The total ban on mobile phones in New York City schools was upheld by the appeals court this week. While I can certainly agree that mobile phones and schools don’t mix, the total ban outlaws phones even when they are turned off. That means kids won’t have their phones on the way to and home from school, nor during after school activities (unless they are able to go home first).
Some critics argue that the ban is prejudicial to kids in poorer, inner-city schools; those that use metal detectors and other scanning devices. Kids at “non-scanning” schools simply keep their phones in their pockets and no one’s the wiser.
It’s a tough call. Anybody who’s ever spent time in a tough urban school knows how hard it is for teachers to maintain control and authority in that environment. But a total ban, especially one that affects kids outside of the school environment, just seems wrong.
2 CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on April 29th, 2008
Filed in: school
The Boston Globe recently ran a story about parents who cut off their children’s ability to send text messages after they got walloped with huge bills from their mobile service providers. It seems like a drastic measure, but when that bill comes in for $1000 or more, what’s a parent to do?
There are ways to moderate your kids’ mobile usage without completely cutting them off. Sadly, it seems that many parents don’t do much investigating into what their options are (I’ve talked about them on this blog), and a lot of mobile providers don’t seem interested in offering services that would make it easier on parents.
Things are improving, however. Clearly, parents want an easy way to cap their children’s mobile usage and spending, and as the Globe article indicates, some wise mobile providers are starting to respond by offering parental control services. But until such services are widely available, a lot of parents will resort to draconian measures, at least in the short term.
The Globe article recounts the story of a 15-year-old who ran up an $800 dollar bill in one month, mostly from texting. Her mother responded by turning off text messaging for a few weeks, during which the girl, Tori DeSantis of Burlington, MA, suffered a “texting coma.” The episode, according to the article, caused the girl’s mother to re-examine her relationship with her daughter and the way she was parenting.
More interesting is that Tori, while she wants her texting back, has re-evaluated her relationship with her phone. During her “coma,” she was put off by how her friends would spend so much of their time texting other people instead of enjoying their time with the people they were with. She came to realize the kind of disconnectedness all this so-called connectedness was creating. “It’s kind of annoying,” Tori said. “But I’m like, I was kind of like that at one time.”
It looks like there’s hope for our kids after all!
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on April 16th, 2008
Filed in: parental controls, texting
I’ve written a few times about the problems of kids loosing sleep because of their mobile phones. The problem usually comes about when they take their mobiles to bed with them and hide under the sheets texting their friends long into the night.
Some new evidence has emerged that sheds more light on the problem of mobile phones and sleep; and this time it concerns all of us, kids and adults. According to a study conducted by American and Swedish academics, the radiation emitted by mobile phones can have a profound affect on our sleep patterns:
…monitoring under laboratory conditions showed the initial ‘light’ phases of sleep in the subjects were affected. In addition, “exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals, components of sleep, believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear, are adversely affected.” The research also found that those exposed to mobile phones during their sleep appear to have more headaches, than those not exposed.
The study monitored the sleeping patterns of 36 subjects, men and women from 18-45 years old. It is unclear whether or not the subjects had to actually talk on the phones or if they merely had to be in close proximity to one. It should also be noted that the study appears to have been sponsored, or at least encouraged, by UK company Exradia, who make a device that supposedly blocks cell phone radiation.
Regardless of the uncertainties, what remains is that it’s a bad idea to let your kids take their mobile phones to bed with them.
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on February 27th, 2008
Filed in: radiation, sleep
If you still think that mobile phone-based porn is hard to find or only available to people in futuristic movies, word from Reuters is that mobile porn is about to get a big boost in North America.
According to the article, mobile porn is big in Europe where it was a $775 million industry in 2007, but has yet to really take off on the western side of the pond where sales were a mere (by comparison) $26 million. That is about to change, if the adult entertainment industry gets its way. A conference held in Miami earlier this week, the Third Annual Mobile Adult Content Congress, focused on opportunities for porn in the mobile industry. The conference was attended by a mix of adult content industry and mobile industry insiders.
From the Reuters story:
“It will be impossible to stop the adult business exploitation of mobile entertainment,” said Gregory Piccionelli, a lawyer specializing in adult entertainment at law firm Piccionelli & Sarno.
He predicted that U.S. consumers may soon be offered free porn on mobile phones alongside paid services like live video or “adult dates,” a term for prearranged sex with strangers.
