Cellphones - The Modern Leash

Do cellphones increase kids independence or are we actually making them more dependent on us? Once upon a time ....

• Johnny goes to a friend's house to play. (He probably even walks there!!!) Johnny and his friend had a fight, as kids often do. Once upon a time... the friend's parent would intervene to help resolve the problem if necessary. Often times today..., Johnny just whips out his mobile phone and calls his parents to come pick him up. The friend's parent probably isn't even aware of the problem, or the fact that Johnny is leaving.

• Mary goes on an overnight trip from school. During the night she is scared and becomes anxious. Once upon a time... Mary would have approached an adult accompanying the trip, who would have addressed the problem only calling Mary's parents if absolutely necessary. These days.... Mary is much more likely to call home, even at 3:00am, to be comforted by her parents. The chaperons are not even aware that there is a problem because Mary calls from her personal phone without their knowledge.

Yes, mobile phones enable us to stay in constant touch with our kids. However, is using them as an electronic leash in their best interest? Aren't we making it harder for them to develop a sense of confidence and responsibility? In both of the very common scenarios above, wouldn't the child have benefited more from resolving the problem without parental intervention?

Another side effect of using the mobile phone as a leash is that we are absolving the adults caring for our children, whether it be parents of friends or chaperons on a trip, of their responsibilities towards our children!!!

There are two other interesting posts related to this from the Independent and CourierNews.

No technology in today's post, but some important food for thought. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Social Network Identity Verification

Originally I had planned on discussing something concerned with cellular phone use. However, I find myself still so appalled by the case I discussed in my previous post, that I will instead open a discussion about possible ways to avoid bullying by social network users.

The main approach today is to attempt to limit use of social networking sites to those over a certain age. Therefore, there are those who are now proposing that age verification be legislated. This article discusses the problems associated with such an approach. The most obvious issue of course is that minors do not have any identification (drivers license, credit card, etc). Any scheme that relies on using a parent's ID is doomed for failure for many reasons, as is discussed in the article.

So, now I am putting on my thinking cap. Is it really only an age issue? Wouldn't it be a healthier environment for all if we all knew which are impostors and which are portraying their real identity? Even if we couldn't provide a 100% accurate indication, wouldn't it be helpful to have some kind of indication (real vs. impostor) with perhaps an accompanying reliability score?

With my technical background I of course have lots of ideas running through my head about how to provide information that could contribute to a real vs. impostor decision. However, I believe that user input could also be an important source of information. We take into account other people's opinions about everything from books to washing machines before we make a purchase. Perhaps it would be helpful to receive input from others about whether Joe Smith on Facebook is real or an impostor.

Please express your views about this, as well as making other suggestions about how you think we can make social networks and the other modern modes of communication safer for our children ... and for ourselves.

Social Networking Tragedy

Social Networks are the latest rage these days among young and old. They started out as ways for students to stay in touch and make new friends, and are now used by anyone who is someone. MySpace and Facebook are the leaders at the moment, but there are many more. The basic idea is that you can create a page for yourself that includes who you are, a picture of yourself, your hobbies, favorite music, etc. You can then invite friends to join your social network. If they agree they appear on your page as your friends, and you are added to their list of friends. In this way you create a social network of friends - 1st degree (those you know directly) and 2nd degree (friends of friends). Within this network you can chat, share music, send updates, send virtual drinks, and do all kinds of other stuff. The sky is basically the limit since these sites provide developer kits enabling the users themselves to create new applications.

While this sounds like a lot of fun, I recently read of the tragic death of Megan Meier. Megan, 13 years old, was befriended by a 16 year old boy on MySpace. With her mother's approval, Megan added Josh to her list of friends on the social networking site and a long distance MySpace friendship developed. However, "Josh" was in reality the peeved parents of a girl who lived down the street from Megan. As this article describes, Megan ultimately commited suicide after "Josh" began slandering her on MySpace.

