Trying to block MySpace at school (or home or anywhere) is getting harder, since…
1. “For teens, the future is mobile,” CNET reports, and
2. MySpace (not to mention other social sites) is getting increasingly mobile.
MySpace just announced its new social-networking app for the iPhone (available free in iPhone’s App Store), Internet News reports. With it, iPhone users can “search the network and add friends, compose and delete mail, and send bulletin blasts to all their friends [in 12 languages so far]. It will also offer the ability to upload and share pictures” and music. MySpace is also available on Helio phones, the T-Mobile Sidekick and other AT&T phones – not to mention its deals so far with 27 carriers in 20 countries offering m.myspace.com (MySpace tailored just for those little mobile screens). MediaPost says games and social networking “lead the way” in the App Store, now with 500 applications in it. And social networking on phones is only just taking off – ITbusiness.ca calls mobile social networking a “goldmine of untapped business opportunities.” So, for youth, filtering workarounds are getting easier by the moment. As my tech educator friend Anne Bubnic wrote, this is “another good reason we need to focus on digital citizenship rather than block sites – kind of like trying to block out fresh air when it’s all around you, anyway.” Parents might consider setting parental controls on kids’ iPhones themselves, though, since 6 out of 10 of the most popular apps named by a site that rates iPhone apps (which was pointed out by a reader and to which NetFamilyNews can’t ethically link) are selling porn. For a mobile social-networking reality check, a study in the UK, where youth mobile phone use is even higher than in the US, found that “only 24% of Internet users access social-networking sites with a mobile phone,” mocoNews.net reports.
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