- Mom's online-safety measures
In response to our April 30
and May 14 issues featuring the challenge
of kids accessing porn through online image searches, mother and educator
Krista in North Carolina emailed us:
"I have to laugh out loud whenever I hear parents
tell me they don't know how to stop their children from going into porn sites
or various chat rooms they don't approve of. In our home the rule is clear:
If I find out, or you get caught, then you lose all privileges to use the
Internet at home. I take the keyboard with me to work as well as the mouse
- that way, they can't use the Internet even when they figure out how to bypass
the security I have installed inside the computer.
"Children are a lot smarter than we give them credit
for and I take no chances with mine. From Day 1, we talked about what was
expected with Internet and computer use, that schoolwork and homework came
first, games and other things were a privilege. I check the cookies and anything
else that I can think of to learn where my kids are surfing and what they
are getting into. The computer has always been in the living room and I have
security software that doesn't allow the kids on the computer when I'm still
at work and I can't supervise. Only one of my three teenage boys tried to
buck my system and he learned that what I say goes. He was the one who discovered
the missing keyboard and mouse one day!
"My children depend on me to teach them everything
from how to brush their teeth to safely driving a car. Why wouldn't I teach
them how to surf responsibly and stay safe from possible predators on line?
I wouldn't be a mom if I didn't care about where and what they were getting
into on the Net. I care enough to have rules about what they do in my home
and when they're in the real world, with groups of friends, or out alone.
The Internet is no different. With responsible surfing come privileges, with
irresponsibility and abuse come consequences."
- Leapster praises
Responding to an item we ran June 11
on LeapFrog's Gameboy-like product for elementary-age kids, Lee Ann in Washington
State emailed us:
"Our daughter, 5, loves it. We bought her one for
Christmas and she played with it every day for about 2 months. We bought her
3 other cartridges for it - ouch! Those are expensive! She is down to playing
with it once or twice a week now, but I think it was worth the investment.
She likes to play it on long car trips and when Mom (a music director) takes
her to rehearsal."
- Solstice's share of P2P lawsuits
Summer's official arrival brought another batch
of 482 file-sharer lawsuits from the RIAA. The litigation campaign against
"music pirates" started a year ago this week, but the question remains
about whether these apparent ritual purgings of the most prolific pirates
are having the effect the recording industry seeks. "The number of users
on Kazaa, still the most popular file-swapping network, has declined somewhat
over the past year, while showing considerable seasonal fluctuation,"
reports CNET,
citing analysts. "However, the popularity of other online networks - particularly
a newer rival called eDonkey - has grown substantially over that time."
Then again, file-sharers are said to be very aware of the lawsuits, now
amounting to nearly 3,500. The two biggest impacts of the litigation,
according to a CNET source at a company that "seeds" the file- sharing
services with fake files in order to downgrade file-swappers' experience,
are 1) a lot more swappers downloading but not sharing music on their
hard drives (which certainly eats away at the source of all this music,
as well as the networks' whole business model) and 2) the most popular
service, Kazaa, is losing users to other, lesser-known networks that file-sharers
probably see as "safer" or more lawsuit-free.
- Hollywood's looking for bootleggers
Do you know any kids who are taking videocams
to the movies they go to? If so, they need to be aware of the legal and
ethical implications. The former just got a lot more tangible this week.
The US movie industry is now offering movie theater employees rewards
of up to $500 for every person they catch recording films in their theaters
and report to the police, Reuters reports. The Motion Picture Association of America
has decided that the vast majority of bootlegged films that turn up on
the Internet for free downloading (via file-sharing networks like Kazaa)
are from video cameras recording in theaters. "Overseas labs then use
the pirated films to create illegal DVDs, which are distributed en masse
on street corners around the world," according to Reuters. And that cost
the film industry about $3.5 billion last year, according to the MPAA.
- Kids confused about Net risks
Parents aren't the only one not helped by scary
stories about online risks to kids. Children, too, need a balanced, level-headed
approach to Net safety training, the University of London's Institute
of Education found. Its researchers asked UK students 8-18 about what
"dangers they face online," and the students replied, "bomb-making, blackmail,
HIV, asylum seekers, aliens, and blindness," according to The Guardian. "Some children confused paedophiles
with hackers or thought they sent viruses via 'spam' or junk emails....
