Elementary School Kids and Social Media: A Dicey Proposition

If you think kids as young as 6 years old aren't posting and chatting away on social media, better think again.

The article "Does Instagram Put Kids at Risk?" in the June/July issue of Scholastic Parent & Child magazine takes an eye-opening look at just how young some users of this particular social media app really are.

Writer Sharon Duke Estroff went on an "undercover mission" for this piece, exploring the potential upsides and pitfalls of kids using Instagram, a photo-sharing app owned by Facebook that's increasingly popular among school kids. Estroff posed on Instagram as a "fun-loving 10-year-old girl with an affinity for Justin Bieber and all things adorable," she writes. And some of what she discovered might stop parents in their tracks.

"I saw little boys tossing around four-letter words like footballs; I followed young girls who asked me to 'like' their pictures if 'you think I look sexy'; I viewed popular posts that included an alleged paparazzi pic of Zac Efron's private parts," Estroff writes. All this on the accounts of elementary school children.

Technically, you must be at least 13 to use Instagram. It's clearly stated in the app's "Terms of Use." Facebook, Snapchat and other social networking services have the same age requirement. They have to in order to comply with the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which makes it illegal to collect, use, or disclose personal information from anyone under 13 without parental consent.

But as Internet safety expert Larry Magrid writes in Forbes, COPPA is about preventing the collection of personal information, not about online safety. "COPPA compliance in no way means that the site is safe or appropriate for young children," Magrid writes.

And the age cutoff certainly isn't stopping kids from signing up in droves. In a study by McAfee released last month, 85% of kids ages 10 to 12 admitted to having a Facebook profile. Last year, a study by Ipsos on kids and social media found that 29% of all kids ages 6-12 had an account on a social media site.

Facebook was by far the most popular site among kids in the Ipsos study, and statistics show that there are millions of users under 13 on Facebook. But the popularity of Instagram and Snapchat among elementary school kids has soared in recent months.

Statistics on underaged kids using these apps are hard to come by, but in her Scholastic Parent & Child article, Estroff describes a world in which 8-year-olds are using Instagram like old pros, posting photos, sharing comments, collecting hundreds of followers and "liking" each other's posts.

Estroff's Instagram investigation was triggered by her own 10-year-old daughter complaining that everyone at her school had an Instagram account but her. Estroff eventually "caved," as she says, and let her daughter sign up — but only under close supervision and with strict rules.

When it comes to social media, the "Everybody's doing it!" argument is a powerful one parents are up against these days. And it's a hard spot for parents to be in.

On the one hand, we don't want to deprive kids of important opportunities to be part of the group and to feel that they belong. Through Instagram and other social media services, kids stay connected to each other and can enjoy support and encouragement from peers and a much desired sense of community. What kid doesn't want to be "liked," online or off?

On the other hand, we don't want our kids being "followed" online by complete strangers or accepting requests from strangers to be followed. We don't want them harassed or bullied online, or subjected to posts, comments, photos and videos that are far too mature for their age.

Even with close monitoring and safeguarding, Estroff writes, inappropriate posts still slipped through to her daughter's new Instagram feed: "A string of raunchy jokes posted by a boy in her class who had re-posted them off of his older sister's Instagram; pictures of a friend's older brother funneling beer at a fraternity party; 20 minutes later, the same boy urinating on a car," Estroff writes. We're talking about a 10-year-old's account here. "As a parent, I was mortified," she writes.

And yet many parents find they must weigh these risks against the potential benefits that socializing online might have for their kids. Many, like Estroff, let their younger kids sign up for these 13-and-over services but are committed to keeping track of what their kids are doing on them and to protecting them from possible harm.

Estroff gives a helpful list of "Rules to Keep Kids Safe" using Instagram. These include creating a joint account with your kid; controlling the password; reviewing posts, followers, followees and comments; and setting time limits for using the app, which she calls "highly addictive."

And yes, making sure your child's account is private. This is truly key. Instagram accounts are public by default. Estroff writes that about half of the kids she saw on Instagram had accounts that were public. So it's up to parents to take charge and actively change the privacy settings.

Instagram's Photo Map feature.

It's also important to never activate the app's Photo Map option, which shows the exact location that a photo was taken, "down to the street number," Estroff explains. (For more on geotagging and kids, see the previous post on this blog. Also see this recent Digital Trends piece on a petition to Instagram to make it disable its geotagging feature and change its default privacy settings. For info on a new parents' guide to Instagram, see this post.)

Staying on top of all this is a lot to ask of parents. The recent McAfee study — which explored the "online disconnect" between parents and kids when it comes to online activities — reported that 80% of parents do not even know how to find out what their children are doing online. The study showed that a large majority of parents — 74% — say they do not have the time or energy to keep up with their children's online activity. They're throwing in the towel and just hoping for the best.

But if parents don't remain vigilant about protecting kids from inappropriate content online, who will? Certainly not the social media services.

In a recent Digital Trends article, writer Kate Knibbs shows how and why social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are failing to keep young kids off their services. Even the new SnapKidz feature on Snapchat for kids under 13, which rolled out last month, won't keep kids off the real service, Knibbs argues.

