December 21, 2001
Dear Subscribers:
We will be on holiday break next week. The next issue will arrive in your In-Boxes January 4. Meanwhile, we wish all of you every joy this holiday season! Here's our lineup for this third week of December:
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Your rules: 2001 Survey results
We have smart subscribers. For example, here's sound
advice for kids that one of you shared in a response to our 2001 Subscriber
Survey: "Remember that many people live fantasy lives online - they very likely
are not who they appear to be." Sexual predators wouldn't have much reason
to hang out in public chat rooms if more children digested those wise words.
They remind us of some similarly good advice shared recently: The best filter
is what lies between a child's ears (and their parents and teachers can help
them to develop that)!
On the other hand, we were dismayed to see in the
new Kaiser Family Foundation survey (see last week's issue )
that nearly a third (31%) of teenage Net users in the US have access to the
Internet from their bedrooms. That's a cardinal online-safety rule: to have
connected computers kids use in high-traffic areas of the house, not where
kids and teens enjoy some privacy. It was one of the Top 3 online safety rules
on a number of your survey responses.
As for all the responses: In answer to our
question, "What are your Top 3 rules for kids' safe/constructive Internet
use?", here are the three rules you shared most (by number of respondents
providing them):
- Do not share personal information online (name,
address, phone number, or any other identifying details). This was by far
the No. 1 rule you provided - an important one!
- Stated various ways: Do not visit any adult/bad/inappropriate/sexually
explicit Web sites.
- Basically, "don't 'talk' to strangers" was the third
most well-established rule, taking various forms - no email with people
you don't know, no online chat with strangers, no instant-messaging with
strangers, etc.
Other rules you cited a lot (in order of popularity)
include:
- No chat (at all).
- Tell a parent if you run into something you're not
comfortable with online.
- Only go to sites pre-approved by your parents (a
variation is "age-appropriate sites only").
- Don't go online without our permission.
- Don't chat if we're not present; don't use the Internet
without our being present/at home; and limit the time you spend online (some
parents impose curfews, other a one-hour/day limit, for example).
And we'd be remiss not to publish some less-used rules
that are still very useful: Immediately close any Web page that isn't what you
wanted; Don't open an email message if you don't know who it's from; No downloads;
Be careful about opening attachments; Don't make arrangements to meet with anyone
you meet online; An adult must be with you when you're using a search engine;
Use the Web for school research only; and various instant-messaging rules -
none before 5th grade, only with a parent present, and only with relatives.
Send in your family Internet-use policies and
rules - especially ones you feel we've missed here. We'd be delighted to share
them with your fellow subscribers. The address is feedback@netfamilynews,
of course.
* * * *
A subscriber writes:
Animated e-messages
Subscriber Elaine in New Jersey took the time to email
us over the weekend about a fun service for kids she's run into:
"I just came across a great site for animated email
cards for kids. I learned of it through a news article saying how much English
teenage girls loved it. Didn't see any commercials or links and it's really
neat: http://www.funmail.com. Please let me know what you think. Thanks."
Editor's note: Move
over instant-messaging
FunMail is a cutting-edge little service that has
a way of bringing out the kid in anyone - turning text in email and on tiny
mobile/cell phone screens into little animations. It's fun and free for those
who use it with email, but the company's really focusing on cell phones, which
haven't yet taken off among US teens. David
Coursey of ZDNet explains why in his extremely useful piece about kids
and SMS (for Short Message System), or text messages on cell phones, which
itself sends the strong (and surprisingly conservative) message, "We've got
to stop it [SMS] before it gains a foothold on these shores."
The following certainly is more information than Elaine
asked for, but parents and educators will want to know more about this technology's
pluses and minuses.
First its appeal: The
Guardian recently reported that 90% of 11-to-16-year-olds in the UK have
mobile phones. FunMail itself sponsored a survey
of users at British teen site mykindaplace.com
that gives a feel for how much SMS compares with the easy-going, light, stay-in-touch
feel of IM and chat in the US. David Coursey points to data showing that "in
countries overseas, users - mostly young people - partake in this activity
some 750 million times each day. It's reported that in Finland, young people
spend as much as 90% of their allowance to pay for it and related items....
Kids love it because it puts them in immediate and constant touch with friends.