When I logged onto Facebook the first time I was both fascinated and appalled by the whole idea. Yes, it's a great way to meet new people and it's great way to share pictures, updates, etc with my family and friends. However, I was amazed by the amount of information people were willing to put on the internet about themselves. I immediately thought of how kids could bully each other using this medium, and of course everyone's fears of pedophiles. The same rules that apply for instant messaging which I mentioned in a previous post are true here. Kids shouldn't interact with people they don't know.

There are laws against impersonating a doctor, lawyer, policeman, etc in real life. There definitely should be laws against an adult impersonating anyone for the purpose of misleading or harming a child whether it be in real life or cyberlife. In my worst dreams I never imagined a parent would use a social networking site as a weapon against another child.

At a minimum, it seems to me that we need a way to identify real people on these sites vs. impersonators.

Mobile Phone Etiquette

This cartoon is definitely worth a thousand words, and it says a lot about cellphone etiquette. As adults most of us don't excel when it comes to cellphone etiquette, so I guess it's no great surprise that our children don't either. Somehow though I think current attempts at banning celphones in schools will be about as successful as the attempts to ban calculators in the 70s and 80s. Heck, enforcing bans on teacher's use of them in the classroom hasn't been very successful from my personal experience, so how can we expect the kids to comply?

And if you think voice conversations are the main problem then you are way behind the times! Long gone are the days when kids passed notes to each other to cheat on tests. A quick SMS is much more efficient. Since some kids can even type blind on the miniscule keyboards, they don't even have to take the phone out of their pocket to send a message.

Obviously teaching our children appropriate use of phones and basic mobile phone etiquette is the first step. Teaching Kids Cell Phone Etiquette has some suggestions and tips about what to discuss when you broach the subject with your child.

A recent New York Times article highlights very pointedly some people's frustration with mobile phone conversations carried out in public places. As the article describes, some people and business owners are so frustrated that they purchase jamming devices to block cellular signals. With a press of a button on a device hidden in a pocket they prevent the people in their vicinity from receiving and making cellular phone calls. The devices and their use is illegal, but it is a growing trend.


So what is the solution? Education is part of it, but I believe that technology will also be a major part. In my previous post I described the location tracking technologies that are becoming available. As these technologies become more mainstream we will see applications built on top of them that will make etiquette enforcement much easier. I believe that this will happen in several ways:

1. Our rich presence information (I'm in school, driving, in a concert, etc) will be shown as part of the contact information in our phone's contact list. and thus will move some of the etiquette to the caller. The caller will then hopeful refrain from sending an SMS if I am driving, or will refrain from calling at all if I am in school. This is an extension of the capabilities I described in my post on instant messaging.
2. Automatic call routing will enable me to define when, where and how I want to receive my calls. I will define, for example, that if I am in a movie theater I want to receive SMSs only and if I'm driving I want only voice. Automatic systems will make those conversions, including automatically converting speech to text and vice versa.
3. Instituations and businesses will be able to define the required etiquette in their locations, and the level of enforcement. Enforcement will be automatic. The frustrated commuter in the New York Times article could sit in a quiet car on the train which would prevent voice calls but allow SMSs, for example.
   

None of these capabilities are available in the market yet, but they give you an idea of some of the things I am addressing at work.

Kids Go Mobile - Part 2

In Kids Go Mobile - Part 1 I discussed cell phone features that are established and well known in the mobile phone market and my thoughts about how to avoid some of the dangers associated with some of them. Today I will start to introduce some of the newer technologies that are emerging in the mobile phone market.

Location based services is a REALLY hot topic these days. There are lots of different applications, and probably the most well known is GPS based driving instructions. While such applications very often run on special devices installed in cars or on PDAs, they are also available now on mobile phones. However, since this blog is focused on technologies and how they affect kids I will focus in this post on phone based location based technologies aimed at that.

Believe it or not, you can now use a cellphone to track the location of your children. The phrase, "It's 10:00pm do you know where you child is?" is going the way of the rotary phone. Today's location tracking technologies enable you to look on the internet via a PC or your phone and see a map indicating your child's location using the GPS capabilities of his phone. You can even indicate an area on the map and if the child leaves that area you will receive a warning via SMS and/or email. This of course raises what I call the "track or trust" dilemma, but we'll get back to that in a few minutes. If you would like some links to providers offerings this type of service take a look at this blog post, which mentions the different providers and has links to their tracking enabled phones.