When kids who are under 13 try to sign up for Snapchat, the popular app that lets users send self-deleting photos, the new SnapKidz mode now kicks in. It allows kids to take photos and doodle on them, but it won't let them send them to anyone. Knibbs calls this new feature pointless — "a meaningless mea culpa that will achieve absolutely nothing." Savvy kids know all they have to do to get the real Snapchat service is plug in a fake birth date. It's what they do on all social media sites that require a birth date to "prove" that you're 13 or older.

"SnapKidz is like a pair of really flimsy, slightly deflated arm floaties," Knibbs writes. "Parents slip them on their kids and may assume they won’t have to watch them swim as closely. But they don’t actually make the child safer."

There's not much Snapchat or other social media services can do to keep underaged kids off without requiring complicated background checks, Knibbs says. And such checks are not likely to happen. So it will remain up to parents and other adults to pay close attention to what young kids are doing online and to keep them safe. A "snap," right? Not so much in today's rapidly changing digital world.

Controlling Your Digital Footprints: An NPR Report

Your child posts an innocent photo of the family dog on a social media site. No problem, right? Not necessarily.

As this recent report from NPR's "Weekend Edition" explains, there are many apps available that can pinpoint precisely where a photo was taken, in effect making it possible to lead someone right to your child.

This is due to a process called geotagging, or adding geographic location "metadata" to photos, videos and other media.

"Today all smartphones and most cameras add those tags automatically," NPR's Steve Henn explains. "It's like writing your address on the back of a photo."

In this report, Henn demonstrates how easy it is to drop a photo into an app that will reveal all of the metadata attached to it. Such apps allow someone to see exactly where the photo was taken — right down to the building, and even where in the building.

"All of this information gets stored, and if you email a picture to a friend or post it on a social network, a lot of that can be out there and easily accessible," Henn says. This data is catalogued with each photo, Henn explains, "unless you go into your phone and turn the location services information on your camera off, which you have to know a little bit to do. But most people, I think, don't do it."

Henn, who has an 11-year-old daughter himself, says some new tools have emerged to help people control their own digital footprints, such as Wickr, an app developed by security and privacy experts that lets you send encrypted text, photo and video messages. It also allows you set a time limit for how long a message is shared. Wickr, which has the tagline "Leave No Trace," boasts on its site that it "flips messaging on its head, giving control to the sender instead of the receiver (or servers in between)."

In the wake of the NSA scandal, at a time of heightened awareness about just how easily our personal information is collected, privacy is on everyone's minds — including concerned parents.

"Perhaps over time," Henn says, "as we continue to have conversations about privacy like this, we'll see more attention in Silicon Valley about making tools available that are easy to use that also allow you to control how your information is shared." And that let you rest easy if a photo of Buster happens to be shared online.

Mommy or the Touchscreen? ABC News Puts "iBabies" to the Test

Here's a tough choice for a baby: Go to Mommy or go to a shiny, glowing touchscreen? An ABC News reporter put some babies to the test for a segment on ABC World News this week, positioning each baby across the room from both the baby's mom and an iPad or smartphone.

It turned out the choice wasn't so hard after all: The babies crawled straight to the mobile device every time, all but ignoring poor Mom. (See the full report and experiment below.)

US News | Weird News | More ABC News Videos

The news segment, titled "iBaby," took a quick look at the phenomenon of small babies — "the diapered set," as reporter Juju Chang called them — being given smartphones and tablets to use.

It cited a new study by Northwestern University, out this week, that found that 37% of parents who have smartphones or tablets say they are likely to use these devices to keep their children occupied. The same study showed that 54% of parents are concerned that mobile devices have a mainly negative effect on their children's physical activity. (A similar percentage felt the same about TV, computers and video games, by the way.) And yet 55% of those surveyed said they are "not too" or "not at all" concerned about their children's media use in general.

The ABC report is short (under three minutes), so it doesn't delve too deeply into the topic or draw many conclusions. It also seems to showcase parents on one end of the spectrum only — the end where giving an infant or toddler a touchscreen is part of everyday life.

The report began by showing a 10-day-old baby — yes, that's 10 days old — propped up inches from an iPad, staring at the screen. The baby's mother is shown saying, "I guess I just didn't think it was going to hurt, so why not give it a try, and he seemed to like it."

The segment later cuts to a mommy-baby playgroup, where a mother of a 13-month-old had this to say: "I feel kind of guilty when he's sitting there with it, but at the same time I know that I'm going to get him to eat dinner if I give him the iPad."

The iPad Stroller Mount

A lot of babies are eating meals with iPads these days. A trip to most restaurants will verify this. You see it even in strollers, where small babies are handed smartphones and tablets to stare into while parents or nannies feed them. You can even attach iPads to strollers now with devices like iStroll Kid or the iPad Stroller Mount (for mealtime or just general "use" by a strolling baby).

I've said it before, but it's worth noting again: No baby ever sat down for a meal with an iPad prior to three years ago, because iPads didn't exist. So the "it gets him to eat dinner" argument doesn't sit well with some folks — including many incensed viewers who commented on the ABC News report online. Sure, it works, but it's unsettling to think that some parents today might feel out of other options at mealtime. Long before iPads were created — even before TV was around, if anyone can imagine that far back — babies somehow managed to eat their dinners.

