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May 9, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first full week of May:


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Conversations with teens about tech, Part 3: Online lifestyles

Steve (16), Will (16), and Liz (17) all clearly enjoy their parents' trust. We can tell this from talking, IM-ing, and emailing with them as well as their parents. They spend a lot of time online, but the Internet plays a supporting role to their real interests - music, communication with peers, and research. It's a backdrop, a tool, an environment - many media rolled up in one. Which may be why time spent online is not a great concern to their parents.

Will: "I'm online probably two to three hours a day, mostly IM-ing, and I'll read the news at the New York Times before I go to bed. It's a great way to find new information. I use [the Net] a lot for uploading and sharing music that I record. I use it for research papers and homework help and things like that. When my printer's not working, I'll email my paper to myself at school.... [When IM-ing] I'll be playing my guitar, doing my math homework, asking friends about homework, listening to music. Sometimes it'll be 12 at night and way too late to call someone, so I'll go online and IM them."

Liz uses the Net for instant-messaging, email, and research for school - "about 5 hours max" a week. She uses these as individual applications - more with specific purposes in mind (a lot for school research) than as the constantly morphing, always on, multi-tasking tool of her American counterparts. For her, the sophistication lies in how she chooses which communications tool for what (email, IM, and cell phone for "texting," or text messages). Texting "is instant, and you don't have to have a long conversation with someone if you don't want to - you can just not reply," Liz said. "It is also quick to tell lots of different people the same thing," and it's mobile, she added, so the conversation goes out the door with you - a convenience thing. But IM is free (part of home Internet service) and - as with email - you can write more. But unlike asynchronous email, IM is live communication. So there are subtleties, and each is useful: IM will not replace texting or email in her social life. It's a handy addition.

Steve uses the Net for so many things we'll just list them: instant-messaging, chat, news and computer information, school research, checking his favorite cartoons, shopping (with a Visabucks debit card his parents control), sharing music via Internet Relay Chat and his friend's music server, tech support for local people, multiplayer games, text-based games, etc. All this can seem mind- boggling to us adults, but "game playing [and everything else] is just part of the multi-tasking - I have it running while doing other things," Steve told us. [He's parlayed that tech fluency into volunteer work: Steve manages the computer lab and runs the network at the local science and tech museum and is the only teen-aged member of its advisory council.]

How much time do you spend online? we asked. "Probably too much," Steve said, "but I'm not always on it - probably a few hours a day, on and off, and Sunday on and off all day.... I can't even remember a time when I wasn't in constant contact with anyone I'd need to talk to."

His mom Jean put it this way: "He uses the Internet like you'd use a faucet - the tap in your kitchen. It's there. You turn it on, you leave it on while you're making the salad."

Getting back to the trust issue, we asked Steve and Liz about how much privacy parents should give kids, concerning online activities (we asked Will via email, but he gets so much spam in his in-box that he never got around to wading through it all just to find our follow-up questions).

Steve's response included some level-headed advice for parents: "I think that kids should be able to keep a reasonable amount of security on their personal computer life, in order to keep it from their parents. It's kind of like a diary with a lock. It's not a lot of protection, and if the parents are really concerned they can break the lock or pick it and read what their child has been thinking, but normally they wouldn't passively be able to see it. I see the computer as the same way, whether a kid has their own computer, like I do, or just their own email accounts/personal folders/screen names, they should be able to keep it away from their parents. Now, in most of these cases, if the parent is truly concerned about something, there is a way to get beyond the passwords, though it may not be easy for someone who isn't very computer literate. The most important thing, though, is to talk to your kid(s) enough so that you can help them with problems yourself without having to go snooping around in their personal items."

Liz dealt first with the question about teenagers having screen names and passwords their parents don't know: "I think it is ok, as long as they are responsible enough to use the Internet safely and have a good enough relationship to talk to their parents if they are worried about anything. I don't think it is right for parents to snoop around their children on the Internet, just like I wouldn't like my parents listening to my phone conversations. If the problem is an issue of trust, then that is something totally separate from the Internet that needs to be sorted out."

Who could say it better?!

 

Next week: Parent and teen views on the digital generation gap - how kids and adults use technology differently.

We love to get your views on all these issues. Do email us - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

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Web News Briefs

  1. 'Creeping parental incompetence'

    It's almost like we need support groups for sufferers of this annoying widespread condition. For New York Times writer and parent Hubert B. Herring, the source of the "problem" (and of course a myriad home technology solutions too) was Nick. Many of you have someone like Nick at your house - the person to whom you suddenly somehow (not exactly sure when) ceded the role of household Chief Technology Officer. Often when the CTO-to-be turns 11 or 12. Herring refers to the "slippery slope" of accepting this state of affairs. But it's important to note that he is not talking about parental control or credibility - that is not the issue here, people. He's referring to a parent's lost (or atrophied) ability to fix things. "Use it or lose it" is the truism he cites. The real problem is, Nick went off to college. But you really have to read the piece to derive comfort (and smiles) from it. (Maybe the only support group we need is a tech support one!)

  2. The growing 'spyware' problem

    It doesn't just track where you (and your kids) go on the Web. "Spyware" can also "herd users to porn and gambling Web pages," "hijack" browser preferences, "trigger a deluge of pop-up ads and slow PC performance," USAToday reports. The article leads with one person's fairly extreme experience with this software that installs itself on computers unbeknownst to their owners. USAToday also cites the findings of a University of Illinois expert that 493 types of spyware lurk on 1,317 Web sites, up from 56 types on 125 Web sites a year ago. The article thoughtfully provides specifics on how spyware works (so readers know what to avoid) and Web sites with in-depth information and solutions.

