As mobile apps multiply like rabbits and the number of kids downloading and playing with them seems to keep growing, the usefulness of app ratings to parents seems to be growing too. CTIA – the mobile phone industry trade association – gets this. It recently announced an app rating system it has been working on since 2010, Investors.com reports. The system, which CTIA worked on with the … [Read more...] about Parenting & the mobile app ratings in the works
Microsoft
Microsoft’s ‘So.cl’ networking for students
Back in 2008, the researchers of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Digital Youth Project reported that there are two kinds of social networking: the friendship-driven kind we're all very familiar with and interest-driven. The latter kind is self-explanatory too, but worth zooming in on. Because it's not only online socializing around interests (as in a writer's community, the Harry Potter Alliance, … [Read more...] about Microsoft’s ‘So.cl’ networking for students
Europe’s new coalition for a better Net for kids
European children "now start going online when they are seven, and 38% of 9-to-12-year-olds who are online say they have a social networking profile, in spite of age restrictions," the European Commission reports. So it has formed "a new Coalition to make a better and safer internet for children" as part of its Digital Agenda for Europe, the Commission announced this week. The coalition's 28 … [Read more...] about Europe’s new coalition for a better Net for kids
Anti-social media companies will be obsolete
There's anti-social behavior at the corporate level, too – especially now, in the age of increasingly social digital media. I mentioned this in my last post, but – since these (media) environmental conditions are new to all of us, including parents – maybe it would help to take a closer look.... We've always known that social behaviors and norms are expressed collectively by organizations as … [Read more...] about Anti-social media companies will be obsolete
MS & FB’s help in fighting child abuse imagery
What digital technology enabled, digital technology is thankfully helping to disable. The ability to share photos online revived the child-pornography "scourge that had nearly been eliminated in the late 1980s," the New York Times reports, but technology developed by Microsoft and just starting to be implemented by Facebook – PhotoDNA – may "help to beat it back again." The Times says the … [Read more...] about MS & FB’s help in fighting child abuse imagery