Girlz rule

From today's semi-loathed Thursday Styles section of the New York Times:

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain
Stephanie Rosenbloom, February 21, 2008

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

...

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

Then, of course, the article goes to to state that most computer science majors and industry professionals are men, and the gender gap seems to be increasing rather than correcting itself. Something to think about.

APA study debunks myth of stereotypical internet predator

press release from the American Psychological Association:

WASHINGTON—Contrary to stereotype, most Internet sex offenders are not adults who target young children by posing as another youth, luring children to meetings, and then abducting or forcibly raping them, according to researchers who have studied the nature of Internet-initiated sex crimes.

Rather, most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures. The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline, the researchers say.

...

For example, in spite of public concern, the authors found that adolescents' use of popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase their risk of being victimized by online predators. Rather, it is risky online interactions such as talking online about sex to unknown people that increases vulnerability, according to the researchers.

"Most Internet-initiated sex crimes involve adult men who are open about their interest in sex," Wolak said. "The offenders use instant messages, e-mail and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate relationships with their victims. In most of the cases, the victims are aware that they are talking online with adults."

More play on play

I just downloaded & listened to Krista Tippet's interview with Stuart Brown from the National Institute of Play that broadcast on Speaking of Faith last August. Really interesting stuff. As the mom of an almost-three year old boy, this is required listening! The research on the developmental benefits of engaging in unrestricted play are compelling, and the repercussions of denying play are significant and sometimes brutal. Even if one does not turn out to be -- literally -- a murderer (Brown's early research has shown a connection), in order to access playful moments in our adult lives we really need the memory of participating in play as a child. Makes you want to go out and climb the monkey bars ... and lucky me, I get to do this all the time now!

For those of us who are interested in how people perceive technology use by preteens and teens, Brown uses some wonderful language that can be used to show parents the positive aspects of behaviors even when on the surface it might look "dangerous" or "risky."

In this interview Brown and Tippet attempt to connect the dots** between what is happening outside on the playground with what happens inside on the screen (be it TV, computer, video games, etc.), but more can be said on this subject. To his credit, Brown hesitates to make too many assumptions w/r/t what is "good" or "bad" about screen time, however he does highlight interesting discoveries by neuroscientists about the need for body movement in three-dimensional space to activate certain parts of our brain, suggesting that catatonic video gaming is not going be interpreted by the brain as "play" and therefore might not have clear benefits. Perhaps the new breed of active video games, like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, touch this sector of our brain better than navigation games like Grand Theft Auto? Just a thought.

More to listen to: Paul Holdengräber from the New York Public Library hosted an evening with Krista Tippet and Stuart Brown on January 29, 2008. They posted an audio transcript, but I haven't listened to it yet.

UPDATED:  additional story about the psychological benefits of old-fashioned play on NPR

** this section of the interview is about 35 min. in on the podcast

Dueling toy trends - let them make play!

I, Breeder has an interesting post up called Dispatches from the Island of High-Tech Toys. In it he notes two opposite trends in new toys unveiled last week at the annual Toy Fair: toys driven by sophisticated technologies and "green" toys that hark back to an earlier era.

Both are highly interactive, both are relatively expensive to produce and distribute (and in today's iffy economy that makes both pretty risky endeavors), but the techie-toys are clearly designed to appeal to kids, while the "green" or retro toys are targeted at parents.

I wonder if they are as mutually exclusive as they might seem at first glance? I think the two ends of the spectrum are moving together, and hopefully that is not just because I went to grad school with people who wired up ceramic pots and made them into robots.**

There is something so delightfully tangible about both a wooden toy that takes touch and imagination to come alive and a toy that lights up and changes and maybe even morphs into a new toy based on how you play with it.

Which brings me to another great and thought-provoking piece, the NY Times Magazine article about the necessity of play. I love that there is a National Institute for Play! Go Stuart Brown (director), and go to the toy designers who are taking play seriously.

