Bans on violent video game sales

Two "states" in two countries - Illinois in the US and Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan - have put restrictions on violent game sales to minors. One game in particular in Kanagawa - Grand Theft Auto III - because "it depicts random killing sprees in public places, cars being blown up and other acts of violence that officials fear teens might try to mimic, the Associated Press reports." Illinois's legislature voted Sunday to "ban the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors ... a move other states and cities have tried but federal courts have repeatedly struck down," the AP reported separately. The legislation "Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who proposed the ban late last year after hearing about the video game 'JFK Reloaded,' which puts the player in the role of President Kennedy's assassin." The Chinese government is moving in this direction too, at a national level - "to root out pornography, eliminate threats to state security, and to stop youths becoming addicted," Reuters reports, citing a report from the official Xinhua news agency. "Online gaming has exploded in China in recent years, with an estimated 13.8 million people taking part." In related news, in its 679 stores nationwide, Best Buy - "under pressure from religious groups" - will require IDs to verify that buyers of M-rated video games are 21+, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Utah anti-porn law challenged

A coalition of civil-liberties organizations and attorneys is challenging a new Utah law aimed at keeping Net-based pornography away from kids, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, and others say the law violates the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution (the latter because the Internet is global and "Utah's law affects legal speech outside of the state," according to the Tribune). The law requires the state attorney general's office to create a database of sites that "appeal to children's 'prurient interests in sex'." The legal challenge on First Amendment grounds did not come as a surprise. In response to it, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff "has halted efforts to implement the new law." [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this article out.]

Tech for teen social status?

Not skater or running shoes, not clothes, but pricey tech gadgets as fashion statements. We all saw it coming, but now parents are really dealing with it, the New York Times reports in its "Syles" section. "It is no secret that Apple's sleek iPod, costing $99 to $449, has become, to the American teenager, a de rigueur fashion item, not just a handy gadget." Then there are picture phones and DVD players. "It is a vortex of contemporary social currents: teenagers' longing outstrips their ability to satisfy it and collides with most parents' hope to teach restraint and fiscal responsibility." Parents of all income levels, since marketing messages and images reach just about every teen one way or another. Of course, this was probably always the case, but the Times says the objects of desire, if not pricier, are outdated faster. Readers, how do you deal with the nag factor? Click on "post" just below, or email me anytime.

Oz's new Net-safety study

It's probably no different in the US, UK, and everywhere else: Australian children are online "younger and longer with the growth of broadband," according to the latest study, "KidsOnline@Home" from the Australian Broadcasting Authority and NetAlert, Australia's Internet safety advisory body. By mid-2004, 37% of Australian homes had high-speed Internet access, up from 20% in 2003. "The report also found that while Australian parents and children are overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of the Internet, nearly 40% of parents said that their children have had a negative experience when using the Internet at home," according to the study's press release. Parents and kids are picking up on online-safety messages the researchers found, but - because both technology and kids' use of it keep changing - safety education needs continuous updating, they write. For example, mobile phones: "a quarter of 8-to-13-year-olds now make use of mobiles," the study found. "Parents' concerns about their children's use of mobiles generally relate to the costs of use, and not content issues. However, this is likely to change as it becomes easier to access a wider range of content on mobile devices." Here's the study in pdf format.

2 teens held for IM threats

Two northern Virginia boys, 13 and 15, arrested in the past two weeks for sending threats via instant-messaging, were still being held this weekend, the Washington Post reports. The 15-year-old, "a popular freshman," according to the Post, "sent an anonymous IM to a friend, threatening to harm her and others at school. She told her parents that night, and police evacuated Yorktown [High School] the next day, swarming the school before the boy turned himself in. He is being held without bond ... on a felony charge of making a written threat to kill." The 13-year-old, in a separate case, has been charged with the same felony, as well as a misdemeanor for harassment by computer, for similar IM-carried threats that led to an afternoon of lockdown at his middle school. "The arrests have exposed a new gray area for teenagers, the Post adds. "They live in an age when it is delectably easy to use an anonymous screen name to freak out their friends - and in a society that has learned the hard way to take threats of violence seriously." For more on IM-ing, see "IM anthropology: 11-to-15-year-olds' virtual community" and "Parents write: Pluses/minuses of kids' IM-ing" in my newsletter. Post (below) or email your comments on and experiences with this anytime!

More US file-swappers sued

The Recording Industry Association of America yesterday filed lawsuits against 91 file-sharers using the high-speed Internet2 network at 20 colleges and universities nationwide, Internet News reports, and against 649 people "making music files available on traditional file-swapping networks," CNET reports. CNET was referring to services such as Kazaa, LimeWire, eDonkey, etc. A family discussion about file-sharing ethics is always a good idea; for ideas, see "File-sharing realities for families." Post below or email me about how it goes!

Online poker is huge

Especially among college students. "See that guy who brought his laptop to class, the dude seated in the last row of the lecture hall? Odds are he's on partypoker.com or ultimatebet.com right now. The sophomore in the room across the hall who hasn't opened his door for 14 straight hours - and yet you know he is there? Chances are he is on paradisepoker.com or bodogsports.com," Sports Illustrated reports. More than $100 million in bets passes through more than 200 online poker sites a day, according to PokerPulse.com stats cited by SI. Teenagers, too, are into online poker (so far, sites can't verify age, but a credit card or online bank account is needed when playing for money). What's the attraction? Privacy, accessibility, anonymity, poker experience, and the chance to win money, SI says (for some disturbing anecdotes about students and the money involved, see this piece). Is it legal? In a word, no, not in the US - that's why all the poker sites are off-shore. But it's a "low-priority crime," SI quotes a law professor as saying. How about university policy? There's very little; some schools explicitly support it ("the Penn Poker Club receives an average of $1,000 per semester from the university's Student Activities Council"); other schools simply haven't gotten engaged; and very few provide counseling for gambling addiction. Here's the sidebar on the legal issues.

