Playing Safe

Last week a British online game, Smokescreen won the best game award at the hugely prestigious South By Southwest conference in the US. As well as a coup for producers Six to Start and commissioner Channel 4 Education, it’s also focused attention on how to engage teens about safety online.

At its heart, Smokescreen simulates the internet. In the game players use ‘Fakebook’, ‘Gaggle’, ‘Tweetr’, ‘MSG messenger’ and other sites to help friends who’ve set up Whitesmoke - an exclusive teen-only social networking site. Players also receive simulated phone calls and text messages from in-game characters.

The producers set out to convince players that the fictional world they were in could actually be real – and so can the risks and threats it contains. What’s brilliant about the game is that it puts online safety into a credible context, even parodying social networks as it goes.

As a parent and a school governor myself, I’m concerned that we find ways to educate children about the risks of the internet without scaring them off what is the greatest educational resource available today.

Because teens are hard-wired to believe in their own invincibility, standard efforts to explain potential dangers can either fail to convince or sound like the draconian measures of an adult ordering them around in what they perceive to be their space.

But still teenagers don’t think twice about putting e-mails, phone numbers and photos onto Facebook and other social networking sites.

The conviction of a serial sex offender for the rape and murder of teenager Ashleigh Hall, ensnared by him through a fake profile on Facebook, dominated the news a month ago. The need for effective engagement of teens about the dangers of social networking has never been more apparent.

Smokescreen offers one highly effective tool to persuade and engage teens, rather than adults telling them what to do. Now we need more such approaches to fulfill the potential of Web 2.0 as an education and networking platform for good.