Drivers, don't text!: New campaign

With its "Txtng & Drivng ... It Can Wait" project, AT&T just joined Verizon Wireless in campaigning to stop the practice of texting while driving. AT&T's campaign, aimed at teens, is using "television, radio, print, the Internet, shopping malls, even the protective 'clings' over the front of new cellphones, to target young drivers," USATODAY reports. Verizon Wireless launched its "Don't Text and Drive" campaign last year. Persuading drivers not to text may take time. USATODAY cites the view of Peter Kissinger of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, saying that the national Click It or Ticket seat belt campaign worked "because it has a law generally accepted by the public, a visible enforcement component and a big public awareness effort." USATODAY adds that, in 2008, the latest figures available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "5,870 people died and more than a half-million were hurt in crashes involving a distracted or inattentive driver," and "young, inexperienced drivers are disproportionately represented among these drivers." US 13-to-17-year-olds send or receive an average of 3,146 texts a month, or 10 an hour, on average, for every hour they're not either sleeping or in school, according to Nielsen numbers I recently blogged about. Let's hope that includes every hour that 16- and 17-year-olds aren't driving.

How much teens text: Latest data

US 13-to-17-year-olds send or receive "an average of 3,146 texts a month each" – an average of 10 text messages an hour for every hour they're not either sleeping or in school, MarketingVox.com reports, citing the latest Nielsen figures. For 9-to-12-year-olds, the average is 1,146 texts a month or four an hour. The teen figure was for third quarter 2009, the tween one for the fourth quarter. Compare those youth numbers to the average number of monthly texts for all mobile users: 500. As for methodology, in its blog post about these findings, Nielsen reports that it "analyzes more than 40,000 mobile bills every month to determine what consumers actually are spending their money on."

'Smartbooks' (more than netbooks) aimed at teens

They're different, Forbes points out, though the names of the devices are very new, and "smartbooks" haven't even hit store shelves yet. The jury's out on whether teens will want the latter, but marketers have been plans for the teen market. Qualcomm and Sharp "expect at least a dozen smartbooks incorporating their chips to debut in early 2010." Here's the theoretical difference: "Smartbooks will be more affordable than netbooks, with prices as low as $199. Unlike netbooks, which resemble laptop computers with their hinged or 'clamshell' shape," smartbooks will be flat and tablet-shaped. One market went to Savannah College of Art & Design graduate students to help refine the product, Forbes reports. The design students said teens want "intuitive, trendy and powerful devices that become extensions of themselves" and help them "keep up with their hectic lives at a low price point." Sounds like good advice that, if taken, might materialize into a hybrid between laptops and cellphones that might actually become a trend, fellow parents.

Cellphones in class: New study on cheating

On average, US teens send and receive more than 2,000 text messages a month, according to Nielsen figures, and a new study sponsored by Common Sense Media found that - despite many school policies to the contrary - a quarter of those texts are sent and received during class! Common Sense zoomed in on the opportunities this represents for cheating on texts, pointing to these key findings: 26% of students surveyed have stored notes on a cellphone to access during a test, 41% of the students surveyed say doing so is cheating and a 'serious offense'," and 23% don't think it's cheating; 25% of students have texted friends about answers during tests, 45% says this is "cheating and a serious offense," and 20% say it’s not cheating at all; 36% "say that downloading a paper from the Internet to turn in is not a serious cheating offense" and 19% say it isn’t cheating at all. "The results of this poll show a great need for a national discussion on digital ethics," Common Sense says in its press release. Hear, hear! There is no question a national discussion on digital ethics is needed - has been needed for some time - but not just with regard to cheating and plagiarism. What needs to be understood nationwide (worldwide, actually) is that ethics and the respect and civility associated therewith is protective as well. Ethics is protective of individuals and the communities - online communities and school communities - in which they function. And not just legally protective. Ethics, civility, respect, and citizenship mitigate aggression toward and disrespect for individual and collective rights and responsibilities. That is another national discussion we need to have, I feel.

But back to the important academics question. The other side of this needing to be addressed is what testing should look like in the digital age. As my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid writes in the San Jose Mercury News today, "Cheating is cheating regardless of whether you use technology or old-fashioned paper notes. But in addition to admonishing kids about why it's wrong to cheat, perhaps it's also time to rethink what it means to evaluate students in the age of the Internet and omnipresent mobile devices." Here's the San Francisco Chronicle on the Common Sense study, mentioning the organization's great new work in media literacy). [Here's my earlier post on the Nielsen teen-texting figure.]

Md. students seek cellphone rules change

Cellphones are banned from Montgomery County (Md.) schools, but there's still plenty of texting going on in the classroom. So, since texting is so inextricable from their lives now, the students - led by Quratul-Ann Malik, a high school senior - are taking a resolution before the county school board, asking it to allow high school students to use cellphones during lunchtime, the Washington Post reports. "A Facebook group to promote her cause attracted 1,200 members in three days." But she faces "entrenched opposition," not only in Montgomery County. There and in nine surrounding counties, cellphone rules are pretty archaic, "written when few students carried cellphones and 'text' was not yet a verb. Today, they are difficult to enforce. The main problem is texting, which has supplanted talking and note-passing as the distraction of choice in many classrooms." I recently talked with some university law professors, who felt there was no way they could ask students to put away distracting technology in their classes. They said they need to embrace it - not as purely social or "distraction" tools, but as learning tools - and they are beginning to. Here are just two professors who are using social media to great advantage, Michael Wesch at Kansas State University and Jason Jones at at Connecticut State University. I know college and high school are very different environments, but progressive thinking occurring at both secondary and post-secondary levels will spread - though not far, maybe, before Qurantul-Ann graduates (if she hasn't already).