Pressure to open the market is coming largely from the adult entertainment industry, which sees plentiful revenue opportunities. But mobile service providers are worried about offending subscribers. A case in point is Telus, one of Canada’s top mobile providers, who took down its fledgling soft porn service in early 2007 due to subscriber complaints. An interesting side note to that story is that, according to Telus, many of the people who complained were unaware that such material was already widely available on their Web-enabled phones; they thought the Telus service was the only source for Telus customers.
On the other hand, some North American mobile providers are drooling over the revenue opportunities – estimated to hit $1.5 billion in Europe by 2012. They’re also being nudged in that direction from overall pressure to open their markets to more types of content, including TV, music, and games.
Two technological advances are pushing things in this direction. First is the availability of mobile devices with advanced designs for multimedia, such as the Apple iPhone and the Garmin nüvifone. In tandem are the advances in tools to shield such content from minors, such as the Parental Controls service recently launched by Cincinnati Bell Wireless.
What seems certain is that a lot more adult content will be easily available on our mobile phones soon, and parents need to educate themselves on just how easy it is to find such material. More importantly, they need to learn how easy it is to block such content on their children’s phones.
Keep reading. That’s what this blog is all about.
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on January 31st, 2008
Filed in: parental controls, porn
Back in August I wrote about the phenomenon of kids losing sleep because they’re awake at all hours talking and texting on their mobile phones. Over at Science Daily they reported on more evidence along those lines:
A new study finds that cell phone use after bedtime is very prevalent among adolescents, and its use is related to increased levels of tiredness after one year.
According to the report, a recent study by Jan Van den Bulck, PhD, shows a direct link between cell phone use and tiredness among the 1656 school children studied. The numbers relayed by the Science Daily article are a bit hard to follow, but the conclusion is clear. According to Dr. Van de Bulck:
Communication and staying in touch are important for young people, and they now have the technology to stay “connected” more or less permanently. Taking a mobile phone to your bedroom is not trivial. They spend a lot of time “connecting” to other people, and some of them do this all hours of the night.
You can download the study from here (registration required).
Clearly, what is needed is some kind of control over when kids can use their phones. Some parents do it the “old fashioned” way; at bedtime every night they insist the child leave his or her phone outside of the bedroom, such as connected to its charger in an open area like the kitchen or living room.
Other parents rely on technological solutions. Namely, parental control services in which they can set “down times” during which the phone will not function. Typically, parents will set aside bedtime hours as down time, but some even use the feature to block phone use during school hours or study time.
Ideally, the service won’t completely block access to the phone. For example, Parent Patrol lets the parents set “always available” status on some contact numbers (such as parents and other trusted adults). Those “always available” phone numbers are not affected by the down time status of the child’s phone. This ensures that the child can use the phone to call those people (or be called by them) in the case of an emergency or other urgent need, even during a “down time.”
Parents who think that simply using a pre-paid plan is enough to keep their kids from over-using their phones should think about this. The problem is not just that kids tend to use their phones too much, but that they use them at inappropriate times. Using pre-pay alone has no affect on that second, and perhaps more important aspect of kids and phone use.
Further reading:
NDRI.com
EurekAlert!
Psychiatric Times
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on January 9th, 2008
Filed in: parental controls, sleep
Happy holidays to everyone, from all of us at the Kids and Mobile Phones blog! Be sure to check back in the new year for more information and discussion on this important topic.
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on December 21st, 2007
Filed in: No Tags
Anastasia Goodstein is the author of Totally Wired; What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online. She also has a blog related to the book and its topic (although she has recently ceased posting to it).
Goodstein was recently interviewed by Nora Young, the host of CBC Radio’s culture and technology show “Spark.” In the interview, Goodstein discusses some of the differences between what young kids do online, and what tweens and teens do; and she posits that most of it is basically harmless. While it’s true that virtual worlds include a lot of brand and product marketing that is targeted at kids, the host of the show points out that there’s nothing new about that.
A lot of what Goodstein says can be applied to mobile phones. After all, in some respects the only real difference between a phone and a personal computer is the degree of portability. You can talk through your computer (using Skype or webcam chatting) and you can surf the Web on many mobile phones (although the experience is, for most people, awkward and unpleasant in terms of usability).
