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April 25, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

We recently had great fun talking, IM-ing, emailing with three teenage tech users in the UK and on the East and West Coasts of the US - as well as their parents. We've put the results of these insightful interviews into a four-part series that starts this week. We hope you'll enjoy hearing from Will, Elizabeth, and Steve as much as we did.

Here's our lineup for this last full week of April:


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Conversations with teens about tech, Part 1: Instant-messaging

The experts we turned to in our research for this series were Will, 16, in northern California (via phone and email interviews), Liz, 17, in the United Kingdom (with an interview in instant-messaging and an email followup), and Steve, 16, in upstate New York (phone and email) - as well as their parents, all of whom are quite tech-literate themselves.

Clearly No. 1 on the list of top technologies for online teens in the US, IM is also coming up fast in the UK, where mobile-phone "texting" (sending text messages by cell phone) is the teen communications tool of choice. As long as a year ago, a whopping 83% of US 18-to-19-year-olds used the Net for instant- messaging (70% of 12-to-17-year-olds), according to an AOL survey cited by CyberAtlas. Both Will and Steve say IM's the Internet application they use most - easily surpassing email, surfing (including Web research for school), and cell phones. Those percentages have to be even higher now.

Will: "I use it to communicate with all my acquaintances around the country - people I knew before we moved, people I've met from different bands I've been in [he plays bass and trumpet] - and a lot for uploading and sharing music that I record. It's great - I can send it to all my friends."

Steve: IM's "a major tool now for high school students - it's so much easier than using the phone.... I can't even remember a time when I wasn't in constant contact with anyone I'd need to talk to." Beyond IM, Steve chats with a whole different set of friends - more long-distance, more tech-literate - in "old-fashioned" Internet relay chat (using downloadable chat software that creates private, members-only chat that's not on the Web). They also use IRC to share music, so more on this next week.

For Liz, it's her new favorite, having just recently pulled ahead of texting in her esteem, but each has its advantages: "Texting is instant, and you don't have to have a long conversation with someone if you don't want to. You can just not reply. It is also quick to tell lots of different people the same thing. IM is good for conversations. I talk to some people I wouldn't see otherwise. And it's free, so you don't have to worry about the conversation going on too long. And, compared to the phone, it's easier to stop a conversation."

The joke about cell phones in Will's experience is that, at his school in California, where "just about everybody has one," they're used like walkie- talkies. "I'll be in the lunchroom and they'll be in the hall," and they'll call him just to find out where he is at any given moment. "It's just a nice tool - not as necessary as IM," but very necessary, he quickly added, when used the way his and a lot of parents envisioned cell phones for: "to keep in contact so they wouldn't worry about me." Steve's school in New York has a no-cell-phones-in- school rule, so "the only time anyone would ever call anyone else in school would just be to make someone's phone ring during an assembly and embarrass the person."

We asked all three how they use IM, and our interview with Liz was actually conducted *via* IM because it's so much cheaper than phone across the Atlantic. Here's what we learned:

All three use it pretty much just to chat with people they know - for Steve mostly people at school. Will's IM circle is much wider, but it sounds as if the bulk of his IM-ing is also with local buddies. Liz likes IM better than a Web chat room, she told us, because she doesn't like chatting with friends in a place where people she doesn't know could be listening or joining in.

Liz is in a part of the world where "texting" is used for teen communications a great deal more than IM, which is only beginning to catch on (including in her own social life). Why is it rapidly on the rise? we asked her. Because, she patiently explained, if you already have a Net connection at home, it's a lot cheaper than mobile phone costs. There are lots of mobile phone fee plans in the UK, as in North America, but for Liz, she told us, texting can easily add up to nearly 20 pounds (around $32) a month (she's texting about five hours a week max, she told us) - one good reason why IM's attractive! But it's also a novel new communications toy for her active social life.

Liz uses IM more as a recreational tool when she has time in her life to relax and chat with friends - probably more like the way adults would use it at home (not work). Steve and Will, partly because they're in the US, where IM's more ubiquitous with teens, just have it running in the background all the time, it appears.

Multi-thread conversation as wallpaper! Psychologists and academics will be looking at this one with fascination. A 16-year-old comes home to his 24/7 connection at 4pm, logs onto IM, and carries on a running conversation with 6-20 mostly school friends for the next eight or nine hours! These kids are thoughtful: Will said that if he has a question about a mutual school assignment and it's midnight - too late to call a friend - he'll just IM with him. Of course Steve and Will have other tools running in the background too - e.g., tunes for both and, for Steve, sometimes a text-based multi-player game as well as the IRC chat mentioned above, with his music friends.

A note about texting on cell phones: It occurred to us while "talking" with Liz in IM that - for kids in Europe and Asia, where it's extremely popular - phones and IM really have different uses and kind of complement each other. This will probably be the case in North America too, when Net-connected cell phones take off. In other words, IM is an addition to texting - it won't replace it. One more tool for already fluidly multi-tasking teenagers! But as for the way the two complement one another, here are some examples: Liz uses texting a lot for "arranging things" - short conversations to set up get-togethers, etc. For her, text conversations can be as long as 10 times back and forth, but of course they're mostly one- or two-line comments. It's a very efficient technology, she feels. IM, on the other hand, is less a means to an end (such as a get-together) and more social - purely for recreational chat.