Music on phones, pls: Youth study

Young people's two biggest interests for next-generation cellphones were commercial-free radio and music-downloading, a recent survey found. Music videos were also an interest to the 13-to-34-year-olds surveyed by Management Network Groups, Reuters reports. "US operators are widely expected to provide full [music] download services to phones in the coming year but pricing such services for broad demand could also be tricky." The respondents preferred the idea of paying 99 cents per song rather than $19.95 monthly for up to 30 song downloads. The youngest respondents (teens) also liked the idea of multiplayer games on phones.

Video of school fight posted online

A beating that took place in a high school bathroom in California was videotaped and circulated on the Internet. A 17-year-old Iranian-American student "suffered a broken jaw after being struck several times by two attackers," the Associated Press reports. The video was posted in a UK media-hosting site called PutFile.com, which has a nothing-illegal policy and said it would've taken down the video if it had been informed about the posting. PutFile did delete the file. The family of the victim said it would sue the school district for failing to protect him, the AP later reported. Here's a statement from the Contra Cost County prosecutor's office and the latest, in the Contra Costa Times, on how the community is dealing with this event, which was widely reported.

FBI shut down P2P site

EliteTorrents.org, a site being used by BitTorrent file-sharers to download the latest Star Wars film before it was in theaters, was shut down by the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security yesterday, the Associated Press reports. It was "the first criminal enforcement against individuals who are using BitTorrent," federal officials said. "Revenge of the Sith" was downloaded more than 10,000 times in the first 24 hours of its availability on the site," they said, adding that "Elite Torrents had more than 133,000 members and 17,800 movies and software programs in the past four months." The site's home page is now a notice with the Justice and Homeland Security Departments' seals saying that "individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement." President Bush signed a law last month that included penalties of up to 10 years' jail time for distributing a movie or song before commercial release. Parents might ask what the risk is, here, for any file-sharers at their house. Well, the key phrase in the new law is pre-release distribution. So, no matter what the "popularity quotient" would be at school, kids definitely should not be involved in the trafficking of any media before their public release, and even then "sharing" is what media companies filing lawsuits call "illegal distribution." A family discussion about file-sharing ethics is always a good idea; to that end, see "File-sharing realities for families." Email me (or post below) about how it goes!

New 'Star Wars' IM worm

Just another reminder to instant-messagers not to click on links in IM messages, even if they look like friends sent them. The new worm targets AIM users and comes in a message that goes something like, "hehe, i found this funny movie," with the word "this" a link, CNET reports. If an IM-er clicks on the link, they download the worm, which then sends itself to everyone on his/her buddy list (that's why the IM looks like it's coming from a friend). The best way to check is, before clicking on anything, to open a separate "conversation" with that buddy and ask if s/he sent the IM. If s/he either says no or is offline, the IM is bad news - log off and start over. For more on this, see "IM tips from a tech-savvy dad"). Also this week, a Star Wars phishing attack on Yahoo Messenger users. The link in the Yahoo IM goes to a site that is designed to look like a real Yahoo Web site but is actually a phishing scam to steal people's Yahoo user name and password, CNET says. These are just the latest in a growing number of IM-borne scams and attacks, CNET adds.

Parents monitoring kids: Study

Nearly half of US parents keep tabs on their kids' online activities daily or weekly, according to a survey just released by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Cox Communications. The other half (51%) "say they don't have monitoring software on household computers that teenagers use or don't know whether their computers have such software," CNET reports, and 42% don't review what their teenagers are "saying" in chat rooms or instant-messaging (58% say they do). In other findings...

* 28% of parents "don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online."
* 30% allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house, e.g. a bedroom or home office.
* As for the lingo/acronyms kids use in IM, 57% of parents don't know "LOL" (laughing out loud), 68% don't know "BRB" (be right back), 92% don't know "A/S/L" (age/sex/location, which kids shouldn't give out online), and 95% don't know "POS" (parent over shoulder) or "P911" (parent alert).

For monitoring help, here's a thorough survey by the Providence Journal of monitoring and other online-safety tools and services available to parents. For more, type versions of the words "filtering," "monitor," etc. into a NetFamilyNews.org search box (at the top of each page), or go to GetNetWise.org's tools page.

Net-ed course for families on the Web

What a logical place for parents to learn about kids' Net use: in cyberspace! Winn Schwartau - dad, computer-security expert, and author of "Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids" - is teaching a course about "what kids are capable of and what they are doing when parents and teachers aren't monitoring their computer use," as his company's press release describes it. It's as if he timed the unveiling to the findings about parental monitoring announced this week by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Cox Communications (already picked up by China's official news service, Xinhua). The $3, one-hour online course and quiz are based on Winn's book (see my review back in 2001) and is part of a series of courses for better PC-security awareness (including virus protection, email safety, and ID theft). The $3 is per individual, with "deep discounts" for schools (works for grades 7-12 as well as for families). Here's the course and the Security Awareness blog.

New scam, keep patching!