The interview gets particularly interesting when Goodstein points out that parents (read: adults) are coming to this kind of technology later in life. As a result, they have a very different experience than do kids, who are growing up with it. She calls kids “digital natives” and grownups “digital immigrants.” She says this to underscore the extent to which parents often don’t “get it” when it comes to why kids are so involved with online and virtual communities. The typical parental response is often to disapprove, or to become paranoid about the risks and dangers, primarily because it is a world that we are not native to.
However, that doesn’t mean Goodstein endorses a wide-open, laissez-faire approach to kids online. At about the 12:00 mark in the interview, the host asks her what she thinks of people who don’t understand and don’t like all this online stuff, and who think that kids would be better off if they were kept away from it all. Goodstein replies:
I completely support setting limits, and I think that’s absolutely necessary on screen time, but to go to the extreme of unplugging kids feels like something a digital immigrant would say.
I would say the same thing about mobile phones.
You can listen to the interview here (running time, about 13 minutes).
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on December 12th, 2007
Filed in: limits, teens, tweens
There has been a lot of buzz lately about “reverse 411″ services, as people have come to realize that anyone can use them to obtain the home address of a mobile phone number’s owner. This is of particular concern to parents whose children have and use mobile phones.
It’s a legitimate concern, although I think the risks and dangers involved are overstated.
For one thing, the information one can obtain through a reverse 411 lookup is already publicly available from various regular phone directories and lookups. It reminds me of the story going around in which the BBC consumer advocate TV show “Watchdog” tried to scare people out of using Facebook by bringing in a snoop who specialized in digging up personal information online. The snoop showed another guest, a Facebook user, a notepad with something written on it and asked “is this your home address?” The Facebook user, completely unfazed, replied “Yes. But you could also get that by looking it up in the phone book.”
Another thing to consider is that someone could only do a reverse lookup on your child’s phone number if they actually have the child’s phone number. If your child has a mobile phone, one of the first things you will have (or at least should have) done is educate the child on the importance of keeping the number private. No posting of the number anywhere on Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, or any other social network. No sending the number around in bulk emails. No dialing numbers of people you don’t know. This is “phone number management 101″ for kids (and adults too, for that matter). If you haven’t had that talk with your child yet, do it now. And remember: this is just the starting point for the mobile safety talk.
Still, the possibility exists, however remote, that an unsavory character may somehow obtain your child’s phone number. For this reason, you might want to take steps to have the number removed from the various reverse 411 lookup directories. Just in case. But be warned; it isn’t easy to do so.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of reverse 411 services. Generally speaking, you’ll have to peck your way through the “opt out” sections of each one of them. Below is a partial list to get you started:
- Google Phonebook Name Removal form. This only removes information from Google’s directory, but the page includes links to other directories where you need to go for similar information removal.
- Any Who. This is an AT&T sponsored lookup. The Privacy Listing Process page is here.
- Addresses.com provides many directories, including cell phone and reverse lookups. Unfortunately I could find no opt-out form.
- Infospace provides a method to remove your listings; search here and here and look your child up on each list. When (if) you find a listing, click the “update or remove” link that should be next to it. There is a verification process (by email) that follows.
- Peoplefinders.com lets you remove yourself from some of their lists via the process described here. You should also check their privacy policy for more information.
- PublicRecordsNow.com lets you remove yourself from some of their lists via the process described on their Privacy Policy page.
- USA-People-Search.com lets you remove your listing by sending a letter (a letter!) to the address listed on this page.
- US Search has an opt-out program, but it too operates by snail mail.
- Switchboard.com has an opt-out form here.
- WhoWhere lets you edit your information and opt out, but only if you’re a registered Lycos user.
- Whitepages.com does not seem to offer an opt-out. They say they get their information from other sources, so if you opt out of the others, it should (in theory) opt you out of this one.
- ZoomInfo lets you opt out of some of their listings, as described in their privacy policy.
There are plenty of other lookup sources not listed here. As you can imagine, opting out of all those services is a pretty daunting task, and you have to ask yourself if the risk is really so great as to warrant the effort. After all, if you and your child use good safety practices, the situation in which a creepy stranger is looking up your child’s address via his or her phone number will likely never happen.
I would suggest that there are better and more effective places to direct your energy when it comes to protecting your children, starting with that conversation I mentioned above; the one about keeping phone numbers private.