IM can be a little more reflective than texting, but really only when you use it like Steve or Will - you're just online all the time and you dash off a thought whenever it pops into mind. For having a name like AIM (AOL's version) IM's really very aimless. It's like having someone you're very comfortable with in the same room doing something else such as reading a book or working on some project but able to comment on anything, off the cuff, anytime. The amazing thing to think about is that the two casually connected people could be thousands of miles apart.

IM, clearly, is more like chat in a Web chatroom than a phone conversation - definitely safest for kids to use when they're IM-ing/chatting with people they know. "Don't talk to strangers" is as good a rule in cyberspace as in person - especially for younger IM-ers - meaning, block from your buddy list *any* strangers who try to IM with you (they do all the time). The anonymity of cyberspace provides a false sense of security - something to which children need to be alerted to. Another deceiving thing about chat and IM is the fact that participants feel one step removed from reality and therefore aren't as conscious that what they say online can have very real impact on the people they're chatting with. IM-ers need to be just as aware of the consequences of what they say in cyberspace as in a classroom or on the phone. And you have fewer inputs - it's hard to tell how people react to what you say. There's no nuance, really - not even the kind you can pick up on in a phone conversation, much less the body language of a face-to-face conversation. So IM is not very useful for getting to know someone new, better for idle chitchat with good buddies or simply swapping information in a straightforward way.

[Teens have told staff members at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that - after months of "getting to know" someone in IM or chat (it's called "grooming," where pedophiles are concerned)- they really believed they "knew" the person, before they were aware of a very real threat.]

Another IM reality is what the mother of a 13-year-old in Minnesota told us when she called recently. Kids on her child's buddy list feel very comfortable using profanity, talking about sex and porn, and trying out racist language in instant-messaging (her daughter is comfortable sharing her IM experience with her mom). The language doesn't phase her daughter because she hears it all the time. The mother knows of one child who spoke of suicide in IM and another trying out a white supremacist persona. It's difficult to tell if/when teens are role-playing, showing off, or serious and needing help, and the mother wondered if it would help the one very angry-sounding child to inform authorities at his school.

Please email us your family's experiences with instant-messaging - we love sharing what you've learned with fellow readers.

Next week: The very social online music scene - what our interviewees think of file-sharing/P2P & other technologies. Part 3 will look at other aspects of the online life of teens - hobbies, habits, and perspectives, and we'll wrap the series up with parents' views on all the above.

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For further reading on how young people are using instant-messaging, here's a recent article in the New York Times: "Making a Statement, in Absentia". And for 3 Japanese teens' fascinating account of "texting" in everyday life, check out p. 8 of "Children, Mobile Phones, and the Internet: The Mobile Internet and Children" from Childnet International.

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Web News Briefs

  1. Amazon.com challenged on kids' privacy, takes quick action

    One day after 11 privacy, consumer, and child advocacy organizations went public with a kids'-privacy complaint about Amazon.com, the site said it had "removed children's identifying information from its Web sites." According to Advertising Age, "Amazon said it never intended to disclose the information, and that the children who were identified online had bypassed steps intended to list their comments anonymously." The children, who were under 13, had included their email and home addresses in toy review they'd posted in Amazon's toy store. The advocacy organizations had accused Amazon of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by allowing kids to post reviews without their parents' consent, as well as to post personal information in the reviews. This week they filed a complaint with the FTC. The Washington Post reports that, "by targeting Amazon.com, EPIC lawyers said they hoped to persuade the FTC to extend enforcement of the law to retailers that sell children's products or market to them. The rules have been applied to sites that have designated children's areas for games or other activities." If the FTC acts on the complaint, the Post continues, "it could make electronic retailers reconsider how they market children's products." Among the organizations are the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Center for Media Education, and the Consumer Federation of America, CNET reports. EPIC's press release has further details.

  2. Parents rally to stop 'cyber-bullying'

    Probably all of us got used to seeing nasty names and slurs scratched on bathroom walls when we were in high school. So nobody should be surprised that it's being done now in Web sites, the new medium of school gossip. It's common in a 3-year-old Web site called schoolscandals.com, the Los Angeles Times reports, adding that the site has an audience of tens of thousands and links to chat rooms about nearly 100 Southern California middle and high schools - a much broader, more public audience in a medium with much greater draw than a bathroom wall. Parents and school administrators are calling for the site to be shut down, dismayed at the cruelty of some of its content. The site's lawyers say that they're trying to shut down free speech, and schoolscandals.com plans to go nationwide over the next two months. "Not all the postings are nasty," the Times reports, though. "Inside a Taft High School chat room at onschoolscandals.com, someone defended one girl who was accused of dating four guys at once and called a 'tramp.' Then the protester wrote: 'The people who sit here and talk smack [are] just jealous of her and what a good and sweet person she is. You really think this hurts her, when in fact it doesn't, it just annoys her. She can care less what [you] pathetic people think of her.' " Last week we featured an award-winning site that helps people deal with bullying of any sort - Bullying.org.