From the "What Will They Think of Next? Department" the latest PC scam is a "cyber extortion" one. A malicious hacker group is "trying to extort money from Microsoft Windows users" by scrambling text files on our PCs so we can't read them, then telling us we need to pay for a computer program that will unscramble them, the Washington Post reports. How are they doing that? By exploiting a nearly year-old security flaw in the Internet Explorer browser to take controls of text files and using "an encryption scheme" to scramble them. Victims are told to pay for the decoder software "by depositing $200 in the attackers' e-Gold account, an online currency that operates outside of the regulatory and legal controls of the US financial system." Prevention is simple: make sure your family PC is all patched up. To test it, just go to Windows Update and have it scan your system for critical updates, then tell it to install any necessary patches (note that you need to use Internet Explorer for this to work - it won't work with Firefox). "Think most people using Windows would have sense enough to apply Microsoft patches at least once a year?" the Post asks. "Think again. Some of the most prolific viruses and worms circulating the Internet these days infiltrate machines using Windows security flaws that are more than a year old." The other two all-important PC-security precautions, especially for DSL and cable Net connectors, are a firewall and up-to-date anti-virus software on your system. [See also "More browser options"and "The Firefox explosion."]

'Eat well, recieve iPod'

...or an Xbox, movie tickets, and other prizes. That's the message from Glasgow's school-meals service to all students in the city's 29 secondary schools, the Washington Post and The Scotsman report. According to the latter, "the award-winning Fuel Zone Points Rewards Scheme aims to promote a good diet among teenage pupils, with those who choose a healthy option rewarded with points which go towards prizes, such as iPod music players, Xbox computer consoles, tickets for the cinema and book tokens." A good thing, considering the fact that "the deep-fried Mars bar, served with a side order of fries, threatens to usurp the haggis as Scotland's best-known dish," National Geographic News (the Post thoughtfully links to this and other stories about some of Scotland's newer, beyond-haggis tasty treats). An interesting ed campaign! The question is, will they internalize the lesson? ;-)

Whither family entertainment?

"It would seem that Nintendo's products are aimed at the child in all of us," the New York Times reports. The question, though, is whether cute games like Nintendogs - which "lets players raise and train virtual pets on the [handheld player] Nintendo DS" - will help Nintendo stay a successful, third-place, niche game-device maker as Sony and Microsoft battle it out for first. "Over the last five years, Mario has lost market share to the thugs of Grand Theft Auto as the audience for video games has gotten older and the games themselves have moved into the mainstream of pop culture," according to the Times. At the big games expo in #3 last week, "while most game publishers showed sequels, sports simulations and shooting games based on grim tropes such as gang violence and World War II," Nintendo was promoting the new Nintendogs and Donkey Konga and old favorites like Metroid, Super Mario Brothers, and The Legend of Zelda.

Video games: Important upside

"This is why many of us [read: "parents"] find modern video games baffling: we're not used to being in a situation where we have to figure out what to do. We think we only have to learn how to press the buttons faster." This from Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling "The Tipping Point" and now "Blink," in his review of "Everything Bad is Good for You" in the New Yorker (see also "TV makes us smarter?!"). Gladwell's referring to how we're more comfortable with games like Monopoly or gin rummy, which "don't have a set of unambiguous rules that have to be learned and then followed during the course of play." Video games, on the other hand, aid the *other* kind of learning we need: "collateral" as opposed to "explicit [textbook] learning," Gladwell explains.

"Players are required to manage a dizzying array of information and options. The game presents the player with a series of puzzles, and you can't succeed at the game simply by solving the puzzles one at a time. You have to craft a longer-term strategy, in order to juggle and coordinate competing interests. In denigrating the video game, Johnson argues, we have confused it with other phenomena in teen-age life, like multitasking.... Playing a video game is ... [is] about finding order and meaning in the world, and making decisions that help create that order." Gladwell goes on to show how we discount this collateral learning in favor of the explicit learning with which we're more familiar. (Wish ESRB.org rated games for their collateral-learning value!)

A cop on 'Grand Theft Auto' & other gaming news

Star Wars was the top story this past week for a lot of people, Senate filibustering for others, but the *real* story for gamers of all ages this week was the console wars. They've heated up again. Sony's Playstation 3, Nintendo's Game Boy Micro, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 were all on display and vying for attention at the huge E3 games expo in Los Angeles this week. Video games are actually a big all-around story, given that they're now a $10 billion industry, having surpassed the film industry. Journalist, dad, and SafeKids.com publisher Larry Magid was covering E3 and got to talking with a Los Angeles police officer who was guarding Sony's Playstation 3 exhibit and controlling crowds while trying out Playstation Portable. They got to talking about "Grand Theft Auto," an M-rated game in which a lot of cops get killed. Click to this week's issue of my newsletter to see what the officer had to say.

Web work improves reading: Study

A study conducted in two Maryland public middle schools, one rural and one urban, found that "7th and 8th graders who used three "online field trips" scored higher on a national standardized reading comprehension test than those who used traditional learning methods alone. The virtual field trips were developed by Maryland Public Television (MPT), which conducted the study of their effectiveness. On the field trips - "Pathways to Freedom: Maryland & the Underground Railroad" , "Exploring Maryland's Roots" , and "Knowing Poe: the Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe" - students "explore, learn and retain curriculum content through numerous highly engaging interactive experiences and activities," according to MPT. The results, the press release says, were "improved students' reading performance on the Gates-MacGinitie Standardized Reading Test and pre-post content assessments," and "improved reading among the poorest readers," and "improved reading comprehension among low-income students."

Amber Alerts on phones

The Amber Alert system is expanding so that cellphone users who can receive text messages can "opt in" to the free service and be alerted about missing and kidnapped children. "Cingular Wireless, Nextel Communications, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless are among the nine cellphone carriers that will participate in the program, along with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and wireless industry group CTIA," CNET reports. The participating companies represent 183 million cellphone customers. "Amber Alerts were named for Amber Hagerman, a Texas girl who was kidnapped and murdered in the late 1990s," CNET adds.