Before we discuss the implications of this technology on both children and parents I would like to give you a technical overview of how location tracking technologies work. I believe this will help you better understand the true capabilities and limitations.

If even thought of hearing tech talk has caused an expression like this to appear on your face feel free to scroll on down to the "phew" picture and keep reading from there. :)

OK, so here goes. How the heck do they know the location of the mobile phone? Well actually all mobile phone providers identify to which antennas your phone is closest in order to route calls to you. The location of the antennas is of course known to the provider, since they put them up. Using this information and by calculating the strength of the signal received by the closest antennas they are able to identify the location of the phone. This method is called cellular triangulation. However, the accuracy of this method is highly dependent on the distribution of the antennas. In highly populated areas there are typically far more antennas than in more rural areas, resulting in a very different level of accuracy. In the heart of a crowded city it might have an accuracy of up to 50 meters while in a a rural area the accuracy would be measured in kilometers (or miles).

For this reason the mobile providers are not relying on cellular triangulation to provide their Family Finder type services. Instead they use GPS enabled devices. The GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver in the phone calculates the phone's position by measuring its distance between 3 or more GPS satellites. It's accuracy is much higher and much more consistent than cellular triangulation and comes in at roughly 15 meters. A significant drawback of GPS however, is that it does not work without a line of site to the satellites and thus does not work inside buildings, underground, etc. The tracking systems get around this by noting the last place you were located via GPS and assuming you are still there until a new reading is received. This of course is very misleading if you are riding on a subway.

One thing which, although obvious, should probably be mentioned is that for phone tracking to work as advertised the phone needs to be turned on and it needs to be with the child. Ditching it at a friends house while going out on the town defeats the purpose. Some manufacturers have come out with phones whose GPS continues to work even when the phone is turned off. To prevent the child from removing the battery to get around that they have a special screw making it impossible to remove the battery without a special tool.

You survived the technical stuff!

Now take a look at the advertisement highlighted in this post and tell me what you think. The ad for the child tracking system basically infers that the child doesn't know anything about the tracking capability of the phone he just received from his mother, and his mother proudly shows to her coworkers her ability to track her sons movements. I think that goes way beyond even the occassional snooping we discussed in my Instant Messaging post.
There is a lot of interest in these tracking services, especially as parents fear for their children's safety from pedophiles and other such threats. However, does a parent's fears justify such a blatant intrusion into a child's privacy??? In my opinion, the answer is a resounding NO.

However, if the technology is being used with the knowledge of the child then I believe there are situations where it has its advantages. For example, it can help make sure a child doesn't get lost. It can also be used to resist temptations posed by peers. Tweens and teens sometimes need an excuse of "over protective parents" to extricate themselves from situations which they know are not allowed.

Whether this technology is for you depends on a few factors:

1. Your level of fear and anxiety for your child's safety.
2. How closely you like to monitor your child's daily activities.

As with all technologies, this child tracking can be used in a positive way or in a very negative way.

Kids Go Mobile - Part 1

"To be or not to be" has a vastly different meaning for kids today than what Shakespeare intended when he coined the phrase. "To be" is to have a cellphone and "not to be" is to not have one, and thus be completely disconnected from the world.

The decision regarding at what age to allow a child to have a mobile phone is a personal one for each family and is a topic that is widely discussed. The purpose of this post is to make you aware some of the existing capabilities associated with mobile devices, and their implications on kids daily lives. The decision whether or not to let a child have a phone is only the beginning. What capabilities you will allow the child to use is no less of an important decision. In Kids Go Mobile - Part 2 I will discuss some of the newer technologies beginning to appear.

For a start I will group the different types of functionality offered to make the discussion a little simpler. Red indicates that the functionality requires an active data connection which is optional in most 2G phones and is included with most 3G phone plans.