So yes, it can be disturbing to see so many babies staring into touchscreens — in playgroups, in museums, in libraries, in a beautiful park on a lovely, sunny day. But in reality, their caregivers are in the minority (for now, at least). The new Northwestern study, titled "Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology: A National Survey," showed that, by and large, parents are still much more likely to use books, toys or other activities to keep their children occupied than to use touchscreen devices. They're also still using TV more than touchscreens to keep their kids busy.

The same holds true when it comes to calming a child who's upset: Parents are more likely to use activities, toys or books (and yes, TV) than a tablet or smartphone, the study found.

It might surprise some that the vast majority of parents surveyed for this study — 70% — said they do not think smartphones and tablets make parenting easier. Only 29% said that they do. And a mere 10% of those who own a mobile device said they would turn to it as an "educational tool" for their child.

And it's parents' own styles when it comes to media that drive their children's use of screens, the study found — i.e., it's not the children pushing for screen time that's driving how much they get. It is parents who create the types of media environments their kids grow up in, the study found. Parents "set the tone and create a 'family media ecology' that permeates through the generations," the study reports.

The ABC segment doesn't dig too deeply into the many findings of this new study. It concludes with some basic recommendations from experts: Use touchscreen devices as teaching tools rather than electronic babysitters; interact with your child when he or she uses these devices. But the new Northwestern study is worth a closer look. Its findings were illuminating, even intriguing, in this age of mobile media and "iBabies" who choose the lure of the touchscreen over Mom.

Popular Photo-Sharing Apps Demystified: New Instagram/Snapchat Guides for Parents

It's hard not to notice the growing popularity of photo-sharing apps such as Instagram and Snapchat these days — especially among young people.

Instagram, which launched in 2010, today boasts 100 million active monthly users who send 40 million photos per day. Snapchap, not even two years in existence, saw a threefold increase in users between December and April alone — to over 150 million photos (or "snaps") per day.

That's an awful lot of photos being shared. For parents and other adults who are rightly concerned about protecting the safety and reputations of kids who use these apps, ConnectSafely has come to the rescue. This month, the Internet safety nonprofit released two new guides — the "Parents' Guide to Instagram" and "Parents' Guide to Snapchat" — that walk adults through the apps' privacy and safety features and advise talking with kids about these new favorite tools "with genuine interest, not fear."

The two guides join ConnectSafely's earlier parents' guide to Facebook and to Google+. (You can find all four guides here.)

Each one starts by addressing some basic questions adults often ask: "Why do kids love Instagram?" "What are the risks in using Instagram?" "Should my child's profile be private?"

They go on to cover such topics as controlling your own privacy and respecting that of others; managing profiles (on Instagram) and settings (on Snapchat); and reporting inappropriate photos and abuse. They each offer basic reminders about not sharing embarrassing photos you wouldn't want a college admissions officer — or Grandma — to see. Each also covers what to do if you're being harassed.



Snapchat, which allows users to send photos that can self-delete within 10 seconds, has been criticized as a "sexting" app, a notion its creators are quick to dismiss. And so the new Snapchat guide touches on sexting too (it notes that while sexting is a concern, "it's not nearly as common as some media reports have suggested").

The guide also explains how Snapchat photos don't necessarily delete and can in fact be captured in different ways by savvy recipients. (See these recent stories on Snapchat's not-so-disappearing photos in Forbes and the Huffington Post.) 



Each guide ends with some encouraging words for parents. From the Instagram guide: "... research shows that socializing face-to-face is still No. 1 with teens," even as new apps and services for digital socializing seem to pop up by the minute. And from the Snapchat guide:

"... there's no need to panic every time you hear a media report about something awful happening in social media. The reason the news media cover awful situations is because they're rare. How often do you read about planes landing safely?... Of course kids can get into trouble using Snapchat or any other service, but the same can be said for swimming pools. That's why we teach them how to swim."

So take heart: If you help kids to learn their own critical thinking and media literacy skills, they'll be more prepared to navigate any potentially deep waters.

For more on the growing appeal of Snapchat in particular, see this recent New York Times profile.

For more on the explosion of short-term photo-sharing services generally, and other key Internet trends of 2013, see this new report by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers from the AllThingsD D11 Conference yesterday. (This chart shows Snapchat's growth from May 2012 to April 2013.)

From the 2013 Internet Trends report by KPCB

Oh, and check out ConnectSafety's post from earlier this week on the release of the 20th anniversary edition of "Child Safety on the Information Highway," a booklet on Internet safety first published when "the Information Highway" was a phrase people actually used. Written by Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafety and founder of SafeKids.com (and co-author of the new Instagram and Snapchat parent guides), the updated "Child Safety" guide (found here) covers harassment and bullying, online privacy and security issues, and more. Another great tool at your fingertips for keeping kids safe and savvy online.

"The Touch-Screen Generation": Reflections on The Atlantic Magazine's Report

When the April issue of The Atlantic first appeared, its cover story, "The Touch-Screen Generation," created a lot of buzz. It promised to answer some pressing questions on the minds of many parents today about letting small kids use smartphones and tablets. On the magazine’s cover, beneath the catchy bold cover line, was the question, "What's this technology doing to toddlers' brains?" Hanna Rosin, the article’s writer, asked early on in the piece, "How do small children actually experience electronic media, and what does that experience do to their development?"

