission adopted new rules on how privacy policies should be posted and what companies need to do to comply with prohibition from collecting personal information from young people without a parent's permission. The rules took effect in April 2000, and require that all Web sites that gather information from children under 13 first gain "verifiable parental consent." For computer use in schools, the rules also allow teachers to act as parents' agents or intermediaries. The FTC allows Web sites to vary how they gain permission, depending on what information is being gathered and how it is used. For example, Web sites will be required to use reliable forms of consent, like postal mail, fax, credit card or "digital signatures" before children can participate in chat rooms or give out personal information that will be made available to third parties. But if the site is only using the information internally, the operators will be able to accept e-mail from parents, if a follow up e-mail or call is made to them. There are also several exceptions to the rules.
For more information about the FTC's rules, visit the FTC Web site for this information, and review news articles about these rules that were published in October 1999 in The New York Times by Jeri Causing, San Jose Mercury (by Deborah Kong) and Wall Street Journal Interactive, in an article by Ted Bridis of the Associated Press (note that you may have to register online and pay a fee to access the online versions of these news articles).
Suggested Guidelines for Involving Youth as Online Volunteers
- Have contact information on file for the parents of youth volunteers. This includes names and phone numbers, not just an e-mail address. Encourage parents, through e-mails sent directly to them, a phone call, a mailed information packet, or an on-site meeting, to supervise their children's online activities, including their volunteer activities with your organization. Also encourage parents to have their children show them their favorite online destinations.
Your agency may want to develop a regular e-mail newsletter for parents of youth volunteers, to keep them posted about their children's involvement with your organization, and to connect them with resources on online safety for kids. Welcome phone calls and face-to-face meetings with parents to discuss a youth's online activities with your organization.
At the Virtual Volunteering Project, we also encourage youth volunteers to copy one or both of parents on the volunteer's weekly reports to the Project when engaged in an assignment for us, and we are happy to copy parents on assignments via e-mail, per requests. We also invite parents to subscribe to our monthly newsletter and our weekly volunteer update.
- If volunteers are going to be able to e-mail each other, give these volunteers the option of having a pseudonym or screen name, or an alias e-mail address, in these online interactions. This ensures that volunteers cannot contact each other outside of the supervised online discussion areas sponsored by the agency. Make sure, however, that the volunteer manager knows what alias goes with what real name and e-mail address.
- Make sure youth and their parents understand that a specialized or private e-mail system and chat room are only for your program; that online systems sponsored by other organizations, on other web sites, are NOT the same and, probably, not as safe.
- Advise youth volunteers to NEVER give out identifying information -- home address, school name, age or telephone number -- in a public message such as chat or bulletin boards. And advise them to think carefully before revealing any of this or other personal information to other volunteers.
- Tell youth volunteers never to arrange a face-to-face meeting with another computer user, even a fellow volunteer, without parental permission and attendance if a meeting is going to occur. If your agency has a policy against such meetings, make sure this is clearly communicated to your youth volunteers and parents.
- Youth volunteers engaged in online research may accidently stumble onto adult information online. Unfortunately, many online pornography sites or other inappropriate sites have inputted keywords into their meta-tags so that someone looking for, say, information on fly fishing, ends up on their site. Encourage youth volunteers to let you know if this happens in the course of their volunteering activities with your organization.
- Encourage youth volunteers to let a key contact at your agency know if anything happens in the course of their online exchanges that makes them uncomfortable.
- Advise youth volunteers to never respond to messages or bulletin board items that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, threatening, or that make them feel uncomfortable. Encourage youth volunteers to report to the volunteer manager if they encounter such messages.
- Learn how to read headers, to be able to tell what Internet Service Provider (ISP) volunteers are using. If someone receives an inappropriate e-mail, it may be a violation of the sender's ISP Terms of Service (TOS), and the ISP will want to know about this misuse of their system.
- Remind volunteers -- and remember yourself -- that people online may not be who they seem. Because you can't see or even hear the person it would be easy for someone to misrepresent him- or herself. Also remember that everything you read online may not be true.
