Major update on teen tech use

Were we this nuanced as teenage communicators?! I learned from the just-released study of "Teens and Technology" by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that, for today's 12-to-17-year-olds…

* Email is adults' communications tool, so it's more for communicating with them, not peers - and maybe "a way to convey lengthy and detailed information to large groups."
* Instant-messaging is for everyday casual conversation with friends; and it's "efficient." (One high school girl told Pew that, with IM, "if you only have like an hour and a half to spend on the Internet, then you could talk to like maybe 10 people. Whereas you can only talk to three people if you were going to call.")
* The phone, unlike IM, is for serious conversations, and "the landline phone remains the most dominant communication medium in teens' everyday life" (51% "usually choose" it when they want to talk with friends, as opposed to 24% who usually choose IM and 12% cellphone).
* Away/not online messages in IM - customized, when one's IM service allows, with jokes, coded messages, quotations, etc. - are to maintain "presence" in one's social group even when not in the conversation of the moment. IM is an outlet for personal expression - screennames, profiles, avatars, skins, emoticons, and away messages.
* Face-to-face still rules (an average 12-to-17-year-old spends 10.3 hours a week socializing with friends in person and 7.8 hours/wk socializing via phone, IM, email, or phone-texting).

For more highlights, please click to my newsletter this week.

Email from summer camp

And your distant camper doesn't need a laptop! According to United Press International, s/he hand-writes a letter and hands it to the bunkhouse counselor who goes to the office and faxes the letter to a toll-free number at a company called Bunk1, which emails the note to the parents. Sounds more complicated than sending a letter! But there are other ways kids and parents stay in touch, UPI reports. "Many camps offer their own email service to campers. They charge the parents upwards of a $1 per message for the privilege of communicating daily, while still allowing the kids to experience nature." Video emails may be next (at a slightly higher fee)!

Bloggers vulnerable to hacks

Here's a good reason for bloggers to make sure only people on their blogs' friends or buddy lists can email or instant-message them. This might be a good discussion point for parents and teen bloggers: CNET flags a warning from security firm Websense saying that "cybercriminals are increasingly using blog sites and other free online services to spread malicious code." The criminals lure people to malicious sites with "enticing emails and instant messages." When bloggers click to the sites, their computers become infected. "In one case, a greeting card was displayed and a tune played in the background while spyware was being installed on the compromised PC." It's all about good privacy practices while blogging. Different services - MySpace.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, Blurty.com, etc. - have different privacy features (e.g., only designated friends can read profiles, posts, etc. or only friends can reply to posts or send IMs and emails). If you have a very young blogger at your house, you might go through those features together (your child will know where they are). For more on this, take a look at "A dad on kids' blogs: How father & [12-year-old] daughter worked through the issues."

Ratings confusion

What the controversy surrounding GTA: San Andreas really highlights is confusion over all the ratings - of movies, music, and TV as well as videogames. USATODAY reports that "a cry has gone out" to fix the game ratings system, in fact all the ratings systems. "Even though TV programs, movies, music and video games all carry labels denoting age-appropriateness, parents groups and politicians say the systems aren't working" (USATODAY thoughtfully provides a page of ratings charts that's about as clear as it can be). Critics cited are the Parents Television Council and the National Institute on Media and the Family. David Walsh, head of the latter organization, told USATODAY that universal ratings need to revisited because of the media convergence we're experiencing - the ability to hop from music video to TV show to game all on one device. Patricia Vance, head of the game industry's Entertainment Software Rating Board, said the system's fine - San Andreas was an "isolated incident." It would be great to hear these experts discuss the pros and cons of a universal rating system, which undoubtedly would be complicated (here's 2001 testimony in the US Senate, about why it's "unworkable," by Douglas Lowenstein, head of the video and PC game industry's trade association). USATODAY cites a number of examples of commercial and nonprofit services that are tackling the convergence problem by putting reviews of multiple child-targeting media in one place (the article should've included California-based CommoneSenseMedia.org), but raising parents' awareness of these services is a costly challenge.