• Voice - Voice Calls, Voice Mail, Push-to-Talk (like a walkie talkie), recording device
• Messaging - Text Messaging, Multi-media Messaging (ability to send text, pictures, music, video), Instant Messaging
• Organizer - Clock, alarm, stopwatch, Calendar, Memos, To do list, Calculator
• Entertainment - Still picture capture, Video capture, Video conferencing, Music player (mp3), Movie player (mp4), Book viewer, TV Viewer (IPTV - TV broadcast over the internet - in this case to a mobile device), Game console
• Data Applications - Internet browsing (including downloading ringtones, wallpapers, games, etc), Email, GPS navigation

The functionality I have listed here is readily available by all providers. For capabilities such as video conferencing and IPTV a 3G (third generation) handset is required. 3G means that a higher bandwidth is supported, enabling applications requiring high volumes of data.

OK, so what does all this mean? It means that as parents we need to decide the purpose of the phone. If it's sole purpose is to be able to call in an emergency and for us to be able to contact the child, then nothing more than the simplist voice capabilities are required. Some operators are even beginning to market phones for very young children as is described in this Mobile Phone Blog post. Strollerderby also has some interesting insight into this issue.

OK, so you have decided your 4 month old can have a phone limitted to voice functionality only.

Fine, but now she has gotten a little older and all her friends have phones with cameras, fancy ringtones, and the phone is without a doubt a status symbol. What now???

The data connection and camera are two key decisions. Even if there is a camera, without a data connection sending pictures and videos to friends (and enemies) becomes much more complicated. The only way they can send something is by connecting the phone to a computer or by sending from phone to phone by infrared or bluetooth (both technologies requiring close proximity). While it doesn't prevent sharing completely it makes it much less trivial, and I have found that they don't bother. Eliminating the data connection also means no astronomical bills from downloading content (ringtones, music, games, etc).

Whatever decision is made about the data connection, a serious discussion about responsible use of the camera is in order. My children were taught that pictures are to be taken only of fully clothed people and only of people who consent to having their picture taken. No candid camera or using it for surveillance. Like most things, the cellphone can be an aid or a weapon and it is our responsibility to teach our children to use it correctly.

As camera quality increases in mobile devices scanners may become obsolete according to this Newsweek article. In a few more years perhaps kids will be using their camera phone to copy from the board in school and convert to Word and PDF files.

Instant Messaging - Privacy & Supervision Issues

OK, so assuming a basic understanding now of what instant messaging provides and its attraction to the young (and even some of us who are shy but aren't so young). Now come the hard issues ... parental control vs. a child's right to privacy.

One thing parents should note is that most IM clients include the option for storing chat sessions. This means that you can, should you choose, read the interactions that your child has with others. I personally am very torn about this. On the one hand I want to protect my children from the loonatics of the world, but on the other hand I think trust is an important value as well. In my house we have one computer for all the kids and it is situated in a central location. All the kids repeatedly hear the rules about interacting only with people they know - both in the real world and on the internet. You could say that if I truly trusted them they would be allowed to use computers in their rooms. However, I feel that while my children want to follow the rules they can be tempted to do otherwise. The approach we have taken is to decrease the temptations but without snooping on them.

An interesting article from the Media Awareness Network provides some guidelines about supervising use of IM. Note that while the article does provide tips about how to help your child set up an IM account such that details about their identity are not revealed and that only people they authorize can contact them, it does not recommend reading their chat transcripts without their knowledge.

Below are screen shots from the ICQ registration process indicating the key areas to note. The ones crossed out indicate information which I feel is unnecessary to provide for children. The radio buttons I circled are extremely important if you don't want strangers to be able to contact your child freely. Please note that while I used ICQ as an example, other IM programs have similar registration processes.

One of the areas of Research that interest me is how to provide real-time supervision and control of children's IM interactions without invading their privacy.

Instant Messaging - Now and in the Future

ICQ, Messenger, Google Talk, ...

What is it? Why is it attractive? How does it impact children's social lives? What to expect in the future.

