Byron Garrett’s Talking Points for C3 Conference
(October 8, 2010)
Goals: Explain National PTA’s efforts in stamping out cyberbullying and making online safer for
kids; discuss National PTA’s partnership with Facebook; ask for advice and for partnering
opportunities from C3 attendees.

On behalf of PTA’s five million members, I thank you for this opportunity to share
our passion and our efforts on behalf of every child, in every home, of every creed
and color, and in every corner of America. (Slide 1)

It is a special pleasure to work with Dr. Davina Pruitt-Mentle, the chairperson for this
year’s C3 Conference and Director of the University of Maryland’s Educational
Technology Policy, Research and Outreach, and with her colleague, Portia Pusey. On
behalf of PTA, thank you, Davina and Portia, for giving us the chance to present our
perspective on making the Internet safer for our kids. (Slide 1)

I am also looking forward to working closely with Dr. Ernest McDuffie, Leader of the
National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. In a time when our kids spend as much time in cyberspace as they do on
playgrounds, we need the expertise of Dr. McDuffie and other leading thinkers on
cybersecurity. (Slide 1)

It is also a great pleasure to talk to you, our nation’s foremost experts on cyberethics,
cybersecurity and cybersafety. Each and every day, you are helping to secure America’s
education technology infrastructure, craft rules for digital citizenship and set ethical
guidelines for behavior in area which remains as unsettled as America’s western frontiers
of two centuries ago. (Slide 1)

Your work is as transformative for our children as what our teachers and parents do in
classrooms and homes across this nation. Thank you for what you are doing to make the
World Wide Web safe and healthy for our children. (Slide 1)

We are here today to tell you about our efforts to safeguard kids in the online space. At
the same time, I am also here to seek your advice and your thoughts on how we can
protect our children from harm. I seek this advice on behalf of five million parents and
caring adults—and the millions of other parents, educators, caregivers and other adults,
who are only beginning to grasp the new opportunities, challenges and potential dangers
facing our children today. (Slide 1)

Wherever I go, I always remind my audiences that our children are growing up in
far-different times than those of our own youth. As experts in cyber-security and as
parents, you know this all too well. (Slide 2)

Our children are digital natives, living in the age of Android, the iPad and Twitter, while
the rest of us—their parents, caregivers and other caring adults—are digital immigrants.
We merely adapt and use these technologies; they’ve never known life without them.
(Slide 2)

These kids live in a world that looks far different than the late 20th century. The
worldview of the college freshmen surveyed by Beloit College for its annual Mindset List
is also true for our kids: They know nothing about the Cold War; they have never seen a
typewriter; Clint Eastwood was never an action film star; Facebook is more-important
than the telephone; and there has always been an Internet. (Slide 2)

I’m always astounded by the data from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report,
Generation M-Squared: Media in the Lies of 8-to-18 Year-Olds: Children ages 8-to-18
year-old spend 7.38 hours a day, seven days a week with TV, Internet, video games,
songs, websites and other media; five years ago, it was just 6 hours. (Slide 3)

The number of time 8-to-18 year olds spent each day on computers increased by a sixfold between1999 and 2009. Our kids now spend nearly 90 minutes a day surfing the
Web, watching YouTube and engaging in other computer and online-related activities.
Seventy percent of 8-to-18 year olds are online every day; 57 percent of their Websurfing occurs at home while another 20 percent happens right in school. (Slide 3)

Twenty-nine percent of 8-to-18 year olds own a laptop; just 12 percent of them owned a
laptop five years ago. But they aren’t just accessing the Web through computers. Sixtysix percent of 8-to-18 year olds own cellphones versus just 39 percent of them five years
ago. Twenty percent of their media consumption comes through mobile devices. They are
more-likely to get their news on a Kindle, an iPod Touch or an EVO than through a
newspaper, a magazine or even TV. (Slide 3)

As William Gibson once wrote, the future has already arrived. Our kids have endless
opportunities to use these technologies to write their own stories and transform our
futures. (Slide 3)