Microsoft to offer 1-stop PC security

Microsoft's been busy on the PC-security front as well as in gaming. There was a lot of coverage about the "Windows OneCare" PC-security service it plans to offer next year (it launched an internal test this week), the Washington Post reports. OneCare "contains tools to fight spyware and viruses, a firewall to block sketchy data (incoming and outgoing), and patches security holes." It will also offer "computer care tools such as disk defragging and file repair, and scheduled data backup features that will save critical data such as photos and financial information to CDs or DVDs," ZDNET adds. Here's further coverage from the New York Times, BBC. Meanwhile, after five months of testing and 1 million downloads, Microsoft has also released the final version of its desktop search tool, competing with those of Google and Yahoo, CNET reports - you know, what to use to find all that stuff on the family hard drive.

More browser choices

For a while Microsoft's Internet Explorer was virtually the only game in town. Then there was Firefox and, with lower numbers, Opera. Now there's Netscape 8.0, a sort of hybrid of Explorer and Firefox, a San Jose Mercury News blog reports. "To protect its users from the several high-profile security vulnerabilities in IE, [Netscape] will by default view sites using the Firefox rendering engine," according to "Good Morning Silicon Valley." "But when it encounters 'trusted' Web sites designed specifically for Internet Explorer, it will switch to the IE rendering engine" for better family PC security and prettier pages, apparently. Then a little editorializing (it is a blog, after all): "That's a neat trick, but really at this point I far prefer the security and elegant simplicity of Firefox to anything even remotely associated with Active X."

Speaking of Firefox, if you use it, make sure you have the latest version 1.0.4 - it's more secure, the BBC reports. And, just for fun, check out these Firefox promo videos.

Monitoring kids, monitoring workers

If you have online teenagers at your house, you may've received privacy complaints where blogging's concerned. What the complainers sometimes forget is just how public the Internet is. What privacy, we might ask, are we invading? This is just one parent's opinion, but parents have a right, if not a duty, to see what a child's posting, certainly if anyone else can. Now it looks like parental monitoring of kids' online activities is good practice for future employment. A study released this week found that about half of all US employers have fired workers for misuse of the Internet, which means, of course, that they're monitoring Net use. The study, by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, found that about 75% of companies monitor workers' Web site connections, 65% use filtering software, and 5% use GPS technology to monitor cell phones, CNET reports.

Fla. dad confronts teen bloggers

The headline in the Naples Daily News - "Father angry over daughter's online activities at school" - is a little misleading. The blogging that upset him wasn't just happening at school, and Palmetto Ridge High's Web-filtering system wasn't going to catch this activity. Only close monitoring - by parents and teachers, not software - might've turned up the sexually explicit photos and text posted by his daughter and her friends. But the phenomenon was just as much about their social lives as about technology. According to the Daily News, the dad, John Wilkinson, "made the final posting for his daughter [in the blog] to many of her friends: 'by posting those pictures of yourself and the other girls ... on the Web, not only have you publicly degraded yourself, but you have run dangerously close to the wire of committing a federal offense by posting what could be construed as child pornography on the Web.'" Wilkinson went public with this experience to alert other parents, the Daily News reports.

Senator's ID stolen

On purpose, that is. To see how easy it could be, Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska, chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee, told his staff to steal his identity, and they did, the New York Times reports. The senator talked about the experiment in a subsequent committee hearing. A professor at Johns Hopkins University gave his computer science class a similar assignment: to see how much personal information they could gather with only $50 per group of 3-4 students and using only legal, public sources of information. "Several groups managed to gather well over a million records, with hundreds of thousands of individuals represented in each database" and layers of info on each individual. (One group discovered that 1,500 dead people were listed as active registered voters, and 50 of them "somehow voted in the last election.") Read the story to find out the interesting tactics they used, online and offline. Of course the Times points out the ease of access, but it also cites views on both sides of this debate and shows 1) how ambivalent we really are about personal info being so accessible and 2) how tough it would be find and maintain a regulatory balance between openness and privacy because, as the John Hopkins professor said, collectively, we don't know how much privacy or convenience we want. Another takeaway from all this: Our kids' tech know-how is good preparation for higher ed, careers, and contributing to solutions to this complicated problem.

File-sharer's dad goes to court

His daughter began using the Kazaa file-sharing service two years ago when she was 13, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Dave Bink, the dad, wasn't aware of the "hundreds of songs, including 'All You Wanted' by Michelle Branch, 'Eat You Alive' by Limp Bizkit and 'U Don't Have to Call' by Usher," on the family PC. Plus, because he only listens to Led Zeppelin and The Doors, he thought it was a joke when he was sued for file-sharing. Now "he faces this choice: Pay $3,750 to settle or go to court, where he may be ordered to pay at least $750 per song." His daughter didn't think she was doing anything wrong either, the Journal Sentinel adds. "Until last week, Kazaa advertised itself as '100 percent legal'." According to the Journal Sentinel, Bink's chances of winning aren't great. It cites an earlier case in which a Chicago woman sued by the RIAA didn't feel she'd infringed copyrights, decided to go to court, and received a pre-trial summary judgment from a judge, ordering her to pay $22,500 "for the downloading of 30 songs." A new development is a class-action lawsuit started by a family in Ohio (see my 4/29/05 issue). See also "File-sharer's mom sues back."