Phone bans don't work: Oz expert

After two girls were suspended from Ascham School - a boarding school for girls in an eastern suburb of Sydney - for harassing fellow students, "the school sent a letter to parents urging them to take their children's mobile phones away from them at night to try and stop abusive messages circulating," ABC News Australia reports. But ABC talked with the general manager of Kids Helpline, a free phone counseling service for Australians 5-25, who said that she's "wary about confiscating phones and warns parents they need to be careful not to alienate their children too much." She said bans can work against the victims as much as against the bullies. She told ABC that the victims could go "further inside themselves," which makes it tougher for caregivers and school officials to know what's going on with them, and "13- and 14-year-olds like the girls involved at Ascham are the most likely to be affected."

Texting at meals: Usually *really* not cool

"Husbands, wives, children and dinner guests who would never be so rude as to talk on a phone at the family table seem to think it’s perfectly fine to text," the New York Times reports. A therapist told the Times that texting while eating has become a major topic between spouses in marital counseling. It's as if the issue - for old and young cellphone users alike - is sound levels rather than attention to the people present. One dad admitted that, though he never texted at the table, he did read emails. "A few months ago, a family meeting was convened. The ... 7-year-old twin daughters made their feelings known. Their father agreed to cease using his iPhone during dinner" and told the Times he was 95% there. The Times adds that, among adults, men are the worst mealtime phone users, while among teens, girls are). [See also "House rules for teen texting" and "Cellphone etiquette."]

When does texting get unhealthy?

The teen texting rate keeps climbing. US teens sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages a month in the fourth quarter of 2008, the New York Times reports, citing Nielsen figures. That's "almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier." The Times cites one psychotherapist as saying that adolescents' huge interest in what's going on with peers plus huge anxiety about being out of the loop spell the potential for "great benefit and great harm" from excessive texting. Other healthcare professionals pointed to potential "anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation." As interesting to me, if not more, were comments from MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, who wonders whether all the texting allows teens the "peace and quiet" they need to do their jobs as adolescents: separate from their parents and figure out who they are and will be. Turkle makes two other important points: that parents often don't set the right example with their cellphone use, and adolescence is a time when people need the kind of undivided attention from their parents that cellphone-addicted parents aren't giving them. "I believe the 'cure' doesn't lie so much in hand-wringing or policing usage as much as it does in having honest dialogues about the scientific and emotional side effects of tech dependence as experienced by both generations," writes Ypulse managing editor Meredith Sires in response to the Times piece. Well put. See also "'Continuous partial attention...'."

House rules for teen texting

I really like MomHouston's "10 rules for tween texting", but I recommend that - before they're unveiled (ideally in a family discussion) - parents have repercussions in mind for when rules are not followed, as well as for who pays when a phone's dropped in a tub or pool! Most of these are great for teens too, especially "No texting after bedtime," "Answer me when I'm texting you," and "More than 10 texts in a row and it's time to pick up the phone" (some of these fall under the "Get a life" category, or in the Think About the Message Behind the Text Department). So much of this is common sense and courtesy, which stand us all in good stead regardless of age or the technology or device being used. For example, "Don't text while fighting" is just the cellular version of "If you're angry, sleep on it" (before you write, call, comment, email, blog, etc., etc.). This is about parenting, not technology! As we model this phone behavior for our kids, fewer rules are needed. A couple of MomHouston's rules are more like pet peeves, which is fine - one size never fits all where kids' tech use is concerned. One minor point where I differ with her: I'm not entirely sure I'd want my kids to turn off the ringer - sometimes it's good to hear how much they're texting, especially when they're supposed to be focused on something else, such as homework or what Grandma's saying! Lord knows their phones are on vibrate and they're in stealth mode enough of the time. But tell me if you disagree with any of this (in comments here or in our ConnectSafely forum. For more on ageless cellphone etiquette for everybody, see this in the Washington Post.

Nokia wants to help family communication

If you're interested in how a mobile phone maker is thinking about how to improve family communication, listen to Rafael Ballagas at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto describe what his group - which does research for implementation 5-10 years out - is finding. They're looking at current family practices with an eye toward "promoting a stronger sense of family," Ballagas said. One thing they've found is that a lot of families still use standard voice calls, while children, particularly around 7 or 8, "have a lot of different difficulties communicating on cellphones," from cognitive (e.g. holding a phone up to their heads in a sustained way, pointing at things the listener can't see) to social (such as the give-and-take of voice conversations) to motivational (getting kids to stay engaged in audio-only conversations).

