Locally-Founded Social Networking Site Aims to Create Safety Net for Tweens

While high school students are caught up checking their Facebook pages and chatting via any number of instant messaging programs, their younger siblings are busy doing the same thing in their own online world.

ItsMyLocker, a social networking site for tweens founded by Jill Brown, has been gaining more participants around the country since its hard launch earlier this year. Originally populated by tweens from Cranford, Westfield, Scotch Plains, Fanwood and other surrounding towns, Brown said that the site has been gaining users from around New Jersey and other states, including New York, California and Massachusetts.

"There is a group from Alaska, there is a group from Salem, Mass., a group from Amherst, Mass., and a group from New York City," said Brown, a Westfield resident. "There is even a group from Australia."

ItsMyLocker works a lot like Facebook, with users friending one other, posting on walls and sending messages. But there are certainly differences. Brown has it set up so that tweens cannot sign up until they provide their parent's e-mail address and the parent consents to allowing their child to register. In addition, the parent is given their own page on ItsMyLocker and complete access to their child's page in order to see what their child has been doing on the site. Brown said over 2,000 tweens have registered for the site since the launch.

"This is a playground for Facebook," she said.

Many of the tweens on the site report using it for the same reasons teens and adults are using sites like Facebook.

The tweens on the site have the opportunity to join groups on the site in order to find others with the same interests. They can keep up with discussions about their favorite sports and celebrities and throw in their thoughts as part of it. Tweens said this remains one of their more popular features on the site.

Another feature is the job board. Tweens can post seeking part-time employment, with parental consent. After this is posted, negotiations occur between the parents, with the student not directly talking with an adult about the subject on the site.

One feature that has also become popular is the token system, which allows users to purchase tokens to send gifts to one other on the site, such as stickers. Tweens have been enjoying the ability to send the stickers, which vary with different messages, as a part of their time on the site.

Brown said the parental control features have been working well for the site, considering the growing problems with cyber bullying at the middle school level. She said parents have been able to check on the site and see if there is anything that concerns them and then report it. She noted that a parent recently found inappropriate content being posted regarding a coach and after it was reported she was able to remove the information from ItsMyLocker.

Brown said that tweens have been thrown in the online world of social networking with no training and it has been causing a number of problems, including them participating in inappropriate chats, sexting and cyber bullying. An incident on Facebook last fall involving teasing of a Scotch Plains middle school student led to several of the school's students being reprimanded for the behavior.

The Union County prosecutor's office has been conducting a series of lectures around the area to educate students, teachers and parents on cyber bullying and cyber crimes, including sessions at Cranford schools. Brown commended the program and noted that she has been working with police officials in Westfield and Summit to build a program to teach safe online practices to tweens. She said the difference between her program and the one run by the county prosecutor's office is the county program focuses more on educating students about the dangers than on specific training to use social media safely.

"These kids are social networking and have had no training," Brown said. "If you or I write an e-mail we think twice before sending it. These kids don't know that."