Scary new phishing scam

As tempting as it might be, even if the email from "your bank" comes with your actual account number and PIN, don't act on it! That's all the more reason not to act on what it says. Because this is a new, more sophisticated kind of phishing scam, CNET reports. It's not part of a mass emailing. It's a phishing technique that "uses stolen consumer data to rip off individual account holders at specific banks." CNET cites computer security firm Cyota as reporting that "the phishing emails arrive at bank customers' in-boxes featuring accurate account information, including the customer's name, email address and full account number. The messages are crafted to appear as if they have been sent by the banks in order to verify other account information, such as an ATM personal-identification number or a credit card CVD code, a series of digits printed on the back of most cards as an extra form of identification." The basic rule is simple and needs to get communicated: Don't click to banks, PayPal, or any other financial site from an email. If you need to go to your account, it's better to open your browser, type the URL into the browser window, and access your account through the bank's home page.

Spam from Germany

Gotten a lot of German-language spam lately? I sure have. The best thing to do is just delete the emails without opening them, suggests the Washington Post. "As for keeping them out of your inbox, you might be out of luck [because most spam filters use English-language keywords to block spam]. Last year's barrage lasted two weeks before petering out. That is probably what will happen this time." Last year's spate was caused by a variant of the Sober worm that propagated by using people's email address books, the Post continued. The messages in both German and English are political; they're not trying to sell us anything, except maybe right-wing, German nationalist views. See the Post piece for some interesting history and present-day context.

'The secret life of boys'

That's the headline of a thoughtful, thorough Boston Globe article about US boys' increasing exposure to pornography. "Hard-core [online] porn has apparently gone mainstream," the Globe reports, citing the views of both young people and adults on this development. What worries psychologists quoted in the article is what happens to a normal biological curiosity about "what girls look like" when it's met with material that's a lot more hard-core than they could've ever expected. One psychologist is concerned about the impact on boys' relationships with girls and later women, because they're "beginning to think that this kind of human behavior and relationship is average and acceptable." Another psychologist told the Globe that viewing porn sites on a daily basis, as have patients of his as young as 10, changes boys' expectations of girls, which "by default changes the reality for girls." And it bothers him that girls aren't outraged because of it (the Globe quotes one 8th-grade girl as saying matter-of-factly that "all the boys" surf porn). At the end of this 5-page article there's good advice for parents who find a child's downloading porn regularly. [On this subject, see also the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "Is childhood becoming oversexed?"]

But there's no advice about what to do about the technologies that make it so available (not just the Internet). Probably rightly so, since the solutions are as individual as the families. For one family it might suffice to limit kids' Web searches to the search engines that have filtering (see "Kid-friendly search engines"). For another it might be computer time controls that allow online time only when parents are home. Still another family might choose to install filtering or monitoring software. It depends on age, communication, and trust levels in a family, with solutions that keep getting adjusted to fit those levels - sometimes a different solution for each child. For info on parental-controls software, see GetNetWise.org, Software4Parents.com, or Consumer Reports' latest review of 11 filters. (I'd like to hear from you if you wish there was an online forum for discussing tough issues like this on the tech-parenting front - email me or post just below.)

Multitasking, multi-tech teens

This is not news to parents of teenagers, but it makes for interesting reading (and viewing): CBS's "Generation M: Natural Multitaskers." The article and 2.5 minute video (clicked to from the Web page) zoom in on 13-year-old Nick, who has an Xbox, a GameCube, a TV, a VCR, a connected computer, and all sorts of portable devices in his room. Nick perfectly represents the "media saturated" "Generation M" described in the Kaiser Family Foundation study of that name (see my 3/11 issue). CBS quotes Gen M-ers as saying they just can't do one thing at a time and a researcher as saying they indeed can cope with distraction in ways we grownups can't.

Next Xbox's big party

It's not on store shelves yet but, watch out gamer parents and parents of gamers, Xbox 360's marketing has already started - its Hollywood premier party aired last night as a prime-time special on MTV. One of the interesting things about it is the many ways gamers will be able to customize it - its hardware, the look of the screen, and games' background music (without losing their all-important sound effects), MTV reports. Also compelling will be the community aspects - four controllers can be plugged in at once - and, "through Xbox Live, 64 players from around the world will be able to compete against each other in the same game." Parents may want to note this example of how game consoles are getting closer and closer to being connected computers, with the accompanying online-safety and PC security implications (console games, ideally, will need to be in high-traffic parts of the house too). Gamers will appreciate this insider's view of Xbox 360's development at GameSpot.com.

Calling young programmers!

I've been following Tom Friedman's writing about this flat world of ours for some time as a separate interest from kid-tech news, but today there's a point of intersection in his New York Times column that parents of tech-literate kids might want to see. Tom quotes a CNET commentary: "The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest ... the lowest ranking for the top-performing US school in the 29-year history of the competition." A Chinese university took top honors, followed by Moscow State and the St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics. David Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery and a computer science professor at University of California, Berkeley, said that, though the US "used to dominate these kinds of programming Olympics," it hasn't won a world championship since 1997. Bill Gates has been making a similar point when speaking about US education in various locations, as have other tech executives. This spells opportunity for aspiring programmers and other technologists. Many of our children have never known life without the Internet - a whole generation of Americans soon to add their vision and skills to global competitions and the amazing innovation going on in Russia, India, China, and so many other countries that Tom says are now competing on a level playing field.

Personal info gone missing

This isn't exactly kid-tech news, but if anyone's interested in how some 600,000 past and present Time-Warner employees' personal info went missing, see this very readable New York Times article, which *sort of* explains what happened, or rather does a great job of giving us a picture of how "22,500 gigabytes (22.5 terabytes) of data" are backed up these days. It involves, for one thing, "the homely Ford Econoline 350" van - a fleet of them. Then the article asks some good questions, e.g., "To begin with, why would such sensitive information be handled less like a guard-this-with-your-life briefcase entrusted to Brinks than like a fungible bundle handed to the Dy-Dee Diaper Service? Why was the data unencrypted? And why were trucks involved at all?" Here's earlier coverage at USATODAY and CNET.