Chances are that if you found this blog on your own you probably already know all about instant messaging. For those of you who had a helping hand in reaching this blog, instant messaging (IM) is an application that allows two or more people to chat via text messages on a computer. Unlike email, the message you type is received by the person with whom you are communicating immediately - and thus the name instant messaging. Google, ICQ, Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft and many others vendors provide such applications. Another key feature of such applications is the ability to see whether the person you want to contact is on line and available or not before you attempt to contact them. This capability is known as Presence, and I will dedicate a separate post to it.

Kids these days learn to use instant messaging almost from the moment they learn to read and write. In fact, I think one of the positive aspects of IM is that it encourages children to use the written word to communicate. One of my children had atrocious spelling and it was not school or my nagging that changed that, but rather IM! A bit of teasing about misspellings on ICQ did the trick.

Spelling is far from the only thing IM affects though. Wait until they reach the teenage years. I don't know how you were invited out on your first date, but in my day notes passed in school or phone calls were followed by a meeting with a very nervous boy. IM enables real-time interaction without the blushing face, shaky voice, and sweaty palms being observed by your dream date. One evening I watched amazed while one of my daughters chatted for hours on the computer with a boy that lived in spitting distance of her. When I asked her why she didn't just go outside and talk to him, her response was more or less, "I wouldn't be caught dead talking to him." It was the IM medium that caused them both to feel less inhibited and opened a channel of communication that social norms wouldn't allow to take place via other communication channels.

Personal safety is of course a concern with IM. Who I say I am is not necessarily who I am. Since no validation is required when I register and provide my name, age, etc many people misrepresent themselves for reasons which in many cases can endanger our children. While we can teach our children only to chat with people they know, to date there is no technical way to limit with whom they communicate other than completely blocking their access to these types of tools.

Today most instant messaging is done while sitting in front of a personal computer. In the not too distant future we will see additional devices which support instant messaging - for example, mobile phones and televisions. We are already seeing the first such applications on the high end mobile phones.

The following cartoon from http://www.jerryking.com/ gives a good idea of what schools think of IM ...

Then and Now

Remember what communication was like in the days of our parents and grandparents? Letters were the mainstay even though telephones were around in those days. Long distance calls were expensive and even to this day many people of that generation will hold only a 3 sentence conversation with me before hanging up.

Living several hours from his parents and home town, one dearly beloved person of my parents generation (whose identity I will not reveal because I want to survive my second blog post) even wrote a letter to his parents informing them of his engagement to be married rather than calling them on the phone. This has been the butt of many jokes over the years, but since this dearly beloved person is one of the most communication savy of his generation that I know, we'll forgive him.

Getting back to my generation though (and I'll leave it for you to guess what decade that means), an active telephone line was a given. The existence of one common line for the family though meant that parents had some idea with whom we were interacting if not what was being said.

Today's modes and means of communication are mind boggling in comparison with what was available just ten years ago. Voice, text, pictures, music and video are all part of the lexicon. Children have access to a plethora of communication tools via the internet and cellular networks in addition to the standard phone service with which we grew up (otherwise known to those in the profession as POTS - Plain Old Telephone Service).

In coming posts I will discuss cellular phones, instant messaging, VOIP (voice over IP), social networks and many other tools that are currently available as well as new features such as Presence and location-based services.

If you are interested in learning more about how communications have developed over the years see Nathan Shedroff's timeline.

Kids & Communications - Why Me?

Being an expert in telecommunications I thought I would share my knowledge with the world. Aren't you just dying to know about the latest trends and challenges in the Telco industry? Is IMS going to catch on or not? Will IPTV succeed?

No, no, don't stop reading now ... I promise that's not what I'm going to talk about!! Really!!

These are fascinating topics and I do have a lot of knowledge and opinions about them, but there are many blogs and other sources already discussing these issues.

How changes in communication technologies will affect our children and the way they live their lives -both from the technical and social aspects - is something that I haven't seen discussed. In my role as Head of Communications Research at IBM I am familiar with both the existing and the yet to be born communication technologies. As a mother dealing with the dilemmas of raising children in this era of constantly connected, I am also aware of the consequences of these technologies - both good and bad.