Teaching children to think critically and behave responsibly when using
the Internet enabled them to gauge what risks the technology really poses,
and how to handle those problems, said the researchers." More and more
educators are pointing to the importance of helping children develop critical
thinking skills and media literacy. Tech literacy without these skills
- along with excessive parental fears - weights the balance on the risks
side. "Parental fears about the Internet mean that children are not being
given the information they need to behave safely and sensibly online,"
according to The Register.
"Unfounded fears that children are meeting murderers online and that chatrooms
lead to sexual abuse mean that real and more frequent dangers of Web use
are ignored. Blanket restrictions on Internet use leave children unprepared
and unable to protect themselves."
- Family-friendly cell phones
Parents and kids generally like different things
in cell phones. For teens they're as much fashion statement as communications
tool. Of course, parents aren't immune - I love my ringtone (handpicked
by my son). This week CNET compares four phones
that are strong in the design area as well as in the features they offer,
and they're easy on the wallet to boot. And for those family roadtrips,
also from CNET: 10 games for the cell phone (don't forget to pack your battery recharger!).
- Smartest mobile users: Kids
It's not a huge surprise. UK kids 10-14 are quickly
becoming the most sophisticated cell-phone users, according to the latest
study by British research firm Teleconomy. "Even toddlers are able to
tell the difference between incoming phone calls and text messages," the
BBC reports. Seventy-one percent
of kids are aware of video phones, compared to 54% of adults, and some
66% know about Java applications like games, as opposed to 44% of adults.
Here are some other findings: For kids, phones are more like computers
here in the US - more for downloading things "such as pop news, games
and ringtones" than for communicating. "Phone functions" is what they
zoom right in on, so they can personalize their phones. Because one's
phone can be a ticket into certain social groups, the study found. Also,
"in some cases the phones themselves are becoming 'virtual playgrounds,'
as children fill their free time with texting their friends and playing
games.
- Phone-enhanced sleep-overs
Actually, the sleep-over part is just one application
of a phone-based dating service used in Singapore. Nineteen-year-old Gracinia
Kim uses the "BEDD" service on her phone to scan strangers' phones for
their personal profiles. She told Reuters that, with it, she has become close to people she wouldn't have otherwise
met and developed a tight little group of friends with whom she "chills
out," has sleep-overs, and goes for late suppers. Users download the BEDD
software into their phones, complete a short profile of themselves, including
a description of who they want to meet. Then BEDD searches for and exchanges
compatible profiles and phone numbers with other mobiles within a 65-
foot radius. BEDD has more than 1,000 users in Singapore and hosts get-togethers
in coffee bars. "Other mobile-based dating services in Asia - such as
Singapore Telecommunications' MyCupid and Bharti Airtel of India's TrackUrMate
- exchange information through a central database," Reuters adds.
- Librarians: Better than Google
Contrary to what avid Googlers may think, we need
librarians more than ever. To help us find information and to help us
*evaluate* it (parents and teachers need to help kids with this too).
"While the accuracy of online information is notoriously uneven, the ubiquity
of the Web means that a trip to the stacks is no longer the way most academic
research begins," the New York Times reports.
Then there's all the solid information not available to a Google search
(or that of any other search engine) - some 500 billion pages, according
to estimates cited by the Times. "The biggest problem is that search engines
like Google skim only the thinnest layers of information that has been
digitized. Most have no access to the so- called deep Web, where information
is contained in isolated databases like online library catalogs."
In other library news, New Hampshire libraries
are refusing to use filtering software and are willing to forgo federal
connectivity subsidies from the e-Rate in order to provide Net access
without filters, the Associated Press reports. Instead, libraries explain to patrons that the Net is not filtered and require
children under 18 to have a parent or guardian's permission to use the
Internet. Under the Children's Internet Protection Act, upheld by the
Supreme Court a year ago, libraries that receive federal e-rate funds
have until month's end to install Internet filters on their computers.
