News for the Week of February 25, 2007
A top story in teen-tech news this past week looked at how integral communication services and devices have become in teenagers' lives. Check out the new findings from Harris Interactive:
Teens' communications tools
I have two take-aways from the latest Harris Interactive study, "Communication Rules" : 1) Social sites, IM, and cellphones are tools integral to teens' socializing, not add-ons, and 2) teens generally know when it's appropriate to communicate through devices - which tool is appropriate and when. "When the tone of a communication is serious, such as arguing and breaking up with someone, teens realize that communication tools may not be the best avenue of discussion," the study press release says. The study found that...
- 67% of teens 13-18 "would not break up with someone" and 42% would not argue with a friend over phones, email, instant messaging, text messaging, or social networking sites.
- Half of teen use communication tools to meet new people, half don't. If they do, social-networking sites are the No. 1 tool.
- "When choosing a communication tool, teens will most likely choose to use cellphones and landline phones to talk to a friend about something serious or important (phone 34%, landline phone 23%); apologize to a friend (cellphone 22%, landline phone 20%); or break up with someone (cell phone 14%, landline phone 9%)."
- "If teens want to ... have more time to think about what they have to say, they're more likely to use instant messaging ... over cellphone, text messaging, or social-networking sites," though cellphones are No. 1 for arranging to meet with friends, having quick conversations, contacting a friend when bored, and inviting people to a party or event."
Teens' rules for tools' use
"Despite the rise in popularity of these communication tools, young people still seem to have a grasp of the rules for using this new technology and an intense knowledge of when it is appropriate to use these items to gather information and when to avoid them altogether," the Harris researchers found. Check out the report (p. 6) to see what devices teens use for Harris's three categories of communication: "day-to-day," "private," and "profound."
In other news...
- Cyberbullying laws considered US-wide. The Associated Press story leads with this cyberbullying tragedy: the suicide of Ryan Patrick Halligan at the age of 13 after being bullied online for months. Classmates sent him "instant messages calling him gay. He was threatened, taunted and insulted incessantly by so-called cyberbullies," the AP reports. Across the US, states are considering various sorts of crackdowns against cyberbullying, including legislation. There's no easy solution. The AP quotes an educator questioning whether laws can change bad behavior. Maybe if the legislation requires public schools to address the issue? "In Arkansas, the state Senate this month passed a bill calling on school districts to set up policies to address cyberbullying only after it was amended to settle concerns about students' free-speech rights," the AP reports. Check out this thorough report on efforts in Vermont, Rhode Island, Oregon, Washington, and South Carolina as well.
- Teen gadget resellers' safety. Their ranks are growing - teenagers selling their electronic gadgets on eBay, craigslist, or MySpace because they need the money to get the latest model, the New York Times reports. "Part of the reason is that households with teenagers typically have 35 consumer electronic products, on average, compared with 24 products at homes with no teenagers." Parents need to know there are safety and privacy issues involved, including the fact that "teenagers may be interacting with strangers in these transactions," the Times points out. For example, if a kid doesn't want to pay to ship an item, s/he may make arrangement to meet a seller in person. Parents may want to review ads before placement too, since teens may unthinkingly include a phone number or address in a craigslist ad.
- School violence averted? This was one of those cases where a social site helped investigators. A Connecticut high school student sent a link to a disturbing video in YouTube to a friend, who - when he recognized some people in the video - told his parents. The parents called the police. The video "showed teens firing weapons and igniting explosives," the Hartford Courant reported. It wasn't clear last week who made the video, but it led police to a 16-year-old boy's house, where they seized weapons and found "a hit list with at least 20 names" and documents detailing a plan to attack them with "explosive devices and guns," according to the Courant. The boy was arrested and arraigned last Thursday on "two counts of making bombs and ordered held on $500,000 bond," the Associated Press reported. It added the police said they were "extremely grateful" the parents reported the video.
- Help for safe surfing. Casually clicking around the Web "can be a dangerous business" these days, because of the malicious stuff you (or your child) can download just by arriving at some Web pages, CNET reports. By malicious stuff, I mean software that can affect a PC, your identity, or your wallet, not harm a child - e.g., trojan software that can take control of the family PC, keylogger code that grabs passwords or credit card numbers, or nasty spyware that's tough to get rid of. So CNET's reviewers "looked at five standalone safe-surfing tools and compared them with the native protection within Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7." They're all quite different, some identifying and blocking phishing sites, others identifying and blocking legitimate sites containing bad downloads. Most did a better job than the protection in browsers. Check out CNET's at-a-glance chart.