P2P as future game base

Besides the fact that file-sharing has surpassed Web use in bandwidth ("space" in Internet pipes) used, here's another sign that P2P technology is here to stay: peer-to-peer gaming. It's an experiment in its early stages, CNET reports, but the Solipsis project/game "aims to draw together the technological lessons of 'massively multiplayer' games like Sony's 'EverQuest' and file-swapping networks like Kazaa or eDonkey. Developers are hoping to construct a sprawling virtual world that runs on its inhabitants' own linked computers, rather than relying on powerful central servers like those that run Web sites or EverQuest's fantasy adventures," according to CNET. In theory, the security of the family PC would be no less vulnerable than if used to swap songs (and that is indeed vulnerable if owners aren't aware of what's being shared on the PC - see "File-sharing realities for families"); and the security of a young player would be no different than in a massively multiplayer game (with players worldwide). [For an arresting picture of Web-vs.-P2P Net activity, see this snapshot of network traffic at CacheLogic (Web use is that narrow little red band - gray, fuschia, and aqua are all P2P).]

Niche sports videos on the Web

If you have mountain bikers, skateboarders, or surfers at your house, chances are they love watching obscure, hard-to-get videos of their favorite pros. Karl Quist - the founder of TotalVid, a specialty video start-up and Web site - is just like our extreme-sports fans. He told CNET he used to drive his wife crazy watching favorite videos 1,000 times. "TotalVid offers more than 1,000 titles, which cost up to $4 and expire after seven days. In a classic up-selling move, consumers can also purchase a DVD and permanent digital version of a movie and have the rental cost subtracted from the DVD buy," CNET reports. I have a feeling this site will soon be bookmarked on computers at our house.

Yahoo tunes up: New service

Yahoo Music Unlimited is being unveiled today, the Wall Street Journal reports. Using the rent-a-tune model, it undercuts pricing at, e.g., MSN, iTunes, and Real, but it offers fewer choices than Real's latest offering (see my 4/29 issue). Songs can be transferred onto select MP3 players but become unplayable once a subscription lapses. The service gives subscribers "unlimited access to over a million music tracks for $6.99 a month, or, alternatively, for $60 a year" (Real's is $179/year). The latest CNET coverage suggests a possible price war. Besides pricing, what will probably be attractive to young music fans about this service: the music-community part. Yahoo "has spent considerable time building links to its other products, such as the company's popular instant-messaging application, with the aim of making community and legal music-sharing among subscribers a core part of the service," CNET reported Tuesday. The Journal adds that the service will also "allow subscribers to see what songs friends have on their computers, and listen to their friends' tracks if the tracks are part of Yahoo's catalog. Rival services let users share music playlists, but individuals can't always hear the songs unless they own them."

Net security case focuses on 16-year-old

A 16-year-old in Uppsala, Sweden, that is. The case in question involves a network security breach and stolen computer code at Cisco Systems last year which was "part of a more extensive operation ... in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated," the New York Times reports. Computer-security and US federal investigators only recently "acknowledged that the Cisco break-in was only part of a more extensive operation involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe." The Wall Street Journal reports that "the stolen code was a portion of the operating system for Cisco's routers, which direct most of the traffic across the Internet." To parents it might be notable that the nearly year-long investigation, involving Net-connected computers at in seven countries, "is being treated as a juvenile case."

Long-awaited filter reviews

Now that more than half of US families with teenagers use filtering software (see my 3/18 issue), it's surprising how seldom Consumer Reports tests filters - the last time was four years ago. But software testing's very involved, and it's great when they do apply their solid methodology to this important product category. There are four basic take-aways from CR's latest review: 1) Filtering software has gotten better but is still flawed, 2) the 11 products tested are "very good or excellent" at blocking porn (the worst product blocked 88%), 3) "they blocked more than porn but not effectively" (not great at blocking hate and violence sites or those that aided weapons-making or advocated illegal drug use), and 4) they over-blocked ("the best porn blockers were heavy-handed against sites about health issues, sex education, civil rights, and politics"). CR's top 3 picks were SafeBrowse "for most people," AOL's Parental Controls "for Mac users or families with young children," and Microsoft's Parental Controls "if you use MSN or want protection built into your Internet service." But the overview also had good things to say about KidsNet for ease of use and porn-blocking effectiveness (though it overblocked a bit too). Here's the page with at-a-glance ratings of the 11 products reviewed.

Moms & pop culture

US mothers are worried about popular culture and its impact on their children, according to recent survey of 2,000 moms by the University of Minnesota. They're concerned about "what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents' ability to impart positive values to their children ... a cultural onslaught that goes far beyond Hollywood movies and TV, and into the world of the Internet, electronic games, and advertising," the Christian Science Monitor reports. The study's lead researcher, Martha Farrell Erickson, said the mothers surveyed were "a huge and diverse sample," from "full-time homemakers to full-fledged workaholics, all income levels, all racial background," citing hypersexuality, violence, disrespect, and body image among their concerns. Interestingly, "politics did not come up naturally in these mothers' group conversations; they see the solutions more through the avenue of personal and community action, rather than dumping these problems on the doorstep of government. Here's the study, "The Motherhood Study: Fresh Insights on Mothers' Attitudes and Concerns" and its sponsor, the New York-based Institute for American Values. For another perspective, see "Our Kids Are Not Doomed," a commentary in the Los Angeles Times by Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History" (Viking, 2005) and teacher of family history at Evergreen State College.

