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May 16, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this second week of May:


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Conversations with teens about tech, Part 4: Parents' views!

You may have noticed: Parents and teens use tech and the Internet differently. Talking and IM-ing with Steve, Will, Liz and their parents only strengthened this theory. For us non-digerati, technology is just a bunch of individual tools with specific applications for specific tasks: email for asynchronous communication, the Web for research, cell phone for anywhere access. We're so very linear! And we often project the way we use technology onto our kids, by...

a) being in denial and thinking they use tech the way we do, so why worry?
b) being intimidated and forgetting that kids may be tech-literate but parents are life-literate, which can't be left out of the equation
c) being amazed at how fluidly/constantly/spontaneously they use tech and making them our tech consultants (and we their other-than-tech consultants)
d) none of the above, but rather______________________.

(If "d" is where you are, please email us how you'd fill in the blank - via feedback@netfamilynews.org! Or email us about any of this.)

Steve, Will, and Liz's parents would probably fall into a fairly unusual fifth category - early adopters using tech a lot in their work. Interviews with them indicate they were never particularly wary of their children being exposed to technology, but they also managed to ensure it was in balance with other parts of their children's lives and clearly knew enough to be a presence in their kids' experiences with it.

"In many ways Elizabeth, as the youngest of four children, has grown up familiar with technology," her mom Heather emailed us from London. "Recently she got linked into MSN instant-messaging - something I haven't grasped yet! - and that seems to have greatly increased the time she spends on the computer." But she also said that, even though Liz uses the Net and her mobile for fun and socializing, "I think [she] probably uses technology less than most in her age group.... It is very much a part of her life but not her main interest."

"Steve's always used the Internet," said his mom Jean. "In fact, I have a picture of him at the computer at about age 2. We suddenly heard the modem go off and found he'd hit something on the computer that started a connection.... We didn't get good [Internet] service at home till 1995." That's when Steve became her "mole" (she authored a number of books about the Internet) - finding good sites for her to incorporate and bad ones to watch out for. "We gave him his own domain name for his [15th] birthday. He has his own blog there [though Steve wouldn't call it that - way too trendy/newbie, he told us]. I don't really care for the language on it, but that's ok," Jean added. "I just tell him it's all being archived at archive.org [the amazing Internet Archive], so when he's older and running for office.... Then he changed it so people had to log in with a password in order to read his stuff."

As for Will, "He built his own Web site when he was 9," his dad Larry told us. "It was all about gaming." Both he and his big sister Katherine have helped their dad out with his Web site.

"I think adults tend to be a little more modal," Larry said, when we got to talking about the differences. "You sit down, do your word-processing, look at email, look at the Web. We're much more deliberate, engaging in *an* activity. For young people really it's more - it's not even multi-tasking - it's multi- sensory.... It's sort of like peripheral vision, with things [TV, Web, IM, email, etc.] happening all around they're somewhat aware of. They have stuff coming at them from all sides, and they seem to have developed the knack of absorbing it all. I find it amazing."

About adult/teen distinctions, Jean, Steve's mom, said, "I'm a news junkie and he isn't. He's at an age when social capital is very important to him and he's building his social network. I've already built that, and I'll email people when I want to, but I'm not going to sit in a chatroom. I'm not sure he does that either, but when you're a teen you need to be talking with your friends and you need to be establishing yourself as a person in your own right and who you are in the mirror reflecting others. I'm more, 'Gee, how's the market doing? What's the weather? What's happening on the email lists [discussions] I'm following' - it's more about the world and my place in it. Really what you should do is call my mother - she's 75 or so. She only uses the Internet for email, basically. She'll hear something on NPR, then go listen to one of the shows, or follow links my brother or I send her - on health or spirituality issues. She doesn't really surf around that much. In fact, Stephen had to go fix her Flash [plug-in] for her."

Larry said that, for young people, not only is technology not tied to specific tasks, it's also not tied to any particular place - which has interesting implications for parenting these days. "Once I caught him sitting in his study chatting on his cell phone at 7 pm. Besides the fact that he could've been using our regular phone, here's what I think is so significant about that: He's not tied to the house. The mere fact that he can be anywhere and do his texting and phone calls spells a fundamental shift in parenting - more than the computer did," Larry said. "The computer can be credited, or blamed, for bringing others into your home, the cell phone for cutting the link between kids and home. Now it can all happen outside the house."

And parents are still sorting out the implications of kids accessing the world from our homes via Internet connections ... getting free IM accounts with passwords their parents can't get past ... swapping tunes, software apps, pictures and movies (and potentially viruses and illegal files) via free global file-sharing services we don't fully understand ... and potentially doing any/all of these things in public places if their parents don't allow them to at home. The idea that all this is quickly moving beyond the fixed Internet - which at least requires kids to go to a specific place for access - to an anytime/anywhere Net certainly gets parental wheels turning. And makes choice "c" among the options above increasingly sensible.

But email us about your experiences with teens and tech - positive or negative (we can change names to protect the innocent/not-so-innocent). Your experiences can be valuable to fellow parents. The address: feedback@netfamilynews.org.

