Porn on the School Computers

I realize that the big concern right now is illicit books in the library (even if the library is unstaffed and rarely open and generally avoided by students). But a report this week does raise another concern about Dirty Stuff in school.

The report from Common Sense Media, entitled Teens and Pornography, includes a bevy of factoids. Some are not surprising (cis boys are more likely to view pornography on purpose). 44% of teens have viewed pornography on line on purpose. Some are not encouraging: 45% felt that porn gives "helpful information about sex" while 27% think porn "accurately shows sex." 

But the information about online porn accessed at school. They break down the numbers.

30% of students have seen online porn in school during the day. Way more have done so in in-person school (23%) than while attending school remotely (12%). 

For people who propose that charter schools will keep their children better bubbled. well-- plenty of traditional public school students have looked at online porn at school (23%), but charter/magnet students clock in at 41%. And private/religious schools? 50% of their students have looked at online porn during the school day. 

Two in five of the students who had looked at online porn at school during the day reported they did so on a school-issued device.

Education Week talked to assistant principal Scott Wisniewski, who pretty well captured where we are:

Twenty years ago, it was more of a process to acquire that type of materials. And now it’s not hard at all.

My district went to one-to-one computing over a decade ago. The grant money for such computing endeavors comes with a requirement for filtering, but filtering is a fine art. Too tight, and it gets in the way (so much for that report on breast cancer). Too loose and all sorts of garbage comes spilling over the parapets. 

Effective filtering comes with a variety of balances and trade-offs. Eventually the district allowed teachers to request exemptions for sites caught by the filter. Meanwhile, there isn't a filter built that your most gifted hacking students can't circumvent. 

The most effective technique that my district used (also mentioned in the EdWeek article) is also the most unsettling-- a system that not only blocks some material, but logs student keystrokes and notifies administration when students try to get to forbidden sites. It helps to officially inform the students of that level of surveillance, but whether you do or not, they'll find out. And in our district, you cannot connect your personal device to district wifi without opting into the district's filtering. (And in my district, your cell phone will use up its charge by 10 AM in a fruitless attempt to pull more than half a bar of LTE).

So along with their computer, they get an early lesson about life in the surveillance society. Troubling, but at the same time, it's the world they're headed for. As I told many complaining students, this is what's waiting for you. Your work computer won't be private. In fact, depending on your job, your emails and online communication may be subject to discovery. (And for God's sake, stop acting as if your social media stuff is private and confidential). 

All of this is going on while Moms for Liberty and others of that crowd demand that libraries be purged of books with sexy seahorses and descriptions of sex stuff. If students are going to go looking for prurient naughtiness, the school library will not be the first place they look and literature with a couple of naughty pages will not be the top of their search list. This, more than anything else, is why I have to conclude that these folks aren't really serious about their Naughty Materials Crusade.

There's an old notion that new technology is always first used to spread porn. If we're going to make it hard for students to look at actual porn and other objectionable material (and to be clear, I think we probably should), it's going to be part of working out the difficult and complicated new relationship between young humans and internet-linked technology.