Cellular telephone carriers - think of them as SMS pushers - love the little
messages because they burn up connect time or per-message charges. That's
where the allowance money goes."
A useful example David gives (of why he doesn't like
to see kids using SMS) is the site SMS.ac ("ac" stands for "always connected"),
"which is intended to draw American youth into the SMS frenzy." The site,
David writes, "thinks it's ahead of the curve by offering the ability to send
a message to any SMS user today. The company has created SMS aliases to hide
your telephone number. It also offers a variety of SMS user clubs, including
those for SMS flirting, dating, and, yes, sex, as well as classmate and people
finders, and other services aimed at what looks like a high school and college
crowd."
[Another content provider targeting teen cell-phone
users in the US is "teen portal" Goosehead.com,
which has just teamed up with the PocketBoxOffice "micro-entertainment network"
to provide content for mobile phones. You can see exactly what it looks like
and what kind of content the network provides teens on this
page.]
It's not that mobile phones are bad, David says -
among other things, they enable parents and kids to keep track of each other,
as SafeKids.com's
Larry Magid points out. It's SMS that David doesn't like.
Is he being old-fashioned, or forward-looking? Email
us your views (via feedback@netfamlynews.org)! There's a lot of interesting
feedback below David's somewhat inflammatory column, including this one: "I'm
an American in Europe with 2 teenagers - One of the them related this to me
just yesterday: that during their exams, a classmate was text-messaging another
who was at home, for ALL OF THE ANSWERS!!! Yikes." But here's another mom
who's a supporter: "My daughter has lived in Switzerland for the past 10 years.
I can send her an SMS message from my email client. I love it. So does she.
Being in North America, I (and you) enjoy local phone service that is not
tied to per-minute ... rates for our phone service. In other words, here,
Internet messaging is 'free," in Europe SMS makes messaging the next best
thing to free, cheap. ISP service in Europe is similarly not cheap, and you
still pay per-minute connect charges for the ISP and tel services. These factors
alone make SMS a good thing." SMS at least presents yet another opportunity
for Net ethics education, no?
* * * *
For young travelers:
Airport security video
Easing kids' fears appears to be one of BrainPOP's
missions - easing fears by providing facts in a kid-friendly format, that
is. Last October this educational filmmaker came out with a short animated
film on anthrax (see our Web News Brief). Now,
for young holiday travelers, BrainPOP explains the ins and outs of airport
security (on this
page) - "measures that are taken to ensure a safe flight." Here's BrainPOP's
press
release on its new film, which runs about 3 minutes and is designed mainly
for preteens.
* * * *
Web News Briefs
- Portals' double standard
MSN.com in the US and MSN.fr (France's 6th-most-visited
Web site) offer very different content between midnight and 3 a.m., according
to MSNBC. Suggesting
a double standard for the two sides of the Atlantic, MSNBC says that during
those hours MSN.fr opens its gateway to pornography on the Internet, pointing
to similar practice at the European version of Yahoo! as well. "When asked
about the risk that their offerings will expose European children to porn,
MSN and other US portals are quick to note that users can't access the
explicit content on their sites without getting by a warning or disclaimer.
But, all youngsters need to do is say they are 18 to get through. Of course,
Americans of any age can easily access all this, too...." In self-defense,
the portals say late-night programming is no different from what's available
on European TV. Here's CNSNews.com's
article, which also mentions similar content on Terra Lycos's European
portal.
- Using the Net to catch Net criminals
The Internet is both friend and foe to child pornographers.
An article in eWeek
this week explains how the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
uses technology to follow up on leads from its CyberTipline (http://www.cybertipline.com
or 800-843-5678) and find the sources of child pornography on the Net.
The National Center (NCMEC) then passes along to the appropriate law enforcement
agencies information that's genuinely useful to them. One type of technology
Tipline analysts use, eWeek reports, is VisualRoute - software that quickly
gives the analysts "information on the location - usually the city - of
a server hosting a Web site or delivering an email message." It's used
for the Tipline's triage, or prioritizing, process that kicks in when
tips - many of them anonymous - are received via phone or email through
the Tipline. EWeek adds that 10-15% of high-priority cases are turned
over to local law enforcement agencies in the cities and states that have
anti-online-child-exploitation laws. "The rest are sent to federal agencies
such as the FBI, US Customs Service, and US Postal Inspection Service."