Kid exposure to porn on phones: Study

A new study on kids' exposure to online pornography warns that wireless technology "opens the door for more unsupervised access by minors to online pornography," Wireless Week reports. "The Porn Standard: Children and Pornography on the Internet," released this week by "liberal think tank Third Way" and cited on NBC's Today show Wednesday, found that "one-third of children 11-17 have their own cell phones today," half will have them in the next couple of years; "pornography already constitutes half of the multimedia traffic carried by US wireless carriers outside of their own portals"; and revenues from pornography delivered via mobile devices are projected to increase by more than 50% this year, and "perhaps triple by 2009." For some of those numbers it cited other studies. The Today show picked up on these surprising figures in the report: "The largest group of consumers of adult material on the Internet was 12-17 years old" and "57% of 9-to-19-year-olds with Internet access have accessed online porn." Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) of Arkansas unveiled the study when she announced she'll be introducing a bill called the "Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005." The bill includes a 25% federal tax on Net pornography and "new requirements for adult Web sites to help prevent children from looking at them," the Associated Press reports. (Senator Lincoln is listed as honorary co-chair on Third Way's Web site, according to the Wireless Week report.) Parental controls for cellphones are in the works in the US - for that story, see my 5/6 issue.

Critics of kid phones

A group of child advocates "including the singer Raffi, Harvard child psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, and conservative political operative Phyllis Schlafly" are calling on Congress to investigate the marketing and sale of mobile phones to children, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. In letters to the commerce committees of both houses of Congress, they're protesting the creation of the 8-12 market niche whereby marketers can bypass parents and "talk" directly to kids. They're also asking lawmakers to look into whether "adults other than parents could contact children by phone, and whether individuals other than parents could track the physical location of the child's phone." The letters register concerns about classroom disruptions, billing practices, and whether it's healthy for kids to use cellphones. The Sun-Times quotes the letters as citing Disney's soon-to-launched kids' phone service (in partnership with Sprint - see this at NFN); it's not clear if the writers mention others. But the Sun-Times adds some of the latest developments in this niche: "Firefly Mobile has signed up 100,000 users under age 12 since March. Firefly phones connect with parent-programmed phone numbers at the touch of one button…. Coming soon: child-targeted phone service from Enfora for children as young as 6, Global Positioning System through Wherify, a Barbie brand mobile phone from Mattel and one from Hasbro called 'Chat Now'."

Grandmother sues GTA makers

Upset that she bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing it included hidden X-rated content, a grandmother in New York this week is suing Rockstar Games and its parent Take Two Interactive, the Associated Press reports. Filing her lawsuit in a federal court in Manhattan, Florence Cohen is seeking "unspecified damages on behalf of herself and all consumers nationwide, saying the company should give up its profits from the game for what amounted to false advertising, consumer deception and unfair business practices." Meanwhile, The Sims is facing fallout. "An anti-game crusader" and attorney in Florida is pressuring Electronic Arts to take action against people who modify The Sims 2 in a way that "unblurs" naked characters in that game, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The attorney, Jack Thompson, "who has tangled often with the makers of video games," says Sims 2 should be "next on the list to be re-rated as an 'adults only' game." EA responded that this was "nonsense," since even when the mod's in place, the "naked" characters look like store mannequins - they're not anatomically correct. For perspective, the Wall Street Journal reports that mods and "Easter eggs" are nothing new, and most aren't nearly as risqué as the "Hot Coffee" mod (for GTA: San Andreas) that sparked all the controversy. [Mods are bits of code circulating the Net that gamers can download to modify games, Easter eggs are hidden content within games and DVDs that are "unlocked" by mods or found in a kind of treasure hunt done with a remote or controller. Many parents have heard of a third kind of game tweak or add-on called "cheats," which are codes gamers get on the Web to enhance a character's powers, go to the next level, etc.]