Unfortunately, after more than 7,000 words, Rosin came up with very few answers. I don’t exactly blame her. The problem is no one really knows how tablets and smartphones might affect a young child's development. Not yet, at least. As Rosin herself writes in the piece, "To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry — the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects."

Exactly. The iPad debuted three years ago this month. So before 2010, a grand total of zero toddlers could be found playing with one — in a restaurant, a grocery store line or anywhere else. Before June 2007, no toddler had ever used an iPhone, either. (The Apple App Store, with its endless apps for small kids, didn’t appear until 2008.) Today’s toddlers are truly the first in the entire history of toddlerhood to ever use such touchscreen devices. So research in this area is understandably in its infancy. Rosin herself notes, "Because interactive media are so new, most of the existing research looks at children and television." Indeed, most experts agree: There’s a lot we just won’t know for some time.

But here’s something we do know: Toddlers and preschoolers are being targeted like crazy by app developers. The apps-for-tots market is exploding today as more and more developers scramble to get in the game. Over 80% of the top-selling paid educational apps in the iTunes App Store now target children, and of these, a full 72% are aimed at preschoolers. (See this study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.) Thousands of apps for kids are being released every year. And it doesn't stop at the toddler/preschooler level. At a conference of children’s app developers Rosin writes about in her piece, developers were testing apps for kids as young as a year old. We live in an age when people post YouTube videos of 2-month-olds poking at iPads — and app developers know it.

It’s not surprising that today’s parents have many concerns and questions about the effects of smartphone and tablet use by young children and babies. How much screen time is appropriate at different ages? Are there any risks of longterm harm from using these devices? Many parents are legitimately struggling over how to use this technology with their little ones. Some tell tales of toddlers begging for their iPad and throwing fits when forced to give it up. Some call it an obsession — even an addiction. Some worry their toddlers are zoning out on touchscreens to the point where they won't answer when they're called. (Just take a glance at this recent story about a 4-year-old in the UK being treated as an iPad "addict," or this follow-up in The New York Daily News on small kids hooked on iPads.)

For all its promise, Rosin’s article did not adequately address these concerns. It’s a lengthy piece, but in the end the big message seemed to be that parents should simply relax. Rosin writes that parents today have a “neurotic relationship with technology” and feel guilty about giving their small children tablets and smartphones to play with. She made the case in her piece — and in a slew of radio and TV and interviews that followed — that because there are interesting and various things kids can learn from interactive apps, parents really should shake their negative attitudes about them.

"Free yourself from this neurosis and guilt," Rosin said on NPR's "Weekend Edition." "Technology is with us. Just accept it. The phones are with us. The iPads are with us. Some of them are amazing — they're super cool."

In an interview with Boston's WBUR show "Here and Now," Rosin said we’re "in a neurotic place" now and talked about parents' "instinctive horror" over children using touchscreen technology. She urged parents "not to instinctively, automatically treat it like poison — talk about it like it's poison and a lollipop and sugary sodas. It's really not the same."

On "The Leonard Lopate Show" on WNYC in New York, she said, “Don’t pass onto your children the idea that 'this is poison, use it sparingly.' Understand that even for little kids there are interesting things that they can do and learn with this technology. It's not time wasted, it's not brain rot. It's actually something more interesting than that."

OK, we get it. But the interviews — and indeed the article itself — seemed too dismissive of many genuine concerns and real-world parental choices about technology and kids today. Two years ago, The New York Times ran an in-depth piece about Silicon Valley execs who chose to send their own kids to a Waldorf School that uses no computers or screens at all. It quoted parents like Alan Eagle, a Google employee with a computer science degree, who said, "The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that's ridiculous." Parents like Eagle had reasons for feelings as they did. Rosin mentioned this article on "Here and Now" but quickly brushed aside these tech execs' choices. "When you deal with a technology so much what I realized is that your paranoia maybe gets increased instead of decreased," Rosin said.

"Paranoia"? There’s no question that tablets and smartphones have a high coolness factor and can potentially offer kids great experiences and opportunities for learning. Indeed, Rosin spends a big chunk of her article detailing exactly how cool various interactive apps for kids really are, in her opinion. But does it do parents any favors to call their cautions and desires to limit screen time a "neurosis"?

In interviews, Rosin repeated one story again and again — something she seems to be basing much of her conclusions upon. As she writes in her article (though you have to get to the very end to find this out), she conducted an experiment with her youngest son in which she gave him unlimited access to an iPad for six months. She put it in the toy basket and let him use it whenever and however he wanted, no restrictions. 

While it was "extremely annoying" at first — Rosin's son wanted to use the device for two-hour stretches at inconvenient times — Rosin says he eventually dropped it under a bed and forgot about it. It fell out of rotation for weeks. "Now he picks it up every once in a while, but not all that often," she writes. "It took the edge off my thinking, 'Oh my God, his brain is turning to mush, he’s going to become addicted to this thing,'" Rosin said on "The Leonard Lopate Show." "I no longer have that thought."

