Children and Media

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What Teens Feel About Privacy and Social Media

May 22, 2013 | 9:41 AM | By
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Flickr: Christopher Frier Brown

A new Pew Research study of 802 teenagers ages 12-17 and their parents reveals that teenagers are sharing more information on social networking sites than in the past, even as they carefully monitor and manage their profiles. And, while the number of social media sites and ways to share has grown, most teens aren’t concerned with third parties having access to their personal information.

Some highlights:

  • Today’s teens are sharing more personal information on social media sites: 91% share a photo of themselves with their profile (up from 79% in 2006), 92% use their real name on their most-used profile, and 20% include their cell phone number. And while older teens are more likely to share information like photos of themselves, school names and relationship status than younger teens, boys and girls “generally share personal information… at the same rates.” However, cell phone numbers are a key exception – boys are much more likely to share their cell phone numbers (26%) than girls (14%).
  • Twitter use has grown significantly among teens, rising in popularity from 16% in 2011 to 24% in 2012. African-American teens are more likely to use Twitter than white teens, 39% to 23%, respectively, and Twitter users are much more likely than Facebook users to make their posts public.
  • “The typical teen Facebook user has 300 friends, while the typical teen Twitter user has 79 followers.” Girls and older teens (ages 14-17) have larger networks on social media, and also have a larger variety of friends, drawing from different groups. Younger teens (ages 12-13) are less likely to friend people they don’t know, kids who attend different schools, or teachers and coaches. Girls are more likely than boys (37% to 23%) to be Facebook friends with teachers and coaches, and African-American teens are “twice as likely as whites” to be Facebook friends with celebrities, professional athletes and musicians (48% to 25%).

One of the most fascinating findings from the study’s focus groups was teens’ “waning enthusiasm for Facebook.” Reasons for the shift include increased adult presence on Facebook, friends’ need Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Big Ideas, Facebook, Pew Research, privacy, Social Media, teens, Twitter

How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?

May 3, 2013 | 5:00 AM | By
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Flickr: Ben Seidelman

Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might be more difficult because of it.

Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms,” the observers watched intently as the students—in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all—opened their books and turned on their computers.

For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer—and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students’ screens and noted whether the students were wearing ear-buds.

Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.

“We were amazed at how frequently they multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices,” adding, “It was kind of scary, actually.”

“I don’t care if a kid wants to tweet while she’s watching American Idol, or have music on while he plays a video game. But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.”

Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Big Ideas, Culture, Digital Tools, Teaching Strategies, Larry Rosen, multitasking

Kids and Adults: How To Avert Communication Breakdown

April 26, 2013 | 8:00 AM | By
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Flickr: Raneko

By Matt Levinson

Kids operate in a blizzard of communication — texts, social media, music, photography, games, and videos. They’re eager to share any and all new media they discover. In fact, their default action is to share and distribute as they’re living the moment.

For the most part, adults take on a more contained, traditional approach to communication, and are more accustomed to face-to-face interaction or talking on the phone than kids.

Schools, meanwhile, serve as the point of intersection for kids and adults, who are often trapped in the cross hairs of different modes and patterns of communication. Frustration invariably surfaces as kids and adults struggle to figure out how to co-exist in schools where technology is being introduced and integrated, especially through the very devices they use for social interaction.

Kids think of mobile devices holistically, in that the device encompasses everything – email, video, photos, games, music, social media – all existing as one system. Their online world is one world.

For teachers, mobile devices in schools are used specifically as tools to enhance learning. In the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture

Online Privacy: Parents Worry Advertisers Know Too Much

December 28, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

The Federal Trade Commission recently reprimanded makers of mobile apps targeted at children for failing to provide enough information to parents about the kinds of data being collected. The announcement raises a long-standing concern many parents have about how to keep kids safe online.

A recent study from the Pew Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that 81 percent of surveyed parents with children between 12-17 years-old are concerned about how much information advertisers can learn about their children online. They are also concerned about their children’s online behavior, with 72 percent saying they’re concerned about how their child interacts with strangers online, 69 percent saying they’re worried about how their child’s online footprint might affect their academic career and 69 percent saying they’re worried about online reputations.

“When asked about the information that advertisers can gather about their child’s online behavior, parents’ concern levels rival and sometimes even exceed worries about their child’s interaction with people they do not know online,” the Pew study says. Specifically, African American parents worried about advertisers, with 62 percent saying they were “very concerned” about the information gathered, as compared to 47 percent of white parents. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Big Ideas

FTC Urges App Makers to Protect Kids’ Privacy

December 11, 2012 | 10:14 AM | By

Flickr: Christopher Frier Brown

By

Developers of smartphone and tablet apps aimed at children have done little in the past year to give parents “the information they need to determine what data is being collected from their children, how it is being shared, or who will have access to it,” the Federal Trade Commission reports.

“Our study shows that kids’ apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz says in a statement released by the commission. “All of the companies in the mobile app space, especially the gatekeepers of the app stores, need to do a better job. We’ll do another survey in the future and we will expect to see improvement.”

The FTC’s report is posted here. In it, the commission’s staff:

“Strongly urges the mobile app industry to develop and implement ‘best practices’ to protect privacy, including those recommended in the recent FTC Privacy Report: (1) incorporating privacy protections into the design of mobile products and services (‘privacy by design’); (2) offering parents easy-to-understand choices about the data collection and sharing through kids’ apps; and (3) providing greater transparency about how data is collected, used, and shared through kids’ apps. These standards should be developed expeditiously to ensure that consumers have confidence in the growing mobile apps marketplace.”

According to the FTC, among its more troubling findings is that many children’s apps “shared certain information with third parties — such as device ID, geolocation, or phone number — without disclosing that fact to parents. Further, a number of apps contained interactive features — such as advertising, the ability to make in-app purchases, and links to social media – without Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, apps

Facebook and YouTube Offer Guidelines to Help Schools and Parents

August 2, 2012 | 7:00 AM | By

Flickr:Dan Taylor

By Matt Levinson

Online social giants YouTube and Facebook have taken big steps to attempt to provide guidance on digital citizenship for kids online. Google (which owns YouTube) just launched its ten-step online program for smart and safe YouTube use, with a series of instructional videos that hit on topics from cyberbullying to privacy. And Facebook has teamed up with Edutopia to help schools create social media guidelines.

As schools figure out their social media policies, Facebook is reportedly exploring allowing children under the age of 13 to use the site. “Recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to enforce age restrictions on the Internet, especially when parents want their children to access online content and services. We are in continuous dialogue with stakeholders, regulators and other policy makers about how best to help parents keep their kids safe in an evolving online environment” a Facebook statement says.

In the meantime, companies are sprouting up to quell (or stoke, depending on perspective) parent fears. From FBI Child ID, which “stores a photo of your child, along with a detailed description that might help others find him or her,” to Footprints, which is a location-sharing app to “help parents track their children’s movements,” parents are searching for solutions to “ease their fears,” according to a recent New York Times article.

The Times also reports that there are also slang translation apps to help parents make sense of text speak, sites that track a child’s Facebook and social media pages looking for inappropriate Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Facebook, Social Media, YouTube