News for the Week of May 29, 2005
We know a little more about the intersection of kids and tech this week. Two key studies were released, one in the US and one in Australia...
How can the Net help our kids?
That's the basic question The Children's Partnership (TCP) spent the past year considering. They looked at "how technology tools help children 1) increase educational achievement; 2) lead healthier lives; 3) prepare for the workforce; and 4) become engaged in their communities. Their findings were released this week. "While digital tools are enhancing successful outcomes for young people, they are also seriously disadvantaging those young people without access and the skills to use them," TCP found. "However, when low-income children do have these tools, they use them to gain opportunities for themselves at higher rates than wealthier young people." That was one of the most thought-provoking findings - interesting to consider alongside the earlier Kaiser Family Foundation's study about our "media-saturated" youth (see Net Family News, 3/11). As for kids' adoption of tech, TCP found that "over the past 10 years, the number of kids accessing the Internet from home has grown from 15% to 68%; 77% of 7-to-17-year-old US residents have computers at home and 90% at school. Here's the executive summary (PDF) of TCP's "Measuring Digital Opportunity for America's Children."
Kids' Net use in Oz
It's probably no different in the US, UK, or anywhere else: Australian children are online "younger and longer with the growth of broadband," according to the latest study, "KidsOnline@Home," from the Australian Broadcasting Authority and NetAlert, Australia's Internet safety advisory body. By mid-2004, 37% of Australian homes had high-speed Internet access, up from 20% in 2003. "The report also found that while Australian parents and children are overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of the Internet, nearly 40% of parents said that their children have had a negative experience when using the Internet at home," according to the study's press release. Parents and kids are picking up on online-safety messages the researchers found, but - because both technology and kids' use of it keep changing - safety education needs continuous updating, they write. For example, mobile phones: "a quarter of 8-to-13-year-olds now make use of mobiles," the study found. "Parents' concerns about their children's use of mobiles generally relate to the costs of use, and not content issues. However, this is likely to change as it becomes easier to access a wider range of content on mobile devices." Here's the study in pdf format.
In Other News...
- IM pranks gone bad. Two northern Virginia boys, 13 and 15, arrested in the past two weeks for sending threats via instant-messaging, were still being held last weekend, the Washington Post reports. The 15-year-old, "a popular freshman," according to the Post, "sent an anonymous IM to a friend, threatening to harm her and others at school. She told her parents that night, and police evacuated Yorktown [High School] the next day, swarming the school before the boy turned himself in. He is being held without bond ... on a felony charge of making a written threat to kill." Please see the article for more. Some parents' views can be found in "Parents write: "Pluses/minuses of kids' IM-ing".
- Teens on e-dating. An article in Silver Chips Online, Montgomery Blair High School's "Official Online Newspaper," is a little unnerving for a parent, but also insightful. Written by a student at this Silver Spring, Md., school, it gives several examples of long-distance online romances relationships experienced by other students at her school, one of them having turned out to be destructive. Senior Heather told the writer she'd "found it difficult to recognize the warning signs of an abusive relationship [with a boy in Michigan] when they took shape on the Internet." At least temporarily, the relationship "destroyed her self-esteem and her parents' trust in her judgment."
- Bans on violent video games. Two "states" in two countries - Illinois in the US and Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan - have put restrictions on violent game sales to minors. One game in particular in Kanagawa - Grand Theft Auto III - because "it depicts random killing sprees in public places, cars being blown up and other acts of violence that officials fear teens might try to mimic, the Associated Press reports." Illinois's legislature voted Sunday to "ban the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors ... a move other states and cities have tried but federal courts have repeatedly struck down," the AP reported separately.
- Utah anti-porn law challenged. The challenge comes from a coalition of civil-liberties organizations and attorneys, saying the law - aimed at keeping Net-based pornography away from kids - violates the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution (the latter because the Internet is global and "Utah's law affects legal speech outside of the state"), the Salt Lake Tribune reports, adding that the challenge was not a surprise.
- Online poker is huge - especially among college students, but has a following among high-schoolers too. More than $100 million in bets passes through more than 200 online poker sites a day, according to PokerPulse.com stats cited by Sports Illustrated. What's the attraction? Privacy, accessibility, anonymity, poker experience, and the chance to win money, SI says. Is it legal? In a word, no, not in the US - that's why all the poker sites are off-shore. But it's a "low-priority crime," SI quotes a law professor as saying.