I consider this piece written earlier this year by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired
magazine: Thanks to open-source technologies and the global economy, a group of
people just like you and me can actually design a car on simple desktop computers, and
then have them manufactured in China in just 18 months—the same time it takes a
Detroit automaker to change the specs on just a door trim. You don’t even need to be a
corporation in order to build your own car. You only need to have imagination and
technology. (Slide 3)

If this is possible in 2010, consider what the world will be like in the next decade, when
these kids graduate from high school, complete college and enter the workforce? Our
digital natives are further ahead of us before they arrive from the womb. (Slide 3)

At the same time, these technologies can also be used by others—from adults to
their own peers—to harm their physical and emotional wellness. Some things
haven’t changed. Not everyone is looking out for the wellbeing of our kids. Some of
our kids will do harmful things to each other. (Slide 4)

We have seen the stories on the news: Last month, it was 18-year-old Tyler Clementi,
who took his own life after two of his fellow classmates used streaming video and
Twitter in an attempt to embarrass and humiliate him. Then there is the sad story of
Megan Meier, who committed suicide in 2006 after being bullied on MySpace by the
mother of one of her schoolmates. (Slide 4)

But Tyler and Megan are just two of the many kids and teens whose lives have been
altered horribly because of people using technology to abuse and torture. These kids
easily be your son or daughter, your niece or nephew, your godchild or the child of one of
your closest friends. (Slide 4)

One out of every five students surveyed earlier this year by the Cyberbullying
Research Center said they have bullied at one time or another. One in five. (Slide 5)

Some estimate that as many as 40 percent of kids who spend their time online have been
harassed or bullied at one time or another. Two out of every five. (Slide 5)

And often, parents and other caring adults are kept in the dark, with only one in ten kids
mention incidents of cyberbullying and online harassment to their parents. Just one in ten.
(Slide 5)

The good news is that as cyberbullying incidents have become better-publicized, parents
and citizens have responded by passing laws that punish such criminal activity. In
Minnesota, for example, school boards now have to enact written policies that police
cyberbullying. Arkansas now polices cyberbullying that happens outside of the school
day. (Slide 5)

But the range of online activity that can lead to harm for our kids extends beyond
cyberbullying. We must worry about online predators who attempt to lure, exploit and
endanger our kids. (Slide 5)

At the same time, we must be concerned with teaching our kids how to be good digital
citizens. We know that what gets onto the Internet stays out there forever. Our children
can easily engage in posting images or writing messages that can adversely affect their
reputations in the eyes of potential employers, college recruiters, even their future
spouses. (Slide 5)

The philosopher Plato once wrote that “a child should play amongst lovely things.”
He is right. It is how every child learns, grows and begins to write his or her own
story. And it is our job as caring adults to ensure that kids only play among lovely
things wherever they go—especially in cyberspace. (Slide 6)

You know there is no turning back. Our parents are slowly realizing this too. We know
what the future may hold for our digital natives—and for us—when Twitter, a service
that didn’t even exist a decade ago, can claim that it has gone from less than five million
tweets (or short messages) a day to 50 million tweets in just one year. (Slide 6)

Parents and other caring adults must serve both as their guardians against harm as they
grow up in the digital frontier, and also guide them on how to behave responsibly online.
Parents and adults, in turn, need information and tools to fulfill these roles. And National
PTA is here to help. (Slide 6)

Our founders could have never imagined a world in which our kids would surf the
Web and chat with each other through the use of tiny plastic boxes. It doesn’t
matter. Our mission—ensuring better lives for every child—is timeless and applies
to every place where our children live, learn and play. We must ensure the safety of
all their living spaces—digital and otherwise. (Slide 7)

One hundred fourteen years ago, two of our founders, Alice McLennan Birney and
Phoebe Apperson Hearst, were outraged that young boys and girls were suffering illness
because they were working in sweatshops instead of attending school. They wanted to
clear out squalor so children had healthy places in which to play and learn. (Slide 7)

Another founder, Selena Sloan Butler, was appalled that children accounted for one-third
of all deaths of African-Americans in her home city of Atlanta. She worried about the
young boy with the infected cut on his arm, scared for the youngster in the third, deadly
stage of Typhoid, and alarmed for the kids forced to loiter in dangerous alleys because
they had no safe place to play. (Slide 7)