Rosin told Lopate she wishes she "could urge all parents" to try the same experiment to put their minds at ease. Does she mean all parents of kids of all ages? Is any age too young for giving unlimited use of a touchscreen? Rosin calls her son a "toddler" in the article but doesn't specify his age. On NPR's "Weekend Edition," though, she said he was 4 when she conducted this experiment. Is a 4-year-old toddler with unfettered access to an iPad any different from a 15-month-old toddler with unfettered access to an iPad? (Are 4-year-olds even technically "toddlers"?) What about a 12-month-old? A 7-month-old? A 3-month-old? Would Rosin have conducted the same experiment on her son if he had been 18 months old at the time rather than 4? Would she have drawn the same conclusions?

Generalizing about "toddlers" — especially based on one experiment with one 4-year-old — seems dangerous here. And that’s one problem The Atlantic piece has: It discusses some research involving kids of certain ages — Rosin cites one study (unpublished as yet) her own child participated in that documented behaviors of 32-month-olds using iPads, for example — but offers nothing regarding any new research or data on even younger children, say, the under-2 set.

Even research on children and TV, after so many decades, becomes more scant when it comes to kids under about age 3. And we know kids 2 and under are being handed tablets and smartphones (forget about TV) with increasing frequency these days. But The Atlantic, despite its promised focus on "toddlers," seems to wander away from any real focus on touchscreen use by the very youngest of our children.

The hundreds of comments from online readers — on The Atlantic’s website and elsewhere — were telling. What they told is just how complex an issue this really is. Some commenters pointed out what else wasn't covered in this 7,000-plus-word article – big topics like the importance of manipulating 3D objects to the early development of young brains. A month later, the comments are still coming in. I’d like to let some speak for themselves here. First, a few comments from The Atlantic’s own site:

- From Rob O'Daniel, who calls himself "a career IT guy, not some head-in-the-sand Luddite": "…children only have a tiny sliver of time in which it's allowable for them to be children. So why cut into that precious time by preemptively trying to mold them into junior technologists and rapid media consumers? My son will have the rest of his life to be enslaved to PCs and other techogadgets, While he's 6 yrs old, I'd like for him to indulge every Lego-playing, finger-painting, bike-riding, earthworm-digging, silly-dancing, fort-building impulse possible. If I've given him a strong foundation that will allow him to survive and thrive in the analog world, the digital will come effortlessly."

- From "Robert SF": "Children need to learn to manipulate 3D objects in a 3D world. Playing ball and getting hit, running around and falling, building something and watching it collapse, all teach that, but a flat screen cannot teach that."

- A similar thought from "djoelt1," who has three young children who aren't allowed to use screens: "At the stage of life the children are in, the laws of physics, chemistry, magentism, optics, and sound are so everpresent and fascinating that nothing on a screen could rival it." This person wrote about the activity of constructing jumps for bicycles, for example. "No amount of fancy graphics or imaginary bike jumping program can teach about how to harness balance, center of gravity, speed, and ramp angle to ride off a jump and land on one wheel or two."

- On a different note, from Natalie Danner: "How are children learning social skills, self-control, attention, persistence, and the ability to entertain themselves without technology?" 

- Dennis Noble brings up the possible dangers of radio waves emitted by wireless devices: "Anyone with any awareness these days knows that exposure to wireless is considered a risk to health. The International Agency on Reseach [sic] on Cancer classified the Radio Frequency radiation as a possible carcinogen, the same classification as DDT and lead. Children are far more vulnerable to this and as we expose young children to this technology, we are playing Russian roulette with their brains, their bodies, and their DNA." (See the IARC's 2011 press release on this here. For more on the subject, see what the National Cancer Institute says about cell phone use.)

- From "sammybaker," a point, made rather pessimistically, about what kind of foundation might be laid when kids use screens at very young ages without a parental "media plan" in place: "Handing little kids a tech device is like handing them a bag of cookies and expecting them to have the frontal lobe ability to not scarf them down. What they learn at 3 or 6 or 8 will stay with them as teens. Those years go by fast. If you don't navigate childhood with a media plan, be ready for that chubby cheeked 'pester power' pro to mutate into an entertainment obsessed 7-year-old and then a texting, sexting force of nature risk taker at 13. When mine turned 8, we had a written set of rules they had to agree to for that iPod, etc... If they are not able to do that, don't hand them a tech device, unless you commit to the time to sit next to them and play with them, edu apps or not."

- With more on possible down-the-road effects of being plugged in early (and often), reader Anthony Davis commented on "digital natives," whom Rosin defines as "the first generations of children growing up fluent in the language of computers, video games, and other technologies": "Yes, and I still have to teach these 'digital natives' in college that copying and pasting from Wikipedia and checking out the first entry on a search engine don't qualify as research. The smartphone is not a back up for poor short-term memory during a quiz. The squiggly green and red lines on the documents in their word processors are actually trying to tell them something basic about their writing ability. Skimming off Sparknotes.com is not the same as synthesizing and analyzing…" (He continues on from there...)

- "Kira" observed that not having access to digital devices makes kids work to find creative solutions: "We restrict use quite a bit in our household and I've noticed that in those ‘I'm bored’ moments, not having access, makes our two kids work together to have fun - build things, play cards, play keep it up with a ball, etc...To me that is worth restricting the app use."

