Then we have failed them.
“I’m used to it now’’
"With a click or a keystroke, teens shed privacy using apps; But they lack decision skills, specialists warn" by Cecilia Kang, Washington Post / May 15, 2011
WASHINGTON — After Scott Fitzsimones turned 13, he got an iPhone, set up accounts for Facebook and Pandora, and went on an apps downloading spree. At the same time, the new teenager lost many protections over his privacy online.
The games he plays know his location at any given moment through the phone’s GPS technology.
See: Telecoms Are Tracking You
He has entered his parents’ credit card number to buy apps, and iTunes has his family’s e-mail address and everyone’s full names. Facebook knows his birth date and the school he attends.
At an age when his parents do not let him go to the mall alone and in an era when he would never open up to a stranger, Fitzsimones, who lives in Phoenix, already has a growing dossier accumulating on the Web....
With few restraints, teens are creating digital records that can be reviewed by prospective employers, insurance companies, and colleges.
Web firms say sensitive data can be collected only with permission and that parents can set controls on phones and desktop computers to help keep teens out of the public eye. But for teens like Fitzsimones, the opportunities to share information online are so frequent and routine that they rarely stop to think about them.
The first time he was asked to share his location on the game Pocket God, the seventh-grader paused to consider why the company would want to know his whereabouts.
But he feared that if he did not agree, his experience on the app would be limited, and Fitzsimones wanted to get started on his cartoon pygmy adventure on Oog Island. So he tapped OK, feeling comfort in the masses; his friends, after all, were using the app and never complained.
Since then, such decisions have been easier. He agreed when Angry Birds, Pandora, and other apps asked to track his location. “I never say no. It’s more annoying than anything when they ask, but I’m used to it now,’’ said Fitzsimones, now 14.
Such decisions are often done under stressful conditions and without enough information about the risks involved, privacy advocates say. Social pressures play out on the Internet, and teens are often tested on how much they are willing to expose to play games and participate in social networks.
Bolt Creative, which runs Pocket God, said its social networking partner, Open Feint, gets the location data so users can see how their scores rank among people in their vicinity.
A 2009 paper by neurobiologists and marketing specialists at the University of California at Irvine reported that teens were more susceptible than adults to online advertising and take greater risks with their information online.
Unless it comes to military recruiting. Then they are just fine.
"The Naval Academy also has been reaching out to students in seventh and eighth grades to emphasize the importance of developing math and science skills to help raise chances of admission."
The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that makes planned and rational decisions, doesn’t fully develop until the 30s, according to the UC Irvine report.
And never develops in certain war-criminal or looting scum.
--more--"
"Cameras to measure what students eat" May 12, 2011|Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO — Smile, Texas schoolchildren. You’re on calorie camera.
That’s the idea behind a $2 million project unveiled yesterday in the lunchroom of a San Antonio elementary school, where high-tech cameras installed in the cafeteria will begin photographing what foods children pile onto their trays — and later capture what they do not finish eating.
Is this really a good use of tax dollars? How many teachers would $2 million buy?
Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a US Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a US school and will be so precise that the technology can identify a half-eaten pear left on a lunch tray....
Your tax dollars hard at work, America.
Parents will be required to give consent for their children to participate, and they will receive regular reports showing what foods their children are filling up on at lunch.
How are the cameras going to know which kid is which?
--more--"
You know where the cameras will be next, right?
Think about it.
Where does all that food go after you eat it, kiddo?