This is the last of our 4-part series. Here's our profiles page with links to the complete 4-part series.

Afterthoughts

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Web News Briefs

  1. Dot-kids info site launched

    Neustar - the company appointed by the US Congress to administer the ".kids" part of the government's ".us" domain - this week announced the launch of its information site, www.kids.us. That's where parents, educators, and registrars (who will sell kids Web publishers the .kids version of their Web addresses) can keep up on the development of this first safe virtual playground. In England that would be a virtual walled garden.

    "We have put numerous technical, policy-related and operational mechanisms in place to ensure that children are informed, entertained and protected while on the Web," said Melinda Clem, Neustar's dot-kids specialist. For example, Neustar and a "technology provider" it has not yet named will check every applicant before awarding it an address in the dot-kids sub-domain - "then spot-check going forward, based on the number of infractions identified [by them or anyone]. To supplement, we are making a link available for adults to contact us directly and notify us of questionable content. Reuters's coverage of the recent developments is misleading in suggesting that the space will be open for business in September (the earliest time children will be able to access this space on the Web is next December). September is when non-trademark holders (like Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.) can start purchasing a .kids address - if willing to pay the additional fee for having a presence in the space. We suspect many small and nonprofit sites will find the barrier to entry a little high - after all, as carefully as Neustar is working through this, a completely safe place for kids on the Web is still not much more than a big, bold experiment (and useful next step) in the effort to protect kids in cyberspace.

  2. Software association's site for kids, parents

    The Business Software Alliance has launched its PlayItCyberSafe.com, a site for teaching children to respect copyrights on the Internet. "The Internet can seem like a free-for-all for children - a place without rules," said Diane Smiroldo, BSA's vice president of public affairs, "and this can lead to trouble and sites not recommended for children, as well as illegal behavior like downloading copyrighted works including software, music, and games." The site has a section each for kids, parents, and teachers (the latter two much the same). The kids section has three simple Flash games about software piracy, copyright theft, and Net safety; the grownup sections explain the different types of cyber-crime (probably the most useful part of the site) and provide a curriculum for teaching about these, as well as links to related resources. The BSA, a huge international trade association with a presence in 65 countries, teamed up with the Hamilton Fish Institute at George Washington University and the US Department of Justice's Cyber-Crime and Intellectual Property Theft Prevention and Education Project to develop this latest iteration of the site. BSA CEO Robert Holleyman told Congress this month that software piracy cost the industry $11 billion last year, the Music Industry News Network reports. Here's BSA's press release.

  3. Have mobile phone, will survive

    It's a telling statistic: 46% of UK 25-to-34-year-olds said they cannot live without their mobile phone. The three-year UK study, by the Henley Management Centre and Teleconomy "looked into the sentimental attachment that people have to their phones," the BBC reports, pointing to the finding that "mobile phones are becoming essential to the management of our private and emotional lives." Some respondents even said losing their phone would be like "suffering a bereavement." Other key findings include:

    • 46% have used their phone to lift their own mood or entertain themselves or friends.
    • 55% stave off boredom with their handset, and 52% gossip via their phone.
    • 86% use texting to make arrangements rather than use a voice call.

  4. Schools & libraries call for more e-rate reforms

    School and library officials blame fraud and waste in the Federal Communications Commission's e-rate program on "vendors, consultants, and complicated government procedures," Internet News reports. The $2.25 billion e-rate program to help schools and libraries get connected to the Net is funded via the FCC's Universal Service Fund. Since the e-rate's start in 1997, the percentage of connected schools in the US has increased from 14% to 87%, according to Internet News. "In January, the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based non-profit 'public service journalism' organization, issued a report claiming the program was 'honeycombed" with fraud'," Internet News reports. The center's study is based on two FCC audit reports and independent interviews. The FCC audits have discovered abuses ranging from simple paperwork and reporting errors to false billing and other fraud potentially involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The scandal has prompted a congressional investigation and led to tougher new rules enacted last month by the FCC," but school and library administrators speaking at a recent FCC forum said more needs to be done.

  5. Recycled computers to be used well in S. Africa

    Though there's been skepticism about how much good the big computer companies' recycling programs are doing, clearly some South African students are benefiting. According to the BBC, Ivory Park - a school in one of Johannesburg's poorest suburbs - "is about to become a centre of computer teaching and training, using recycled machines donated by large Western firms." The school is getting a dedicated computer room with 40 PCs so students can get hands-on experience with various technologies and teachers will be trained to teach them. Ivory Park's computer room is part of a Digital Partnership program that aims to install nearly 200,000 computers in South Africa over the next two years, the BBC reports.

  6. Google goes international (with news search)

    Good news for news junkies outside the US! Google this week announced local news search services in Canada, Australia, and the UK. The world's most popular search engine told E-Commerce News that the idea is that country-specific news sites will integrate a "global perspective" with increased coverage of local news, enabling Web surfers to follow topics of local as well as international interest. "The effort is an attempt to build on the early success of Google News [still in beta], a US service that aggregates thousands of news stories from about 4,000 outlets and uses computer algorithms to rank and categorize them."

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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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