- Federal Child Labor laws apply to young volunteers as well! There are restrictions on what hours they can volunteer if they are under 15, and there is a maximum number of hours they can volunteer each day during the school year. Make sure that online assignments are given with these restrictions in mind -- give youth volunteers generous deadlines so that they can spread work out over several days, and remind youth volunteers to set limits on the amount of time each day and each week that they volunteer.
- Understand that youth online volunteers are NOT adults yet, and may not handle pressure, deadlines or communications the same way as adult volunteers (however, some teen volunteers will handle such things BETTER than some of your adult online volunteers, but we digress). Learning to deal with the various ways people communicate online will help in the management of all online volunteers, regardless of their age.
Youth often will relate information about themselves online that may not be related to their role as an online volunteer -- it may be very personal information, such as difficulties at school or within their family. Volunteer managers are not necessarily qualified youth counselors! Talk with a professional youth mentoring coordinator to learn about the various issues that can arise when working with youth, even when the youth are providing the volunteer service rather than being the focus of such service. In particular, develop a procedure to deal with serious behavior extremes and "red flags," such as talk of suicide or violence.
See more information about and resources for online mentoring programs.
Suggested Additional Resources
Freezone, http://www.freezone.com is a site for kids sponsored by Curiocity, a for-profit company based in Chicago. Freezone has several pages devoted to its policies to protect youth online, and is a great model for other agencies that are going to involve youth, either in service delivery or as volunteers online.
Piracy, Pornography, Plagiarism, Propaganda, Privacy:
Teaching Children to Be Responsible Users of Technology
Protects Their Rights and the Rights of Others
An outstanding article by Merle Marsh, Ed.D. that outlines various ways students and teachers can protect themselves online from inappropriate communications (people trying to obtain passwords, predators, pornographic material, people and sites that promote hatred or violence, piracy, etc.). This article has many, many real life examples and links to additional resources.
Kidding Around? Be Serious! A Commitment to Safe Service Opportunities for Young People
by Anna Seidman and John Patterson, published by the Nonprofit Risk Management Center. Available from Energize, Inc.
This is an excellent, offline resource and a MUST read for any organization considering involving youth as volunteers, on or offline. Chapters include: Risk Relavant Characteristics of Adolescents and Children, General Legal Principles Governing Interaction with Young People in Service, A General Risk Management Process for Dealing with Young People, Approaching Specific Laws and Risks Involving Young People in Service, and Service Scenarios Involving Young Participants.
A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety
http://www.fbi.gov/tips.htm
By the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Explains how individuals attempt to sexually exploit children through the Internet, how to recognize signs that your child may be at risk online, what you can do to minimize the chances of someone victimizing your child, and what you should do if you suspect your child is communicating with a sexual predator online.
A Parent's Guide to the Internet
http://www.familyguidebook.com/
By Parry Aftab, Executive Director of CyberAngels, the largest online safety and education program in Cyberspace. "Your rules should be designed to help kids understand proper netiquette, know what to expect from others online, how to behave when something unexpected occurs and how to protect themselves." This is an excellent resource.
SafeSurf's Internet Lifeguard
http://www.safesurf.com/lifeguard.htm
Seven rules of online safety basics.
WWK - Web Wise Kids
http://www.webwisekids.com/rascals.html
Very good set of rules for children being online.
Children in Cyberspace: A Privacy Resource Guide
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/children.htm
An excellent, detailed document by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Provides links to many other resources as well.
SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com
These sites by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offer terrific information for kids, teens and their parents. SafeTeens.com also details Internet risks by area in plain, non-sensational language. Other resources on these sites:
Kids' Rules for Online Safety, http://www.safekids.com/kidsrules.htm
Guidelines for Parents, http://www.safekids.com/parent_guidelines.htm
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)
Resources and information to prevent Internet Related Child Exploitation
http://www.missingkids.com/html/ncmec_default_ec_internet.html
Includes TIPS FOR TEENS and SAFETY GUIDELINES FOR CHILDREN, as well as background and statistics, parental guidelines, information about laws and legislation and links to other resources.
There is a list of telementoring and teletutoring programs ; check these established programs for examples of safety policies in practice.
See also:
- General safety guidelines for all online volunteering programs
Creating basic policies and procedures, access to volunteer information, and exploring issues around confidentiality, privacy and security. - Bringing together youth and adult online volunteers
Suggestions for staff, parents and youth.