'Multi-purpose' mobiles

Nearly 300 UK school and university students were disqualified from exams last summer because of cheating with mobile phones, the BBC reports. That's a 15.7% increase over the previous year. "Some students had attempted to receive answers via text messaging - particularly in more factual subjects such as maths and science.
Others had inadvertently taken handsets into the exam hall." The latter could happen more and more, since there are now more mobiles than people in the UK, VNUNET.com reports. Meanwhile, get ready for ever-more-attractive, multi-purpose phones: "games and programs that let people connect, on their own terms, with anyone and everyone else," according to the vision of Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, cited by the BBC. Watch for "mobile gaming leagues" and other phenomena that are as much about connecting people as playing games (and not about fancy graphics).

Parents on IM pluses, minuses

After his list of concerns, John - father of an 11-year-old avid IM-er - wrote in an email: "I did think of something I like. When [my daughter] gets on AIM, a pop-up box appears on my computer and I can ask her if she has finished her homework! Also, I am apparently getting another window into their lives that I wouldn't have otherwise. She leaves her computer on a table beside my desk, and I get to watch a bunch of this stuff happening...." In this week's issue of my newsletter, see what else John and five other parents around the country (and in Germany) have been thinking about their children's instant-messaging (including some helpful family rules).

Clubs on phones

Texting is the instant-messaging of phones (not that IM itself isn't coming to cellphones too!), and it is taking off. I'm just not sure what the difference between the two is, since both are text on phones (help me out, readers-in-the-know). Phone text messages have a 160-character limit, so - like IM on the computer - they're short, silent, and part of a conversation, not something you leave with someone, as in email. The experience of 15-year-old Shawn in Indiana - who told TheJournalNet.com that he sends around 1,000 text messages a month - helps explain the attraction. And here's a thorough update on US-based texting at NorthJersey.com, including texting clubs such as "the alibi and excuse club" at SMS.ac, "which promises to get users out of any bind. Send a detailed text message to the club and one of its 4,100 members will pose as a friend or a relative and call whoever is your superior - a boss, a teacher, a spouse [a parent?] - with an excuse on why you could not keep an appointment or date." As for numbers, "about 36 million Americans, or about 27% of the 134 million American adults who have cell phones, have sent text messages" and last year "more than half of 13-to-24-year-olds were active text message users" (send more than one text message a month). And the reason given for texting's take-off of late? "American Idol"! Two years ago the TV show allowed viewers to vote for their favorite singers via text message.

Parents, please note: If you're concerned about texting costs and your child is not yet an avid texter (in which case this would be a negotiating tool more than a cost-saving measure, probably), some cellphone companies will turn texting off for specific phones on your plan - be sure to ask about that. When my then-12-year-old got his cellphone, I had Verizon turn texting off, and he never got the taste of it; IM's enough of a digital socializing opportunity for now.

Teens' ringtone costs mount

CNET refers to teenagers' "penchant for reckless spending," but I think this new cellphone-related challenge to our wallets is more because 1) they love personalizing their gadgets, 2) they're huge music fans, and 2) the ringtones are a great way to combine those and show off how current and cool their music tastes are. Don't you think? Anyway, the CNET story I'm referring to, here, may sound familiar: "Wireless operators are fighting a growing backlash from parents angry at the exorbitant ring tone bills their children are racking up," CNET reports. The outrage (against ringtone providers) is probably justified, since they don't make their pricing plans clear - some kids don't realize they're buying subscriptions with monthly payments instead of single ringtones, according to CNET. In fact, one family is suing Cingular, T-Mobile, and ringtone company Jamster. Cellphone companies have been getting more and more irate calls, and the good news is, they're taking action.

Web's fan fiction boom

Every now and then someone in the media notices how huge "fanfic" is on the Web. Newsday is the latest to take a thorough look at the "millions of stories written for cyberspace by ordinary consumers of TV shows, movies, books, even video games." It actually has been going on for eons; the Web has simply made the writing and sharing that fans of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. love to do infinitely more efficient. And it has turned all this writing, critiquing, and interacting into places where passionate fans can find each other and hang out. Some of these fans - particularly Harry Potter ones - are very young. Which is why parents might want to know about this sort of hang-out. It has what some would consider a darkside - sexually explicit stories - lightly covered fairly far down in the Newsday piece. For the perspective of a mom and fanfic writer in Texas, see "'Chanslash': The other Net porn kids access."

Phone parental controls in the works

With more and more Web-type content coming to phones - including the X-rated stuff - cellphone companies are trying to figure how to provide as broad a range of material as possible without displeasing parents (a very big market). The solution? Parental controls, in the form of content-rating and filtering. Phase 1 of the process, spearheaded by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA), is rating the content, Reuters reports. By "mid-year," CTIA says, content inappropriate for people under 18 will have been identified and put into a "restricted" category. In 12 months there will be more labels and content categories - "mobile versions of existing rating systems," e.g., for movies and video games. So it looks like filtering - technology that puts those ratings to work - is a ways off, but at least it's in the works. I can think of other controls parents might want, too: restrictions on time spent talking, number of text messages, calls from strangers, pictures or videos sent and received, etc. It'll be interesting to see what cellphone makers will provide. For an early look phone parental controls, see my 5/7/04 issue.

Teen fraudster sentenced

UK 18-year-old Phillip Shortman has been sentenced to 12 months' detention and training for defrauding more than 100 eBay customers of $85,000, CNET reports. He did so by selling them goods he didn't have and demanding cash up front. So tell anyone who uses eBay at your house to be on the alert for seller terms like that. "EBay recommends that customers pay by credit card or by PayPal," according to CNET. "It also offers a buyer protection program."

