A Decade of Distraction?

I leave for a trip to the UK on Monday. This will be my first trip to the UK. I'm very much looking forward to it!

I'm part of two presentations at the conference at the iCS Oxford Internet Institute, A Decade in Internet Time. One of those is with Rey Junco, a higher education professor at Loch Haven University. We've posted a draft copy of our paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1927049. We welcome any thoughts or feedback on it before we submit it for journal publication.

Gender Differences in Cell Phone Usage among Youth

Our media rep did a press release on a new paper that I and two colleagues just had published in New Media & Society. Here's a link to it. A horrible pix of me, but good coverage of the article. Contact me if you'd like a copy of the article.
http://main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/71818/

Youth Media Usage

If you study youth and how they use media, take a look at this website that one of my RAs found today (http://www.frankwbaker.com/mediause.htm). I had not seen this previously. It is an amazing compliation -- though some of it is based more on marketing studies.

"I Need To Check My Email"

said the 2 year old little girl to her mother last night . . . Now, I think my child is bright but all mothers think this don't they : ). Callen has always been curious about computers from the time she could sit up in my lap and watch as I did work on the computer. I'm guessing she's heard me and Bo talk about checking our email and it just stuck with her. We will sometimes go to the Sesame Street website and do some interactive games with her but this isn't very frequently. There is a little computer in her classroom at school but I'm not sure how much they actually teach them about computers at age 2.

I wonder if I should get her her own email account . . . Hmmm, what do you think?

Out Teched By A 2 Year Old

We had dinner with some friends last night and they gave Callen an Elmo song book with an MP3 player. See the picture below. So, our daughter has an MP3 player before either of her parents have an MP3 player or an Ipod. She loves it and has been singing with the songs today!

I've never thought I'd like an Ipod or MP3 player as I like listening to the radio when I'm in the car. However, I must admit the new i-phone is very appealing, given all it will do. Of course, I don't want to pay the high cost; nor do I want to switch from my present mobile carrier.

For those who have Ipods or MP3 players, what appeals to you about these technologies? Anyone have an i-phone? If so, how do you like it?

In The News

I was interviewed via phone yesterday morning for a story a reporter is doing on social networking sites (SNS - ex. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.). She had looked at some profiles on Bebo and was surprised at the level of profanity and the nature of some of the pictures on this SNS. I'm not all that familiar with Bebo, so couldn't really comment much on that SNS specifically. She was also interested in the impact of children viewing profanity and other things on these sites.

One of the things the reporter wondered was whether there was an age that was too young for children to use SNS. That is a good question. There are now so many different sites available and so many ways to form networks related to particular interests/topics on any given site that they could potentially be interesting to children of almost all ages who are capable of understanding how to use a computer.

So, I wonder, at what age will you let your children use social networking sites? My 22 month old already loves playing with the computer when we're on it. I'm not ready for her to have her own website or blog yet, but maybe soon : )

I wonder what the future will hold for the youth of today in terms of technology and the social impacts of technology. Any thoughts on this topic?