  3. A great-grandmother who loves email

    One of the ways she celebrated her 102nd birthday this week was to download the emailed sonogram of a great-granddaughter due next month. Like so many of us, Katherine Young of Palo Alto, Calif., is inundated with emails. She loves it, though, she told the San Jose Mercury News, confessing to be an "emailaholic." She checks her email as often as six times a day, using it to keep track of her 10 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. "Young was born in the Fujian province of China in 1901, before the Wright brothers flew and the Model T made its debut. She arrived in California aboard the Pan Am Clipper in 1958. Today, she ... accesses the Internet on her MSN TV ... [and] uses Google to learn about her Chinese heritage and research her favorite rose hybrids."

  4. Child porn ring 'smashed'

    This week's "International Day of Action" reportedly demonstrated remarkable international law-enforcement coordination. On Wednesday, the FBI, Europol, US Customs, the UK's National High-Tech Crime Unit, and law enforcement agencies in Canada and Germany arrested and searched the premises of 21 key members of "a complex Internet pedophile network" operating in five countries (including Norway), The Register reports. Discovery of the pedophile ring happened when a Colorado man was arrested early this year on charges of "grooming a young child in a chat room and meeting her for a sexual purpose." A spokesman for Wednesday's operation called it a "mopping up" exercise, since the 21 men arrested this week were among 60 people police have arrested to date.

  5. Disney launches online game

    It's the first online game targeting children, the San Jose Mercury News points out, and with it Disney is taking a bit of a risk. "The mass market hasn't taken to pay-per-month online computer games oriented toward adults, such as 'The Sims Online' and 'EverQuest,' in the way that many pundits predicted," reports the Merc. The new Disney game, "Toontown Online" - a fantasy environment for kids aged 8 and older in which "players can compete in fishing contests and battle bad guys by pelting them with cream pies" - will cost $9.95 a month (a free preview is available now at the Web site). As for the business risk, Disney told the Merc that "its brand clout and its reputation for making non-violent, safe places for kids could very well convince parents to sign their kids up for Toontown, which features many of Disney's popular cartoon characters."

  6. You too could be a(n unsuspecting) spammer

    George Johnson at the New York Times explains how it happened to him - all those "Undeliverable Mail" notices in his email box suggesting he'd actually sent the emails that were bouncing back. It's happened to us, too. "Some cyber miscreant puts your email address in the 'Reply-to' line of an outpouring of sales pitches and turns you into a spammer," George explains, adding: "Every time the spam arrives at an invalid address, it is returned to me - more than 750 times so far. How many times do I multiply that to calculate the number of people successfully spammed on my behalf? I've probably even spammed myself." His piece has virtually all the typical subject lines spammers are using these days - just like our in-box does. So read his article, providing the subject lines of all the emails you can delete the second you see them in your in-box.

  7. RIAA's 'covert campaign'

    Suing university students and sending scary instant messages to file-sharers aren't sufficient, apparently. The Recording Industry Association of America is also financing the development of software that can sabotage file-sharers' computers and Internet connections, the New York Times reports.

    But every measure has a counter-measure. File-sharers are fighting back using new "cloaking" software called PeerGuardian that "protects individuals from network snooping," Wired News reports - the kind of snooping that the RIAA does to find file-sharers to sue. Developed in the UK, PeerGuardian creates a personal firewall that blocks the IP addresses of "snoops."

    As for university students, some universities are taking preemptive action: "The New Jersey Institute of Technology will no longer allow its students and staff to use P2P [file-sharing] sites on its computer network in an effort to avoid any legal action from the music industry," Wired News reports.

    Meanwhile, not that it's likely she'd be jailed, but Madonna's profane campaign against file-sharing may actually be illegal, the UK's The Register points out. She flooded file-sharing networks with fake music files, and that's quite a lot like sending email with inaccurate or deceptive subject lines, which is now a criminal offense in Virginia. And the new PROTECT Act "similarly makes it a federal offense for online pornographers to obtain or use misleading domain names to induce individuals to surf unwittingly to porn sites," The Register points out, adding that "the US Federal Trade Commission [has sued] alleged 'porn-spammers' " for deceptive trade practices. All of which makes it unlikely that artists or record labels will try a tactic like Madonna's in future. And if the file-sharing services survive all the RIAA's lawsuits, maybe some day all the "music files" on them will actually have music in them.

  8. Pan-Europe game ratings in the works

    A new age-based rating system for computer and video games will soon be introduced throughout Europe, The Register reports. Eventually to replace individual countries' rating systems, PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings - for age groups 3-6, 7-11, 12-15, 16-17, and 18+ - will appear on games' packaging with a brief description of game content. "The only exception to the new rating system - introduced by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) - are some minor local variations in Portugal and Finland. Oh, and Germany won't be using it since will retain its own rating system - 'cos that's the law," The Register adds.

  9. A marketer on the 'Brand Child' of the Internet Age

    Children are not just consumers, but "big spenders and indeed the future of business," so "probing their young minds is of great interest to marketers," according to a review of a new book, "Brand Child: Insights Into the Minds of Today's Global Kids, Understanding their Relationship with Brands," in eCommerce-Guide.com. The book's author, Martin Lindstrom, tapped into research that "probed the minds" of children all over the world, and "these kids pretty much want the same things," the reviewer reports. The members of "the first truly digital generation ... can't even relate to those luddites who still dirty their hands by reading actual newspapers or trudge to brick-and-mortar stores to shop." We're not sure that's entirely true, and if the book isn't facile, the review of it certainly is. But we'll stop reviewing the review now!

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 


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