• Right age for cellphones? The age group more and more parents are asking about is 8-to-12-year-olds, "the fastest-growing segment of the US cellphone market," the Houston Chronicle reports (already, 72% of 13-to-17-year-olds have mobile phones). The Chronicle cites experts as saying that, generally children around 10 or 11 can handle responsible use of a cellphone. But it really does depend on the child. Some of the signs of responsibility the Chronicle suggests are whether a child can remember to: charge the phone, turn it on before going out without prompting, and follow both family and school rules associated with cellphone use. Downsides to consider are: the bills kids can "rack up ... through texting and downloading songs" (remember to either use your cellphone company's flat-rate, unlimited texting add-on or have it turn off texting altogether); unwanted calls and messages from peers or adults you don't know ("but kids shouldn't automatically ignore calls from numbers they don't know because it could be a parent themselves that's stuck and calling from another phone"); and "phones may give children privacy that parents don't necessarily want them to have." Very helpful things to consider.
• Stealing personality?! TFirst there were identity theft and cut 'n' paste plagiarism. Now there's cut 'n' paste personality theft, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's more sad than threatening. "These identity thieves don't want your money. They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music." The Journal says people are not just stealing others' jokes, but their favorite films, books, "life philosophies, even signature poems." It brings new meaning to the phrase, "Get a life." In a way, it's also a sign that social networking is demanding something pretty cool; to have an interesting profile, it helps to be well-read, have some musical interests of a certain depth, have something to put out there for friends to see. But back to the downside: Stealing these things from others is similar to the laziness of plagiarism and it's yet another indicator of the crying need for teaching ethics - not just cyberethics, certainly, because, at least to young people, this is about identity exploration, socializing, basically just life.
• Participatory justice. NPR aired a story about a shop owner whose security cam recorded a thief scooping up and making off with a couple of watches. "After filing a police report, [the retailer] handed out fliers with the suspects' pictures and posted the surveillance tape on YouTube." Whether the motive is public humiliation or catching the thief, the Internet is increasingly being used to "right" wrongs. To law enforcement, it's a little scary because when people or organizations like Perverted Justice (the group used by NBC Dateline for its "To Catch a Predator" series) take matters into their own hands online or offline, they can make it even harder to bring the perpetrator to justice. People not trained in gathering the kind of evidence that holds up in court can botch the legal process and make things much easier for the people breaking the law. Fortunately, the retailer NPR led its story with filed a police report and offered a reward with the YouTube video only for tips that he could hand over to the police. "Police caught the thief late last month after the watches were spotted in a pawn shop down the street," NPR reports.
• Facebook & user privacy. Ya gotta hand it to Facebook for responsiveness to public concerns. No way to be sure we have a perfect cause-and-effect situation here, but one week in January we hear from CNET that it's really hard to delete a profile from Facebook and the UK government is concerned, sharing that concern with the BBC and The Telegraph. Then the New York Times chimes in on the subject a couple of weeks later, following that report two days later with "Quitting Facebook Gets Easier." "The updated Facebook help page now includes the question "How do I delete my account?" With this last piece, the Times has made a man named Nipon Das - who tried to delete his Facebook account for two months and likened the experience to "Hotel California," where, the Eagles song goes, you can check out any time but can never leave - "a mascot for disgruntled Facebook users," the Times says.

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