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Phones that track kids

July 30, 2004 By Anne Leave a Comment

It probably makes sense that South Korea – where 75% of the people carry at least one cell phone – would be one of the first countries to have mobiles that keep track of kids’ whereabouts. According to Reuters, the SK Telecom phones, which cost about $90, tap into the global positioning satellite network (GPS). Reuters adds that “the phone has four buttons to save phone numbers of key contacts, such as Mum and Dad. The GPS technology works even when the phone is turned off.” Some child advocates wonder, though, what would happen if people other than Mom or Dad should use this tech to track children (see “Monitoring kids by mobile phone”). Where kids are concerned, technology is never either all positive or all negative. [An alternative to mere tracking is the idea of parental controls on cell phones, which is in the works in the UK and US (see my feature on this, 5/7.]

Meanwhile, cultural differences in cell-phone behavior have already emerged, the BBC reports, citing a Surrey University study. For example: “In Paris and Madrid, users are happy to stand in the street and talk. But Londoners prefer to create a temporary phone zone where several users, unaware of each other, stop to speak in the same place.”

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Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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