All three realized that an army of parents, partnering with other caring adults and
institutions, can make America’s communities safer and healthier for our children. (Slide
7)

We helped pass child labor laws that keep kids out of dangerous factories and in
classrooms so they can grow their bodies and minds. (Slide 7)

We partnered with scientists such as Jonas Salk in order to develop vaccines that saved
generations of kids from Polio and other crippling diseases. (Slide 7)

We worked with farmers and national leaders to start the National School Lunch Program
so kids could eat hot, nutritious meals. (Slide 7)

And we have teamed up with stakeholders to teach our children about the dangers of
substance abuse and underage drinking. (Slide 7)

Our powerful, transformative voice, working in alliance with other caring adults, is the
reason why every child, no matter how rich or poor their parents may be, can eat hot
school lunches. It is why children are vaccinated and protected from crippling diseases.
This is why 10 year-olds are in classrooms instead of sweatshops. It is why our children
can enjoy fresh air on local playgrounds, growing up healthy and strong. (Slide 7)

And now, we are taking our transformative voice to the Web and to social media in order
to secure the wellness of our kids on the information superhighway. We have begun this
work through PTA.org, where we inform parents on how to protect their children from
cyberbullying and promote good digital citizenship. (Slide 7)

In June, National PTA gained a partner in protecting our children online when we
teamed up with Facebook, the leading social media platform. Together, we have put
together the “Campaign for Children’s Internet Citizenship, Safety and Privacy.” This
initiative includes the development of an online information center that will help
families teach their children to safely engage with others on the Web and become
good digital citizens. (Slide 8)

This initiative includes the creation of an online information center. This will be the
centerpiece of everything we do, and will include extensive materials on digital
citizenship, safety, training information for parents and educators, and tips and tricks for
parents and children. The goal is to establish this information center as a nationallyacknowledged clearinghouse of the best, most useful information from every source on
keeping kids and families safe online. (Slide 8)

There will also be an aggressive awareness campaign about respecting peers and staying
safe online. Parents will be able to go to PTA.org and Facebook’s home page to access
information on online safety. Our 24,000 local chapters will also inform parents in their
schools and communities about surfing the Web safely and protecting children from
bullying and harm. (Slide 8)

PTA and Facebook are developing public service ads that reach families and inform them
about the consequences of cyberbullying and dangerous online behavior. We are also
working on new ways to help families and children learn how to behave properly online
and stop cyberbullying. This includes an online safety test that will quiz families on what
they know about digital citizenship and how they can promote good online behavior.
(Slide 8)

I thank Facebook for being great digital citizens and for taking on this important effort to
safeguard our children from harm. Facebook’s energy and effort shows what happens
when caring institutions and caring adults come together and remember what truly
matters! (Slide 8)

But we cannot do this work on our own. And our parents cannot work on their own
to keep their children safe online. Our kids need all caring adults—including each
and every one of you in this audience—to help them stay safe online. For that
reason, we seek your advice—and we are ready to listen to your suggestions. (Slide
9)

I also invite you to join PTA. Over the past 114 years, we have proven that when parents
and other caring adults come together with energy and practical solutions, our children
can grow up healthier, safer and better-educated. If you care about securing the futures of
our children, you need to be part of the PTA voice. We speak as one for every child—
including your own and those of your neighbors. (Slide 9)

We have a tremendous opportunity to do for our kids in cyberspace what we have
done for them in securing better physical health and safety. There is no reason why
our kids cannot be safe from bullying, from harassment and from harm. (Slide 10)

We have institutions such as Facebook ready to help. We have parents and caregivers,
who only want the best for their children. What we need now is each other. (Slide 10)
 When we work together to safeguard our digital natives and promote good digital
citizenship, we are assuring them of brighter futures. This is making a difference in their
lives—and we are being men and women who make a difference. Being a man or woman
is a matter of birth; being a man or woman who makes a difference, is a matter of choice!
Thank you for choosing to make a difference for our children. (Slide 10)