Teen's suicide over sexting

It's a tragedy no parent can imagine, and this teenage suicide was over nude photos she sent to her "boyfriend" last spring. Her mother, Cynthia Logan, went public on national television today so that other teens won't make the same mistake. The sexting incident involving her only child, then-18-year-old Jesse Logan. NBC reports that "she had sent nude pictures of herself to a boyfriend. When they broke up, he sent them to other high school girls. The girls were harassing her, calling her a slut and a whore. She was miserable and depressed, afraid even to go to school." Her mother told Today "she never knew the full extent of her daughter’s anguish until it was too late. Cynthia Logan only learned there was a problem at all when she started getting daily letters from her daughter’s school reporting that the young woman was skipping school." The tragedy illustrates the importance of getting and keeping young people talking with parents or other trusted adults about the online and on-phone part of their social lives too. A recent study at UCLA found that only 10% of youth report incidents of digital harassment and bullying (see "Online harassment: Not telling parents."

Cellphone to be No. 1 access tool: Study

By 2020, the mobile phone will be the main tool for connecting to the Internet for most of the world's people, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's latest "Internet Evolution" study. "The study asked a group of 'Internet leaders, activists and analysts' to forecast what they expect to be the major technology advances of the next decade," the Washington Post reports. Two other interesting predictions concerned social tolerance and virtual reality, and the experts polled seem to have felt just as uncertain as the rest of us about what impact connective technology will have on human relations and social tolerance: "The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness." Their prediction about virtual reality lines up with teens' approach to tech for some time: "divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations."

Tech & the ties that bind: Study

American families are into their digital communications, and this is "enabling new forms of family connectedness," a new nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found. The study found that "89% of married-with-children households own multiple cellphones" (47% three or more), and 57% of the 7-to-17-year-olds in those households have their own cellphones; 58% of those households have two-or more computers (63% of them connected via home network); and in 76% of those households, both spouses use the Net, in 84% of them youth 7-17 use the Net, and in 65% of those households just about everybody's online. Two-thirds of the US's 2-parent households with children have broadband Internet access. It's interesting to see what the respondents themselves say about the impact this has on family ties. When the parents were asked if this use of cellphones and the Net has brought their family closer than when they were growing up, 60% there wasn't much difference (maybe the increase in digital communications compensates for a proportionate increase in everybody's busyness?), 25% said closer, 11% not as close, and 4% didn't know or didn't want to answer. In its coverage, the Washington Post cites researchers as saying "the heaviest technology users are also people with the heaviest work schedules." USATODAY tells of a family in New York that uses Twitter to keep in high-frequency touch. Here too are Information Week and about 5 dozen other reports on the study.

Mobile Web's arrived

"The mobile Web is here, and it's huge," reports Chris O'Brien in the San Jose Mercury News. This from a reporter who started covering telecommunications in 1999 and heard at countless mobile industry trade shows that "next year is when the mobile Internet really takes off." As evidence, sure there's the iPhone nearing its goal of selling 10 million unites, the coming new, non-business-y versions of the BlackBerry, Google's new Android OS for mobile phones, and the "countless developers rushing to build new applications" for phones. "But more than anything, my recognition of this moment is based on personal experience." He got the BlackBerry curve and "I've been completely shocked at how indispensable it's become and how it's changed the way I work and communicate," and he's not a gadget freak and this isn't his first BlackBerry. This one's his mobile computer, where he manages all his email in odd moments, reads his news, comments on friends' profiles, sends his Twitter tweets, posts to his blog, snaps and sends loads of pictures, and - through GPS-enabled software called Telenav - finds the nearest ATM or coffee spot wherever he is. Add game-playing, which is not on Chris's list, and you're looking at how our kids use phones. Good filtering between their ears is increasingly the best online-safety "application." See also "Tweens are into phones", with Nielsen Mobile research showing that 26% of US 8-to-12-year-olds owning cellphones (46% using them) and 77% of US 13-to-17-year-olds owning them.

Landlines out the window?

Well, not quite, but the number of people abandoning landline phone service is rising, especially among youth. JupiterResearch found that 12% of Internet users don't have fixed phone service and almost two-thirds of the 12% are between 18 and 34, the New York Times reports. Another 12% "indicate their intent to replace home phone service with exclusive cellphone use during the next 12 months," the Times adds. Still, fixed phone use is still pretty high: 70% of Net users still have fixed lines in their homes provided by a phone, 15% have fixed phone service from a cable company, and 3% from an Internet service provider.

Parents speaking 'txt'?

This is probably not news to you: Many technologically challenged parents are being introduced to the world of texting by their children, the Denver Post reports. "Statistics point emphatically to kids and young adults under 25 driving the tidal surge in text messaging - up fourfold in the past two years to almost 30 billion messages a month," the Post cites wireless industry figures as showing. But I love the basic message of the article, that "the process of young people instructing their parents can be gratifying for both." It tells of an Arizona computer services company advising parents that it's fun to surprise your kids by sending them an out-of-the-blue message like, "I love you" or "What would you like for dinner?" Meanwhile, it looks like 2007 is the year when Americans will have spent more on cellphones than on landlines, the Associated Press reports.