News for the Week of November 11, 2007
Topping youth-tech news this week is a new study that shows parents are pretty engaged in their kids' Net use - in stark contrast to the popular stereotype of the "clueless" parent.
Parents on kids' Net use
A new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows parents check up on and regulate their teens' media use - not just in terms of the Internet, but with television and video games as well. However, "those rules lean slightly more towards the content of the media rather than the time spent with the media device." The study found 68% of parents have rules about what sites their kids can use, compared to 77% concerning TV shows they can watch and 67% concerning videogames they can play. Some 65% say they've checked where their kids have been after they've been online, and 74% can "correctly identify" whether their children have created a social-networking profile others can see.
So parents are pretty engaged in their Net use - "despite the stereotype of the clueless parent," Pew/Internet found.
Parents more ambivalent
The study also found parents are a little more ambivalent about their children's Net use than they used to be - but that doesn't mean more parents think the Internet is bad for kids.
"While a majority of [US] parents with online teens [12-17] still believe the Internet is a beneficial factor in their children's lives, there has been a decrease since 2004" in the number of parents who believe so (67% then vs. 59% now), study author Alexandra Rankin Macgill reports. She adds, though, that there has not been a "corresponding increase" during the same period in the percentage of parents who see online activity as a bad thing (7% now vs. 5% then).
"Instead, more parents are neutral about whether their children have been positively affected by the Internet, saying the Internet has not had an effect on their child one way or another [30% now vs. 25% then]." ["Now" should be qualified a bit, because the survey was conducted about a year ago.]
"The Internet for a lot of parents is now a mature technology," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew in an interview with the Associated Press. "They are not in a honeymoon period with the Internet anymore. They are realizing the Internet is something with good and bad things."
There's a fairly predictable difference between teens' favorable view of technology and that of parents, though the percentage of parents with a positive view is high: 71% of parents say the Internet and cellphones, iPods and digital cameras make their lives easier, compared to 89% of teens. The study also found 63% of US 12-to-17-year-olds now have cellphones, compared to 89% of parents. For iPods and other music players, it's the inverse: 51% of teens have them, compared to 29% of parents.
In other news...
- Tragic school shooting in Finland. A high school student in Finland shot and killed himself, six other students, and the school principal yesterday "after announcing plans for the rampage on YouTube," the Financial Times reports. The FT cites a Reuters reports saying the boy's video was "called 'Jokela High School Massacre' and posted by a user called Sturmgeist89, meaning Storm Spirit in German. The video's musical backing was a song called Stray Bullet." The Washington Post reports that "the song was a favorite of Eric Harris, one of the Columbine High School shooters, who had featured the band's lyrics on his Web site." According to the FT, "there have been occurrences around the world, including the death of 16 children in 1996 in Dunblane, UK, the 1999 killing of 12 students at the Columbine High School in Colorado, the 2002 deaths of 18 in Erfurt, Germany and this year's killing of 32 at Virginia Tech University in the US." The Times of London looked at what's unique to Finland about this tragedy.
- Child porn networking shut down. European police arrested 92 people allegedly involved in a child pornography operation that sold videos to 2,500 customers in 19 countries "including teachers, doctors and lawyers," the Associated Press reports. "The alleged mastermind, Italian Sergio Marzola," and a Belgian man suspected of abusing his own children, were arrested last year. Marzola "allegedly made some 150 videos in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Belgium." Investigators said that at least 23 girls aged 9 to 16 were tricked into on-camera abuse by being promised "lucrative modeling careers."
- Clear-eyed look at Net risks. Rarely do we see balanced reporting on the subject of children's online safety. So it was good to see USATODAY's Janet Kornblum looking at both the real risks and the misconceptions that have developed about how teens are victimized online. Not that dangers don't exist, but "some worry that parents are falling victim to 'predator panic' and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether," she reports. She also cites the view from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Center's director, David Finkelhor, told her that - contrary to impressions from news outlets such as NBC Dateline - "overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005," and the vast majority of those involve abusers the victims know in real life. For more from Dr. Finkelhor, see "Profile of a teen online victim."
- New virtual worlds for kids 6+. Close on the heels of her report that a "boomlet" of kids' virtual worlds was in the works, CNET's Stefanie Olsen blogs about toy company Playhut's two new online playgrounds, one for girls 6+, one for boys. Like ClubPenguin, it appears, "the free sites enable members to play games, dress up virtual characters and chat with friends - once parents send a permission slip via e-mail to the site." Well, ClubPenguin has very limited, scripted, chat, where kids are given phrases to choose from. VirtualWorldsNews reports that the free sites are Wowbotz for boys and Mystikats Kutties for girls.