- Reader Hal Horvath had similar thoughts to "Kira": "We use breaks, including days at a time, from the finite world of apps/games, and I can tell you from repeated experience that an interesting thing happens. After a day or two without the Wii, computer, or Kindle, our daughter doesn't even seek them out, but continues building and creating her own stuff, out of found materials."

- Another reader, "pavopax," linked to this recent article from Fast Company, "Why Your iPhone Addiction Is Snuffing Your Creativity," also on the importance of, well, boredom.

A few more interesting comments from other sites:

- From "mld," on Rosin's interview with WBUR's "Here and Now": "I think its [sic] the wrong question to ask. More important to ask 'why are we so enamored with a toddler's ability to operate a touch screen?' So what? It isn't difficult--not like they learned to play the violin or learned to read." 

- From "Sally," on the interview with WNYC's Leonard Lopate: "I have an 11 year old son, and I find that he becomes very aggressive when he spends a lot of time on an electronic device, especially when playing video games. I limit screen time for him."

- From "Taylor," responding to a post on The New York Times' parenting blog "Motherlode," by KJ Dell'Antonia, about The Atlantic's article: "[A]fter introducing the iPad to my toddler to keep him entertained on a long car ride, we are now awash in a sea of regret. He asks for it CONSTANTLY, cries and throws things when we say no, already knows how to navigate to the movies we've downloaded, go back to the beginning, etc. It's crazy to me. We've done a great job of standing our ground so far - he's allowed to use it only once a week, only supervised, etc. But it's the whining about it that drives me crazy. Anyone with tips, please let me know what worked for you to curb iPad cravings."

- From Mike Kaplan, also commenting on the "Motherlode" post: "One thing missing from iPad play is the tactile interactions with objects, and I wonder what we're losing when we replace three-dimensional playtime in the world of objects and space with 2-dimensional time in the world of simulated objects and simulated space. The coordinated input from multiple senses that you get when handling and looking at an object may be more important than it appears, especially during early development."

- Elaborating on this same idea, Amy L. Slutzky, a pediatric occupational therapist of 33 years, wrote in to "Here and Now" a rather technical explanation of exactly why it's important for babies and toddlers to explore their 3D world. Part of her post: "I 
think we are wise as adults to be cautious regarding exposure of very young
 children to any electronic screen use. When we talk about child development, 
development of the brain, it is easy to limit our thinking about cognitive
 development to visual and auditory learning. However, development, especially
 during the earliest months and years, depends on a gradual expansion of sensory-motor, 
or physical control of the body and the hands during movement, directed by the 
visual system…. Spontaneous
 three-dimensional manipulations with infinite varieties of intensive tactile
 qualities and resistance is critical to development of skillful dexterity, or
 eye-hand coordination. Each specific interaction with the environment contributes 
to a storehouse in the brain for future reference."

Slutzky cites two experts who each "estimated that one-third of our children are failing to develop the
 musclulature of the hand, and the eyes for competent use... The precision muscles in the palm of the hands and the fingers, as well 
as the tiny but all-important eye muscles that control movement of the eyes 
hands [sic] do not have the opportunity to develop in the complex context of the
 three dimensional world no matter how 'interactive' a designed program might 
be."

Indeed, while Rosin lauds the interactiveness of many children's apps, several online commenters argue that apps necessarily have built-in restrictions and limitations. Here's "Jane," for another example, responding to the Leonard Lopate interview: "As interactive and educational as the apps may be, they are REPLACING children's imaginations with pre-determined choices, rather than allowing the children to come up with their own ideas, or allowing them to learn to interact with the world around them."

In a recent New York Times piece called "The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind," reporter Nick Bilton quotes Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at UCLA, saying, "We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet." Bilton writes that Small, author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, says "we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills."

When it comes to our children, caution seems prudent on so many fronts — especially in an area of life in which so much is yet unknown. Hardly anyone would criticize a parent for wanting to limit her young child’s or baby's TV time. Why such a different response to parents' choices about mobile screens held inches from their children's faces? Parents’ concerns need support and understanding. Let’s respect the challenges parents face when it comes to technology use and tots and keep the "neurosis" talk out of it.

Teach Online Privacy Early, Say Google Execs in "The New Digital Age"

Never mind the birds and the bees. It's the "online talk" that kids need to hear first.

That's what two Google executives write in the new book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. 

And when top guns at Google say teaching kids about online privacy and security should come even before sex education, you might want to listen. They know a thing or two, after all, about collecting personal information online.

"Whether you're in New York or Saudi Arabia or a part of Asia, educating the next generation as they're coming online young and fast is going to be important, regardless of what kind of society it is," Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, told NPR's "All Tech Considered" this week.

Cohen, a counterterrorism expert and former State Department adviser, teamed up with Google's executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt to write The New Digital Age, out today. The book lays out a vision of what the near future will look like in an increasingly "connected" world.

"Parents will have to talk to their kids about online privacy and security *years* before they talk to them about the birds and the bees," reads a post on the Facebook page for The New Digital Age. "Online privacy and security will be taught alongside health class."

Schmidt and Cohen say that kids today are part of a generation unlike any that came before it when it comes to virtual identities and permanent online profiles.

"The parent sits there and says, 'There's really no delete button for what my 10-year-old or 11-year-old is about to post, and I really don't want this following them for the next 50 years,'" Schmidt told NPR.