'For teens, a tangled Web'

Teenaged software writers, Web developers, and tech support experts are actually not the norm of their generation, according to a recent report. Although 83% of US teens have Net access, they're not as media literate as many adults think they are. In a series of tests in which a group of 13-to-17-year-olds was "asked to visit selected Web sites and perform given tasks, [Nielsen Norman Group] researchers measured a success rate of 55% ... much lower than the 66% success rate they found for adult users in a similar recent test," ConnectforKids.org reports. For more on media literacy and youth, see "Not-so-savvy searchers," "Kids confused about Net risks," and "Critical thinking: Kids' best research tool."

Telling the world their secrets

At a recent meeting of the Lexington Herald-Leader Teen Board, "most members said they had blogs, but when an adult said she'd like to read them, there was a universal 'Nooooo.' The 'it's on the Internet, where anyone can read it' argument was lost on them," reports Herald-Leader writer Mary Mehan. She cites the work of David Huffaker, a PhD student at Northwestern University who has studied 3,000 teen blogs, finding that - in terms of blogging topics - "struggles with parents or sexuality are presented with the same frankness as small ones, say, what somebody had for lunch or the glory of a sundress." But it's not so much these intimate details that add risk to blogging; it's information that helps strangers figure out who and where they are. The Pew Internet & American Life project has found that 62% of teens online have been contacted by strangers; blogs are just another tool they can use. This is a readable, meaty article that you'd also find great fodder for a family discussion. Another good one is at MSNBC. As for *secure* blogging, here's Wall Street Journal tech writer Walt Mossberg on MSN Spaces, which - along with AOL's new RED Blogs (as described by CNET) - offers bloggers varying degrees of privacy.

Spyware targeting kids

This is something online families need to talk about: how spyware gets downloaded onto the family PC. One clear answer just confirmed by spyware expert Ben Edelman is "kids." But it's not their fault. As Edelman explains it to ZDNET, spyware creators are buying banner ads on kids' Web sites - cute ads with offers like "Click here for free smileys!" (smiley faces and other little graphical icons to add to/spiff up their instant messages). When kids click on these free, fun, innocuous-looking ads, they download spyware, Edelman said. "I've been trying to figure out how these programs have such a large installed base: Who in their right mind would agree to have their computer become a vehicle for pop-up ads? It turns out that many of these programs target kids." Besides free IM graphics, another temptation is free little games kids can click on, play, and in the process download spyware. But informed families are empowered families, and kids will probably appreciate this heads-up, which they can in turn IM to their friends! The simple message is "think before you click" (and you probably don't want to click on free downloads or to Web sites advertised on banner ads that make them sound really cool with all kinds of freebies (so they don't have to ask Mom or Dad to pay for them). Here are Edelman's report on this and bio.

From road to computer rage

Personal computers arrived and evolved so quickly (and the making of their software and hardware involve so many different people and talents), it seems, that they never got to be user-friendly. Thus we've added "computer rage" to the lexicon of modern society. And to roaming tech-support techies' lists of headaches (though, on the upside, they are becoming the knights in shining armor of the Digital Age). Their employers, however, probably aren't too upset about computer rage. "The phenomenon is transforming the nature of technology service, an industry long infamous for being impersonal," the Washington Post reports. "Business is booming for companies with names like Rent-a-Geek, Geeks on Call, and Geek Squad that make house calls to fix computers." The savior-techies of one such company "do triage. The challenge is to recognize which of the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - a given customer is in, and respond accordingly." If this sounds entirely too familiar and your family is in need a little computer-related humor therapy, do not miss BackupTrauma.com, starring John Cleese.

A student's threatening blog

The article in Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover, N.H.) starts with a caveat: "Readers should know that some of the language and images presented in this story may be considered obscene and disturbing." That is not an understatement. The article is about a University of New Hampshire junior who was ordered by administrators to undergo counseling and stop attending a class because of obscenities and threats of violence and murder against the class's professor and fellow students in his blog. "The public blog however did not require a password and could be opened by anyone knowing [his] name," the Democrat reports, adding that the student said it was all intended as a joke, but he has since apologized to the professor by email. The student "said the counseling sessions and being banned from the English class are the only sanctions he has received. He also said he voluntarily took down the journal, which he started his freshman year of high school." That's a long time for his blog to have been available - hopefully it only recently turned threatening. This is a very extreme example of what can go on in the "blogosphere" but a reminder that it's a good idea for parents to be aware of their children's blogging activities - ideally through open parent-child communication, but at least via an occasional Web search of their name in association with other key words in their lives (such as town, school, team, and friends' names). Here's a thorough piece on the subject at MSNBC.

Our personal info online

With all the news about identity theft of late, there has been "a flurry of hype over ZabaSearch.com," CNET reports. The article provides some helpful perspective, saying that ZabaSearch is one of zillions of personal-information search sites (Google turns up some 300 million). It's "no evil Big Brother. It's a search aggregator, and a rather efficient one at that. All the information in its database can be found elsewhere on the Web." It's all public information (which - at first check - means that minors' information doesn't turn up, thankfully). I guess there's small comfort in that only one's birthdate, address, and phone number turn up - you have to pay for background check info! The article's writer, Tom Merritt, points out that ZabaSearch will remove your information but - somewhat shadily - requires even more details to do so. The main point is, though, that you'd really have to go to the sources to get personal info off the Web, and he tells you how. This is another one of those Internet reality checks; convenience has a definite downside. If you read down far enough in the CNET piece, you'll get to a link to another very informative article about "Identity theft remedies in the works," which I'm linking to here in case you don't get that far.