  3. Madonna's twist on file-sharing control

    Madonna seems to want to alienate file-sharing fans (some of the most passionate music fans) as much as the recording industry does. Not to mention parents. But she and the Recording Industry Association of America apparently don't think there are parents on file-sharing networks too. Because, timed to the launch of her latest album, "American Life," file-sharing networks were flooded with fake tracks containing no music but instead the voice of Madonna saying, "What the #&*% do you think you are doing?" the BBC reports. "One of the tactics used by record labels to thwart music pirates is to swamp file-sharing networks such as Kazaa with decoys," the BBC adds. "In Madonna's case, the fake tracks are being used to send a blunt message to people trying to get hold of her music for free. The fakes appear to be full-length songs, so anyone downloading them does not know they have been tricked until they play the files." According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, other ways she's controlling her album's release include: no advances sent to journalists (they're asked to listen to the record at her publicist's office) and no music rented out via subscription services such as MusicNet.com, Pressplay.com and Rhapsody. Using Madonna's own colorful verbiage, hackers responded last weekend by hacking Madonna's site, replacing her content with links to pirated versions of her full album, CNET reports.

    Meanwhile, the story about the RIAA suing individual students is being picked up by papers and other news media all over the US (see our coverage 4/11). In a twist on it - quite possibly fearing lawsuits against its own students, if not itself - Pennsylvania State University banned 220 students from file-sharing on its network, Internet News reported this week. Here's Rolling Stone's view of the music industry targeting students and schools, providing history and useful context. In keeping with our series starter above, Rolling Stone points out that file-sharing networks aren't the only placing where music piracy occurs. "America Online's Instant Messenger program is a major vehicle of illegal trading, but the RIAA isn't suing Time Warner any time soon." The Minneapolis Star Tribune and the New York Times weighed in on the student litigation topic, too, this week.

    Of course, the basic issue behind all these efforts is musicians and record companies' fear that they won't get paid (though plenty of musicians like file-sharing, including indies and unsigned bands, Rolling Stone points out). The Daily Princetonian this week published a clearly written perspective about how none of the RIAA's litigation has put "a single nickel into the pockets of a musician" or slowed the spread of peer-to-peer file-sharing. "More Americans have used file-sharing software than voted for the President," the writer, Fred von Lohmann, points out. He is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which could be characterized as standing on the freedom-of-file-sharing side of this debate (an excellent one for the classroom or debate clubs!).

  4. Schools unwiring?

    A growing number of US schools are going wireless, which means the Internet is really moving beyond the media lab now. "Over 90% of students attend the 110,000 public schools throughout the United States from kindergarten through 12th grade. These schools combined spend about $6.2 billion a year on technology needs, including hardware, software, networking equipment and staff development," Reuters reports. Of that, about $500 million was spent on wireless technologies last school year, Reuters continues, a figure that is expected to have doubled this year and quadruple in 2003-'04.

  5. Software piracy & you

    Anyone who thinks copying and using a friend's software is the perfect crime because the only victim is Bill Gates has another thing coming. The other victim, the BBC reports, is all of us. The article leads with Matthew, who in his undergraduate years copied many a software program - in fact, that was about the only kind of software he used. Until, on vacation in Malaysia, he bought a super-cheap copy of Microsoft FrontPage for a song. It was "laced with the Chernobyl virus" and cost him more than $1,000 in computer repairs. "For software companies, piracy means lost revenue, which in turn means fewer jobs, scaled-back operations and less tax for the public purse. For users, counterfeit software may be a false economy. The program may contain a virus or be incomplete; and the user will have no entitlement to future upgrades. For businesses, there's the threat of legal action and hefty fines." The UK isn't the only place where that's true. Most kids aren't aware of these implications, whether micro or macro, so family computers (as well as budgets and busy schedules) can benefit from parents' alertness. Our thanks to QuickLinks for pointing this piece out.

  6. Spammers are still winning...

    ...in the fight against spam, the New York Times reports. The article gives you an inside look at spam marketing - those people who send out messages about fixing your credit rating, cheap toner cartridges, and much less innocuous products and services. It is becoming harder, but "with a simple computer hookup and a mailing list, it is [still] remarkably easy and inexpensive to start a career in email marketing" and think up ways to get past burgeoning email filters, according to the Times. But not hard enough. It's not a pretty picture: "The microscopic cost of sending email, compared with the price of postal mailings, allows senders to make money on products bought by as little as one recipient for every 100,000 email messages." Catch the article for a great survey of all the efforts afoot to tackle the spam problem.

  7. Blogging ethics

    The blogging world is abuzz about ethics, according to CyberJournalist.net - particularly the lack thereof in the case Sean-Paul Kelley, a Texas blogger who admitted to plagiarizing for his "popular war blog," The Agonist. If kid bloggers (children and teens who put their journals and diaries online - find examples any/all types of blogs at Eatonweb or blogwise) have noticed this debate, it's certainly a healthy one - not just for blogging but for classroom applications as well.

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 


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