Week of September 11, 2005
Marketers are calling our kids "Generation On," meaning they are always connected, always accessible to messages trying to get through to them (maybe from people other than their parents?!).
To today's teenagers, the Internet is like electricity - just always there - and because they're so wired, "they are changing marketing, technology and communications," according to Debra Aho Williamson, author of eMarketer's Kids and Teens report, for which marketers pay $695.
That always-on state means that the distinction between "online" and "off-line" is fading rapidly. Kids move easily, fluidly, between reality and what to most adults seems more like the alternate reality of cyberspace (for example, see teens' own accounts of meeting and dating kids living in other states) - and how their parents deal with it.
As for the big picture, eMarketer found that 14.1 million US kids 3-11 (39.4% of 3-to-11-year-olds) and 18.8 million teens (73.4% of 12-to-17-year-olds) are Internet users. In 2008, 87.3% of teens will be online. Some parents will find it comforting that the percentage of 3-to-11-year-olds online is not growing quite as fast - from 39.4% now to 43.7% in 2008.
In Other News
- Web's role in Katrina relief. It has become a mainstream tool and medium in times of crisis, say experts quoted in the Los Angeles Times - in ways the Internet's founders never dreamed 30 years ago. Besides enabling contributions and relaying info fast, "it reunited families and connected them with shelter. It turned amateur photographers into chroniclers of history and ordinary people into pundits. It allowed television stations to keep broadcasting and newspapers to keep publishing. It relayed heartbreaking tales of loss and intimate moments of triumph."
- Teen pleads guilty to phone hack. The 17-year-old in Massachusetts has a self-professed history of hacks and violent threats. He not only pleaded guilty to hacking into Paris Hilton's cellphone account, he also told the Washington Post he made bomb threats at two high schools, broke into a phone company's computer system to set up free accounts for friends, and participated in a well-known data theft at LexisNexis that exposed more than 300,000 people's personal records.
- Calif. law about violent videogames. The state's legislature this week passed a bill that requires violent videogame packaging to carry a sticker restricting sales to minors, The Inquirer in the UK reports, "in the same way as adult movies are." The bill now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing. Meanwhile, the NewYork Times suggests that Illinois [the first state to pass such a law] was only the beginning (actually a milestone): federal-level politicians, led by Sen. Hillary Clinton, are "ramping up" efforts to regulate videogames.
- Virtual High School in Va. Online learning is basically self-directed learning, so it can be a great alternative for some students but it's not for everybody. That's the bottom line of this Gainesville (Va.) Times article about Prince William County's Virtual High School. And whom might those students be? The Web-based school has especially helped students "with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who have a hard time concentrating with all the activity in a traditional classroom," but what's emerging is the program's value to students who want to "practice for college," the Times points out.
- Child porn conviction overturned. A decision in Maryland's highest court could be a major setback for US law-enforcement agencies' practice of catching online predators by posing in chatrooms as teenage girls. The Maryland Court of Appeals "unanimously overturned the Frederick County Circuit Court conviction of Richard J. Moore, saying he could not be found guilty of committing a crime with a nonexistent victim," the Washington Post reports. Moore had thought he was chatting online with a 14-year-old who was actually chatting with an officer trying to lure him into a physical meeting for the purposes of an arrest. He was arrested and convicted - the conviction that was just overturned. The Post said the court's decision was based on the experience of the state's legislature, which had "tried but failed six times to broaden the law and make it illegal to proposition an adult who the suspect believes is a minor."
