Online Safety Starts at Home

The Internet is here to stay. We cannot stop this technology so we may as well work with it and use it to our advantage. The advances The Internet have brought about are significant. But despite its numerous benefits The Internet has also become a medium and aid for unscrupulous people. And the worst kind are those predators polluting the innocent minds of our kids and preying on their vulnerability. Protecting our kids without depriving them of the educational information the Internet can offer is quite a balancing act. A new book entitled The Savvy Cyber Kids At Home: The Family Gets A Computer by Ben Halpert offers parents a simple way to tackle the issue.

NPD finds mobile gaming apps dominate kids downloads

Kids' Mobile Entertainment & Apps, the latest report from market research company The NPD Group, has found that gaming apps dominate usage among US kids, followed by music apps.

Gaming is the most popular type of app downloaded, with the chosen device used by a child containing approximately 10 gaming-related apps on average. The majority of mobile entertainment devices used by parents and kids have fewer than 20 apps that have been downloaded specifically for a child, with 7% having more than 60 apps for a child.

Music, however, dominates when it comes to overall downloading, with games coming in at a distant second place and video falling in third place. A full 61% of all kid-friendly downloads to a mobile entertainment device are music-related. The remaining types of downloads, which include ringtones, TV shows and movies, make up less than 10% of all downloading activity.

The report also cites that 82% of all apps downloaded for children were free. However, those who have purchased an app for their child are willing to spend almost twice as much as they are currently spending, with the willingness to pay for an app among device users increasing with the age of the child.

Police: Thieves Robbed Homes Based On Facebook,
Social Media Sites

Nashua police are crediting an alert off-duty police officer who heard fireworks with cracking a burglary ring that targeted homes known to be empty because of Facebook postings.

Police said they recovered between $100,000 and $200,000 worth of stolen property as a result of the investigation.

Police said there were 50 home burglaries in the city in August. Investigators said the suspects used social networking sites such as Facebook to identify victims who posted online that they would not be home at a certain time.

"Be careful of what you post on these social networking sites," said Capt. Ron Dickerson. "We know for a fact that some of these players, some of these criminals, were looking on these sites and identifying their targets through these social networking sites."

Stopping Bullies: Cyberbullying & Digital Citizenship for Classrooms

Texting is replacing talk among teens. The feature is so important to them that if texting was no longer an option, 47% of teens say their social life would end or be worsened – especially among females, 54 % compared to 40% of males. Most cell phones today have the capability of taking photos. Many teens are engaging in “sexting” which is writing sexually explicit messages and/or taking sexually explicit photos of themselves or others and sending them via text to each other. So why are teens engaging in this type of behavior?

• 51% of teen girls say pressure from a guy is a reason girls send sexy messages or images; only 18% of teen boys cited pressure from female counterparts as a reason.
• 23% of teen girls and 24% of teen boys say they were pressured by friends to send or post sexual content.

Once the message or image is sent, there is no way for the sender to retrieve it. Some tweens/teens rely on the promise that the recipient will not share the messages or photos with others but these messages are often forwarded to others and can quickly become out of control. The embarrassment and humiliation that follows can be devastating for the sender.

Coca-Cola and Facebook get touchy
with Israeli teens

Coca-Cola is offering wrist bands to those attending the Village festival in Israel so they can update their Facebook status with a tap of the hand.

That tap has to be against one of the huge "Like" buttons Coca-Cola has erected around the site, though tags are recorded as youth pass the festival gates too, so organisers can see who is where and attendees can be sure that every moment is captured on Facebook.

Ten Coca-Cola Villages were held this year, each consisting of three days of swimming, music, stand-up comedy and sports. A total of 6,500 teenagers went along, though the supporting Facebook page has 55,000 signed up.

Not only could attendees automatically update their status with such gems as "I got the best massage of my life at Coca-Cola Village" while leaving the festival spa, but staff wandered around the events with digital cameras, taking photographs that could be instantly uploaded to Facebook by tapping the wrist against a portable reader.

The project was a huge success, with attendees happily providing free advertising for Coca-Cola, while organisers appreciated being able to see how many people were looking for food, or attending a particular performance - no doubt that data will be examined carefully when considering the line-up for next year.