"From birth till your death now, going forward, your online profile will be shaped more and more by online events, what people say about you, and it will be very difficult for you to control that," he said. "And so the reality is that a child growing up today will find more and more of the things said about them and the things they do accumulate over time. We'll all, of course, deal with that as a society, and there will be a change in social mores. But the fact of the matter is that our generation never had this problem."

From The New Digital Age Facebook page

Cohen said he and Schmidt met with parents across the world as they conducted research for their new book. In the process, they came to a greater appreciation of the importance of teaching online privacy to kids.

For more on The New Digital Age and the authors' forecasts, both bleak and hopeful—and on Google's own troubles with privacy (they've been sued repeatedly over privacy concerns)—see this Huffington Post review. 

And for more on the authors' journeys to various autocratic regimes, and what might happen as 5 billion more people log onto the Internet in the coming decades, joining the 2 billion already online, listen to this second discussion with "All Tech Considered." The authors explore such questions as What will the Internet in Burma look like? and Will North Korea ever really be online?

New Yorker Cartoon Roundup: Reflections on Generation Tech

Here's one just for fun. Through the decades, The New Yorker magazine has captured the changing digital landscape with true genius through witty cartoons that are spot-on. Here's a quick roundup of some of the magazine's best cartoons from the past few years on growing up digital by an array of clever artists. Enjoy!

From September 27, 2010, by artist Emily Flake (who was also highlighted in this earlier post):

Is this what's coming next? From December 17, 2012, by artist Harry Bliss:

Another classic by Emily Flake, from April 11, 2011:

Here are two recent cartoons on "the Cloud." First, from August 13, 2012, by Emily Flake again...

... and from October 8, 2012, by Tom Cheney:

This is not about young people per se, but I couldn't resist. It's one of the funniest cartoons I've ever seen about the Internet. From June 25, 2012, by Roz Chast:

From September 5, 2011, by Alex Gregory:

From October 1, 2012, by Matthew Diffee, about a girl's Klout score, or alleged social media influence:

And finally, my absolute favorite. By Mick Stevens, published March 15, 2010. This one says it all:

"Present Shock" Author on Kids and Digital Media: When and How to Use What

Forget "future shock" — the stress of dealing with rapid, accelerating change. Our problem is the present — the real-time, "always on" immediacy of today's digital culture, says media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in his new book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now.

Rushkoff has been studying the impact of digital media on society for the past 30 years. It was Rushkoff who coined the phrases "viral media" and "digital native." In his latest book on media, technology and culture, out today, Rushkoff argues that trying to keep up in the digital world can be overwhelming — and comes at a cost.

"Thanks to the Internet, we travel more on business not less, we work at all hours on demand, and spend our free time answering email or tending to our social networks," Rushkoff writes in Present Shock. "Staring into screens, we are less attuned to light of day and the physiological rhythms of our housemates and co-workers."

Rushkoff, who made the 2010 PBS Frontline documentary Digital_Nation, calls us "citizens of the virtual city that never sleeps" in Present Shock. He describes such new phenomena as "digiphrenia" — the divided attention that results from being in multiple "places" at once and having multiple "selves" existing online simultaneously.

I won't dig much deeper into Present Shock here — you can read excerpts published in The Wall Street Journal and on "Medium;" read the reviews in The New York Times and Forbes; watch Rushkoff's recent speech on the subject at WebVisions New York 2013; listen to his interview on NPR's "On Point" today; and read this Q&A, just posted on Edutopia. It's all great stuff from a man who writes, "The future is so yesterday." 

Instead, I'd like to devote some space to what Rushkoff has written recently on children and digital media. Rushkoff has said that the constant pings of texts are taking kids out of the present moment rather than helping them live in it. And that growing up on Facebook — developing socially in an online spotlight — can put a lot of pressure on young people. (See why Rushkoff quit Facebook himself last month in this CNN.com piece — a scathing critique of what he calls an "anti-social social network.")

In two recent blog posts on Edutopia, Rushkoff offers parents advice on introducing digital media to children of different ages. The father of a 7-year-old himself, he has some firsthand experience. Here's a look at what he says in each post:

"Young Kids and Technology at Home," on Media and Younger Kids

Babies and toddlers are still developing the ability to understand the 3D world, Rushkoff writes here. "They don't fully understand the rules of opaque objects (that's why peekaboo behind a napkin poses endless fascination), so high quantities of time spent sitting in front of 2D screens may actually inhibit some of their 3D spatial awareness."

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and indeed most pediatricians, recommend that children under age 2 have no screen time whatsoever, for this reason and others. It's a time of tremendous, critical brain development, and the AAP stresses that young children need to learn through interactions with people, not screens.

Rushkoff acknowledges the stresses and realities of parenting — and the lure of the screen — and suggests a compromise: no more than 20 minutes of screen time twice a day for the very little. Still, he says, this should only be DVDs designed for kids that have long scenes their brains can process and elements such as nature that they wouldn't otherwise see. "And no, they can't sit next to Junior while he watches Lego Star Wars," Rushkoff writes.