BTW, from coverage coming out of this week's international
conference in Yokohama on child exploitation, note this well-written Reuters
piece, "The Fight Against Child Abuse Goes High Tech" (via Yahoo.com).
And here's Reuters
on the conference itself.
- Britain's 'Curriculum Online'
It's been billed as "the world's first partnership
between government, leading public/private broadcasters, and software
producers to provide materials for every curriculum subject," according
to The
Guardian. Curriculum Online is a 50-million-pound (about $73 million)
program designed "to help teachers in England bring Internet materials
into the classroom and motivate pupils [mostly 11-to-14-year-olds]," the
paper says. The program will put video and other digital content (that
teachers have downloaded from the Net) on big screens called "whiteboards"
at the front of classrooms. The BBC reportedly is investing 150 million
pounds (about $219 million) in the program. Our thanks to QuickLinks
for pointing this out. As for tech in the classroom on the US side of
the pond, eSchoolNews.com
recently looked at next-generation schools - "small, technology-driven
magnet schools that focus on providing students with the 21st century
skills they need to succeed in the digital world."
- Lingua electronica?
The Internet is not spawning a generation
of illiterates, according to one eminent authority on language. In a review
of David Crystal's new book, "Language and the Internet," the New
York Times relates the contention of this Welsh "producer of many
scholarly volumes" on the English language that the Net "is developing
into a splendid new medium that shows language users at their most inventive,
adapting a variety of styles for a variety of purposes, some formal, some
highly informal." In fact, he says the Internet is the third of the as
yet three most important developments in the history of communication:
1) speech, 2) writing (about 10,000 years ago, he says), and now "computer-mediated
discourse." This from the producer of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language! His enthusiasm is a welcome departure from the usual
gloomy predictions about the Net's impact on language, though it might
be a bit "big picture" for sticklers of good grammar in classrooms around
the world.
- Uncle Sam's new 9/11 site
Wired
News calls the site "unabashedly sentimental" for material coming
out of the US State Department's Office of International Information Programs.
Wired's referring to a "Web-based
pictorial documenting life in New York City three months after the
attacks." It's a departure, Wired says, because since World War 2 "the
US government [has] rarely included any emotional content in its press
materials, knowing that public relations that pander to emotions are often
dismissed as propaganda by the media and the general public." Nonetheless,
the site is educational - because these, after all, are photographs.
- Psychologist on 'cybersex addiction'
"Contrary to popular belief, cybersex addiction
isn't a problem restricted to lowlife losers you'd never want to know,"
reports USAToday.
Some 200,000 Americans have a cybersex addiction, the paper reports, citing
figures from San Jose, Calif.-based psychologist Kimberly Young, who specializes
in and has just come out with a book about Net sexual behavior. The book,
"Tangled in the Web: Understanding Cybersex From Fantasy to Addiction,"
explains how people get hooked on this new form of "addiction." One explanation,
Young says, is "access, affordability, and anonymity." Here's a Reuters
piece on the subject (via the South
China Morning Post), citing a study by another California psychologist
aimed at identifying those at risk for such an "addiction."
- Paying for music twice
This will annoy many a music fan: Universal selling
copy-protected CDs that won't allow customers to listen to them on their
computers. But, according to Wired
News, Universal will allow customers to subscribe to its online
music service (to open shortly) if they want to hear the same music there.
In other e-music news, Yahoo! this week opened its online music service,
"Launch," "featuring 7,000 music videos, artist interviews, and Internet
radio, Reuters reports (via SiliconValley.com). Our thanks to BNA
Internet Law News for pointing these stories out. While we're on the
subject, here's a book review and handy digital-music backgrounder at
Salon.com, "How
the music industry blew it".
- Ultimate 'catalog'?
As if paper catalogs in Americans' snail-mailboxes
weren't enough! Google the search engine has come out with a searchable
database of catalogs selling all manner of wares. According to Wired
News, "Google Catalogs"
"combs the pages of 600 current catalogs -1,500 [if you include] back
issues - to help both consumers and corporations find everything from
apple butter to zipper doodles [jewelry to hook on zippers]."
* * * *
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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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