Brave new world or virtual pedophile paradise? Second Life falls foul of law

Sick, seedy stuff on SL.

Reminds me of something Pippa Norris says in her book Digital Divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the internet worldwide (CUP). Not the divide stuff, the key point about internet as 'real world' mirror, utopia or something else?

‘Even if the basic digital divide shrinks gradually over time, it is naive to believe that the virtual world can overturn fundamental inequalities of social stratification that are endemic throughout post-industrial societies’ (2001: 17).

The text of Norris' book is here.

Thanks, Pippa.

Nine in 10 US babies watch TV

About 90 per cent of US children under age 2 and as many as 40 per cent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said on Monday.

They said the number of young kids watching TV was much greater than expected.

"We don't know from the study whether it is good or bad. What we know is that it is big," said Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington, whose research appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

A second study suggested excessive TV viewing could lead to attention and learning problems down the road.

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming.

But 29 per cent of parents surveyed by Zimmerman and colleagues believed baby-oriented TV and DVD programs offered educational benefits.

"Parents are getting the message loud and clear from marketers of TV and videos that this is good for their kids. That it will help their brain development ... None of this stuff has ever been proven," Zimmerman said in a telephone interview.

Tech threatens family bonding: study

A study conducted by Australian Telco, AAPT, has investigated a range of parental attitudes towards young people's use of technologies. 1000 parents were 'surveyed'.

About 40 per cent of Australian parents believe their children's fixation with technology is robbing the family of precious face-to-face time, a study has found.

The research by telco AAPT has revealed that 16 to 20-year-olds spend an average of 3.2 hours a day using technology.

This compares with just two hours of face-to-face communication spent with parents.

Almost half of the 1000 parents surveyed believed two hours was not enough time and would prefer about seven hours of face-to-face time with their children throughout the day.

Despite this, almost 80 per cent believe technology has dramatically helped their family to stay in contact.

Interesting stuff of course. I recall something about studies done on the very low average time most fathers spend interacting with their teenage children each day: less than a minute.

It seems to me that here again, in research such as this where parents are interviewed about the 'problems' associated with their children's technology use, the responses are inevitably negative, with undercurrents that appeal to fears about alienation, social fragmention, addiction, youth deviance etc while at the same time finding that people also recognise the ways communication technologies have enabled broader family interactions.

While these two different 'findings' seem to be in contradiction, they are fairly normal findings. One one hand you have a kind of moral discourse about what good or normal adolescence should be with behaviours which fall outside of this being seen as a problem. The problem is of course technology, or violent computer games or internet addiction, or some other technological deterministic view of the power of technology to influence social behaviour of itself, as if technologies have some power to take over humans, or to influence those with less moral fibre or less will power to resist the urges to give in to it.

On the other hand, the discourse of technological advanncement suggests that communication technologies have radically altered social behaviours and allowed us to do things that were not possible in the past.

I guess in the end these two different discourses are not that different.

Research like this taps into such discourses, fears, insecurities, hype and hope, and rather than offer anything new, tends to perpetuate the same kind of simplistic view of young people's use of technologies: as dupes, deviates or cyberkids.

Walking the streets of Cyberia

A perspective from Robyn Treyvaud, a former teacher, who is a consultant to the Centre for Strategic Education. The CSE is headed up by Tony Mackay. Some interesting representation on the CES board.

This piece makes interesting reading next to my own views to be published in ACER's Teacher Magazine in the next couple of months, which you can also find here.

Mobile dangers for kids

Interesting argument about the problems experienced with young kids and explicit material online becoming a problem for mobile phones in the future (or now).

TV blamed for rise in child-speech problems (again?)

We should thank Renee Switzer for reporting on this 'alarming modern trend' and in relying on Leonie Trimper's self acknowledged 'ancedotal evidence' from School Principals to support shoddy arguments and assertions like:

"Families aren't sitting around the dinner table any more every night talking about what's happened during the day and engaging with the children,"

"Children are sitting in front of televisions more and computers playing computer games. It's dinner in front of the television, video games after dinner, or parents both working and time poor — all those issues have to impact on children."

Also weighing in is 'Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg' who is always willing to offer his perspective on what young people are up to these days but less willing, it seems, to point to the specific 'good data' that he often uses to support his views:

"There is good data to show that the more often you sit around a dining room table and have a conversation around a meal, the better the language development of children," he said.

Thanks Doctor. You and Leonie may be interested in the increadibly large body of sociological, communication, literacy and educational research literature that gives a very different picture of the phenomena. Many of these studies show that young people engage with television, computer games and other forms of media culture in a range of rich and complex ways. Ways that strengthen and help develop their literacy skills.

It is far too easy to blame modern technologies for the ills and problems our young people face. Rather than create a panic or crisis, the likes of which Dr Kevin Donnelly would be proud, I would have thought educators and scientists such as yourself would be more interested in trying to communicate some of the complexity of the situation to the media?

Here is a brief selection of research that might be useful. Perhaps Dr Carr-Greg might want to clarify the 'good data' he refers to?

Bazalgette, Cary & Buckingham, David. (eds) (1995) In front on the children: Screen entertainment and young audiences. London: British Film Institute.

Buckingham, David. (1996) Moving images: Understanding children's emotional responses to television. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Buckingham, David. (2000) After the death of childhood: Growing up in the age of electronic media. Oxford, UK: Polity Press.

Buckingham, David & Willett, Rebekah. (2006) Digital generations: Children, young people, and the new media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Calvert, Sandra L. (2002) Children in the digital age: Influences of electronic media on development. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Fisherkeller, J. (2002) Growing up with television: Everyday learning among young adolescents. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Gee, James Paul. (2002) Millenials and bobos, Blues Clues and Sesame Street: A story for our times. In D. E. Alvermann (ed.) Adolescents and literacies in a digital world (pp. 51-67). New York: Peter Lang

Gee, James Paul. (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.

Greenfield, P M & Cocking, R (eds) (1996) Mind and media: The effects of television, video games and computers. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Himmelweit, H T, Oppenheim, A N & Vince, P. (1958) Television and the child: An empirical study of the effect of television on the young. London; New York: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, Henry. (1992) Textual poachers: Television fans & participatory culture. London: Routledge.

Kline, S. (1993) Out of the garden: toys, TV and children's culture in the age of marketing. London: Verso.

Lohr, P & Meyer, M (eds) (1999) Children, television and the new media. Luton: University of Luton Press.

Marsh, J (ed.) (2005) Popular culture, new media and digital literacy in early childhood. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Marsh, Jackie, Brooks, Greg, Hughes, Jane, Ritchie, Louise, Roberts, Samuel & Wright, Katy. (2005) Digital beginnings: Young children's use of popular culture, media and new technologies. Literacy Research Centre, University of Sheffield. Accessed Dec 2005, http://www.digitalbeginnings.shef.ac.uk/