** in case you are wondering, I never thought that was a particularly good use of either technology OR ceramic pots

One teachers's reaction to the high tech high school

A teacher at TC Williams in Alexandria, VA talks about how teaching in a tech-happy high school burns out the morale of some veteran teachers.

Source: Washington Post, Feb 10, 2008

Google doodle contest

Google just announced a doodle contest - the best student-produced (K-12) Google logo doodle will win a $10,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for his/her school! Plus the doodle will be on Google's website on May 22, 2008. The current "doodle master" is a 29-year old Dennis Hwang.

Souce: MSNBC, Feb. 13, 2008

your honorable/dubious reputation

A lot has been made of the teenage preponderance for exposing themselves (literally & figuratively) online.  But of course we are all guilty and subject to that.   

I occasionally listen to the podcast version of Tech Tuesdays on the Kojo Nmandi public radio show, and there was an interesting episode last month related to this topic.  What is the future of our individual reputations in a world where almost every action is recorded and archived and searchable in an instant.   What about our "good name" - especially when there could be a million people out there with the exact same name and it's easy to get confused.   [Sidebar:  is this why parents feel the need to get so creative with the spelling of their children's names?]  

The call-in questions were not as interesting as the intro from the guest -- Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University and author of a new book called The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet.   One woman was afraid of her ex-husband posting naked photos of her on his website as revenge, another person wondering about the responsibility people have to report harmful websites, and of course there was the obligatory mention of concern job applicants should have about their social networking profiles.  

Something highlighted on this show:  the intrinsic value we, as a nation, have placed on privacy as show by the legal protection of MAIL.  It's interesting ... diaries (and of course blogs) are considered quite public, as is any video or audio recording (Alec Baldwin voicemail, Paris Hilton sex tape) but no one would dare steal postal mail and publish it without permission.   In fact, reading the collected letters of a historical figure still thrills ... right?  I heard that Susan Sontag's son is publishing some of her papers and letters, and I realized I want to read her words more than look at Annie Leibovitz's photographs of her during her latest illness and death.  

Anyway, something to think about - the value of privacy and the written word.    I hope we don't all have to register with Reputation Defender (mentioned on the radio show) to stave off attacks.  

they just speak a different language

Fun Reuters piece (here, via Yahoo) on British kids substituting words based on what typically comes up when typing a text message using predictive text. (ie: "book" means cool because that is the standard word that will come up if you key in 2-6-6-5) Linguists are calling it "textonyms" - I say a great way to encrypt what you are saying from the 'rents! It's all about the context anyway.

Last paragraph of the story makes a very intriguing point - there are some possibly unintended values associated with the some of the switches:

Some of the most popular textonyms show intriguing links between the originally intended word and the one the predictive text throws up -- "eat" becomes "fat" and "kiss" becomes "lips," "home" is "good" and the vodka brand "Smirnoff" becomes "poison."

While secret languages like Gibberish (a big hit at overnight camp circa 1984) are nothing new, this actually reminds me of the British, or maybe Cockney?, way of substituting a word that rhymes with the word you really mean. Since I am absolutely terrible at that kind of quick switcharoo, I can't even think of a good example. One of the characters in Ocean's Eleven was famous for this language trick.

All I can say is more power to the teens. They will be absolutely fantastic at crossword puzzles and ace their LSATs.

thinking about ...

.... danah boyd.    Her name rang a bell for me while watching the Frontline documentary "Growing Up Online" and today I finally remembered that I read a piece about her in the NY Times years ago regarding Friendster and her early interest in social networking.  Fascinating stuff!    Her blog (even mentioned in that 2003 article) has a typically brilliant and thought-provoking post up today about exposure, teenagers, and determining the limits of what we should (rather than can) do with social technologies.    Her line of thinking perfectly illustrates the title of her blog - apophenia: making connections where none existed.  

More info:

• Decoding the New Cues In Online Society (Michael Erard, Nov. 27, 2003)
  
• apophenia
  
• danah boyd