Rushkoff says this is good policy for kids even up to 7 or 8 years old when it comes to devices like the iPad or Nintendo DS. That's because there's so much else kids need to learn first — such as gravity. Rushkoff writes:

"Little kids play with balls, seesaws and slides as they develop their vestibular senses, and come to learn about the wonders of gravity. They move on to Frisbees, bikes and Hula Hoops as they explore angular momentum and harmonic motion. The weightless world of a digital game or virtual environment fascinates us for the way it defies the rules of the real world; until we are firmly anchored in the former reality, however, these new principles are not neurologically compatible with a developing sensory system."

In other words, it's best not to mess with developing feedback mechanisms in a child. Let kids learn to navigate the real world before they venture into virtual ones, Rushkoff says.

"Technology at Home: Developing the Social Self," on the Tween Years and Beyond

Once your kids hit the tween years, it's important that they understand the various media they're using "from the inside out: who made this, how does it work, and what does it want from me?" Rushkoff writes. Kids should understand the motivations of the developers behind all the media that's competing for their attention, he says.

"An app is not just an app: it is a marketing plan, an influence platform, and an effort at manipulation. This doesn't mean it's bad – just that it has a purpose," Rushkoff writes. Young people especially, he says, "are unaware that the virtual environments they inhabit may not be constructed with their best interests in mind." Parents should help them understand this.

It's OK to let tweens play with and learn from digital media for one or two hours each day, he says, but it should not be their primary means of social engagement.

"Why? It's not really social!" Rushkoff writes. "Social development is a body-to-body, face-to-face affair. As our social selves form, we learn to read and send messages to other people. This is when we learn most of the 94% of communication that occurs non-verbally: body positions, tone of voice, pupils dilating or contracting... in other words, the stuff you can't see in a chat room or even a 4-inch video window."

Rushkoff doesn't recommend letting tweens on Facebook or other social media until they are "fully socialized" themselves. And if you give a tween his own mobile device, he says, make sure you're in charge of when and how it's used. Keep computers and other media devices in family rooms where you can monitor kids' usage. Do not allow them in kids' bedrooms.

"Let your children enjoy and learn from this stuff, but let them know from the outset that these are not mere toys; there are people on the other side of the screen — developers and programmers — whose job it is to make it really hard for a kid to stop playing." Empower kids to turn games off, Rushkoff writes. "If you can't turn it off, it means you're losing the bigger game." Let every minute a kid goes over her allotted time for the day cost 5 minutes of time the next day, Rushkoff advises.

As for teens, Rushkoff says they "shouldn't be online until they understand how to create their own online spaces." Teens should learn basic HTML and learn about databases. They should be exposed to coding languages and should learn to think critically about digital tools and virtual worlds. Schools and parents alike have the responsibility to encourage this education, Rushkoff says.

"The computer isn't a bad or dirty thing, but it is a portal to the outside world," he writes. "It provides access to love and hate, sex and war, ideas and ignorance, support and abuse. Just like the front doors to our homes, computers may welcome our dearest friends, but anyone can knock."

And when the lights go out, he writes, so should the smartphones. "Exceptions to the rule are that Hurricane Sandy hit, or the kids are at a sleepover. 'Johnny may ask me to the dance' is not an exception."

Note Rushkoff's great list of resources for parents and other interested parties at the end of this post, too. It includes Talking Back to Facebook, a 2012 book by James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, that addresses many parents' concerns about social media and offers practical advice. In this age of "present shock" and in-the-moment digital living, it's advice many parents will eagerly hear.

Sneaking a Peek: Is It OK to Read Your Kids' Text Messages?

When does parenting become spying? It's a question that comes up often in this age of mobile kids with virtual social lives. But the answer is rarely straightforward.

A parent recently asked Common Sense Media (CSM) if it's OK for parents to read their kids' texts to make sure they're not getting into trouble. The response, by CSM's parenting editor Caroline Knorr, was a bit nuanced.

In short, Knorr wrote, it's essential to discuss responsible cell phone behavior with your children — and do this in the beginning, when you first hand a child a phone — and to set consequences for breaking the rules. And yes, you need to keep an eye on their cell phone behavior. But as far as outright reading their texts? "There's no absolute right answer here," Knorr wrote. "It depends on your kid's age, personality, and behavior."

Some behaviors will set off louder alarm bells than others. Changes to a child's appearance or actions could mean something is up. If you suspect that your child is going through something bad but won't talk about it, Knorr says, you may have "probable cause" for peeking at texts.

The links throughout Knorr's piece to other CSM articles offer further advice about sexting, responsible texting, setting cellphone use rules and deciding what devices to give your kids when — do they really need a cell phone with texting? At what age? Knorr's "Parents' Guide to Kids and Cell Phones" is a great place to start for help with these questions and many more. See the CSM article "Are You Spying on Your Kid?" too, on walking that fine line between protecting your children and invading their privacy.

And read what some kids had to say in the comments sections, too. "Parents, it's true that we do treat phones like diaries," writes one 13-year-old. "If you go through them without asking, it offends us a little that you don't have trust in us." This young person said it's OK for his or her parents to read texts as long as they ask first. "I love them, but I'd rather they not just read them whenever they feel like it."

Then there's the 11-year-old who simply answered the "Is it OK" question with, "NOOOOOOOO!" No ambiguity there. Other kids who had their own phones at as young as 6 and 8 years old weighed in on the issue, too. Not surprisingly, they had something to say on the matter.