News for the Week of December 9, 2007
In this week's tech news, the latest on the hits and misses of the much-hyped mobile Web, and important guidelines for young cellphone users.
Mobile Web: We're on the cusp
There has been a whole lot of media hype about the mobile Web. So much so that smart reporters are now writing reality checks (see the New York Times). But with the iPhone's arrival, Google's plans for the FCC's looming 700 Mhz spectrum auction, and an announcement this week from Verizon Wireless, we really do seem to be at an important crossroads. eWeek reports that "the mobile industry is shifting into Internet gear". Business Week reports that Verizon Wireless's move "to let customers use a broader range of cell phones and wireless features on its network was greeted by many observers as a stunning about-face". And the Baltimore Sun offers the big picture on what this means for all of us, including our kids - upsides and downsides, of course. For one thing, I think it means phones really will be access points to the Internet. Which means that parents and educators either will need to need to apply rules and "parental controls" to more devices and access points or will need increasingly to help young people develop their internal filters - critical thinking and content and behavior online.
Cellphone etiquette
I think you will appreciate, as I did, these fundamentals for working with young cellphone users on the best ways and places to use those phones. They're from author and parenting specialist Jan Faull. She looks at where to talk, when to talk, and the example we grownup cellphone users are setting for them. Here are a couple more pointers I would add: 1) Know when and how much your child is using his mobile - for talking *and* texting (the latter being silent, so harder to get a handle on) - and establish boundaries. 2) Know what else she's using her phone for (photo-sharing? video-uploading?) and talk about the implications for her and other people in what's being shared. See also ConnectSafely.org's "Cellphone Safety Tips" and this on a study about the role of cellphones in "teen dating abuse" and what parents know about it.
In other news...
- Videogame 'Report Card' for 2007. Because "videogames" includes the word "games," there are still some parents who don't take videogames seriously enough, said David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family this week. So parents got a "C" on the organization's 12th-annual "Video Game Report Card" (see p. 12 of the 26-page document). The videogames rating board, the ESRB, got a B- for its education efforts; the ratings themselves got a C+ (for "not being based on all of games' content and code, locked or unlocked," the latter meaning gamers' ability to modify the content); the game industry got a C; and the big national retailers got a D for not enforcing the ratings at point of purchase. "The institute conducted 58 sting operations and found almost half the time, children as young as 12, could buy games rated M for 'mature' - intended for kids 17 and older," ABC News reports. For holiday game shoppers, see p. 14 of the institute's report for lists of 10 recommended games and 10 "games to avoid for your children and teens."
- The teenage brain & the social Web. Two articles about the teenage brain and juvenile crime have a message for the way we think about the youth-driven social Web. "The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash," reports the Associated Press. He's a psychology professor at Temple University referring to researchers' growing understanding that the frontal lobe, or executive part, of the brain isn't fully developed until people's early to mid 20s. That understanding should have an impact on criminal sentencing of minors, many experts argue, but it also says something about what society worldwide is seeing on the teenage part of the social Web. Identity exploration and risk assessment, experts tell us, is part of adolescent brain development. It always has been offline, but now a lot of it is on display before adults' very eyes on the Web. Awareness of teen behavior can be a little unnerving for adults and - again - always has been, but concern multiplies when 1) the adult observer doesn't fully understand the medium; 2) teen behavioral norms, as always, different from adults'; and 3) the views, behaviors, and images of entire social networks are on display and instantly accessible to adults (a "super public," as social-media researcher danah boyd calls it). Teens by definition take and assess risk, but this does not mean they don't sometimes need someone "in the car" with them to help engage the brakes. [See also the National Institute for Mental Health's "Teenage brain: A work in progress."]
- Facebook apologizes about ads. Facebook seems to prefer to ask for users' forgiveness rather than permission. A "humbled [Facebook] CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement apologizing for the way his company rolled out the Beacon ad platform," Internet News reports. He said that now users could bow out of the program entirely, "bowing to pressure from privacy advocates and many Facebook users." More than 50,000 of them had signed a petition initiated by MoveOn.org which demanded that Facebook not broadcast information about users' purchases on other Web sites without their permission, the Financial Times reports. Internet News added that "Facebook's retreat marks the second time it has been forced to make changes to a new technology because of privacy concerns. Last year, users protested after it introduced 'News Feed,' which allowed users to keep track of their friends' actions on the site."
- Disney's UK kids portal. Disney says it's about to launch a site for UK children and tweens. Disney.co.uk will be a portal pulling together the company's assets (including social networking) for kids, Reuters reports. "At its heart [is] a feature called Disney Xtreme Digital" in which users can "customize multimedia content simultaneously while watching and sharing videos, messages, music, and games." It'll be interesting to see what is meant by "social networking," but Reuters says "online parental-protection measures are wrapped into the site, along with functionality that prompts children to use Disney-proposed online-chat phrases that have an emphasis on being polite while also using language that can reflect whether the user is looking at content focused on pirates or princesses."