Further reading:
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on December 4th, 2007
Filed in: parenting, safety
Although this blog uses the term “parental controls” a lot, I’ve never been completely comfortable with it. For one thing, it sounds like a tool used to control parents. But even if most people understand that “parental controls” means controls for parents, it is still unclear what is being controlled. For example, both Apple and Microsoft are making a lot of hay over the parental controls in their latest PC operating systems (OS X Leopard and Windows Vista, respectively). Naturally, those features are there to control the children’s use of the computer.
But is it the children that are being controlled, or the computer? It’s something of an academic question, and most people would agree that the computer is the object of control. Yet despite this logical assertion, it remains in many people’s minds that it is the children who are being controlled.
And that’s where it gets iffy.
Linda Criddle, online safety consultant and author of Look Both Ways; Help Protect Your Family on the Internet, had some interesting things to say about this on her blog back in June of this year:
The phrase “parental control” is negative, pitting parents [and] their children against each other. Nobody wants to be controlled, least of all youth trying to find their own identities and gain a measure of independence. The phrase is also offensive to many parents who don’t want to control their children; they simply want to help them stay safer online.
I think it is this uncertain nature of the term that gives a lot of parental control products – and even discussions about parental controls – a bad rap in some circles. After all, as Criddle implies, the idea of overtly “controlling” children seems heavy handed.
Nay-sayers point out that parental controls are not a substitute for good parenting. Well guess what? Most parental control vendors would probably agree!
It’s true! Parental controls and good parenting are not diametrically opposed, nor does one replace the other. In fact, they work together; parental controls are useful tools within the larger and more complex task of good parenting.
So what is “good parenting?” I won’t even attempt to give a conclusive answer to that whopper, but when it comes to parental controls I will say this: what’s important is how you use them.
With regard to mobile phones, for example, parental controls are primarily intended to help prevent overage charges (by setting reasonable usage limits) and to help prevent usage at inappropriate times (by setting reasonable “blackout” times). If properly designed, the parental controls will not prevent the child from calling emergency numbers (e.g., 911, or parents’ mobiles) if they need to, even when they are in a blackout time or have gone over their usage limits. This way, the kid gets the phone he or she wants, and parents get the security they’re looking for without the worries. Everybody wins.
The operative term in the paragraph above is “reasonable.” Parents who impose limits that are too strict (whether it’s on mobile phones or the home computer) could end up with resentful children who make every attempt to subvert the controls and to push beyond the limits in any way they can. (If you didn’t see that coming, you were never a 12-year-old.)
But if the limits are reasonable, and if the parents have discussed them with the child, there’s a better chance they will be respected and not resented.
Finally, parental controls are not about snooping. Using key loggers, reading your child’s browser history, rummaging through their email, and other invasive measures are in a different vein altogether. Personally, I’m very much against that sort of thing as it absolutely creates distrust and resentment within the family. There may be special cases where it is justified, but I can’t really think of any outside of situations that are already quite desperate and a sign of deeper problems than mobile phone or Internet use.
So if you or your children cringe at the idea of “parental controls,” please keep these ideas in mind. It is the device (computer or mobile phone) that is being controlled, not the child. More importantly, it is a tool in the “good parenting package,” not a weapon to be used against the child.
2 CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on November 27th, 2007
Filed in: parental controls, parenting, snooping
Here’s some good news for parents in and around Cincinnati who’ve been looking for a parental control service for their children’s mobile phones. Cincinnati Bell Wireless (CBW) launched “Parental Controls” yesterday. Parental Controls is powered by ACE*COMM’s Parent Patrol application (sponsor of this blog).
According to CBW’s Parental Controls product Web site, the service lets parents:
- Specify the number of voice minutes and text messages allowed on a weekly or monthly basis;
- Assign time periods during which calls or text messages may not be sent or received (e.g., sleep time, school hours, etc.);
- Set controls on the child’s contacts (designating “never allow” and “always allow” numbers)
- Optionally, create a contacts list of numbers that are the only numbers that can make contact with the child’s phone.
Parents can also opt to receive email notifications when the child’s limits have been reached or a call has been blocked. No special phone is required.
The service sells for $5 per month (on top of other line charges), and they have a special sign-up offer in which the first month is free. You can get the details at CBW’s Web site, or by calling 888-391-3925.
No CommentsWritten by Ed Hawco on November 20th, 2007
Filed in: CBW, Parent Patrol, parental controls
