• MN game law thrown out. Minnesota's twist on anti-videogame law was struck down by a federal judge, the Associated Press reports. Unusual because it would have fined minors if they tried to rent or buy games rated "M" (Mature) or "AO" (Adults Only), the law was due to go into effect this week. US District Judge James Rosenbaum agreed with videogame makers (who had sued to block the law) that it violated free-speech rights. He added that the stated "failed to show that the graphic videogames were harmful to children," according to the AP. A US Senate committee recently approved a major study to look into exactly that question (see my 3/10 issue).
• Ads on social networks. Can your kid tell the difference between content and advertising? It's getting harder to. Social-networking is moving advertising way beyond banner ads, CNET reports. "For example, Wendy's [burgers] has a profile page for a character named 'Smart,' a 28-year-old male from New York whose interests include Angelina Jolie, hip-hop music, movies and Wendy's Bacon Mushroom Melt. In the character's 'about me' section, it says, 'it takes flair to be square. Do a square burger at Wendy's and do what tastes right!' Smart has more than 80,000 friends" Rule No. 1: Avoid adding anyone to your Friends list who has 80,000 friends! Probably most teen MySpace users have internalized that rule, but it would make for a great dinner-table conversation to ask them what they think of, say, Paris Hilton's profile or Burger King's - if they have any appeal whatsoever.
• Move over, MySpace? USATODAY suggests MySpace is facing so much competition that it may be "losing its cool." It cites some niche networks like WAYN.com (travel-oriented social networking) and vMix (one of the many video-oriented services, though probably more social), and it cites the view of one older teen moving on to Facebook (which practically owns the college market, so this is not new or unusual). The article also has a sidebar spotlighting four "MySpace invaders": Xanga.com, vMix.com, Facebook.com, and Whyville.net (an interesting pick that could just as easily have been Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom and more logically Imbee.com). But I think all the new niche sites are more additions to MySpace than competition because people use different sites for different things (photo-sharing, video uploading, blogging, socializing, etc.); many social networkers have multiple accounts at multiple services.
• Insights into multitasking. We all know that one of the hallmarks of being a digital native (aka teenager) is skill at multitasking. New research published by the National Academy of Sciences may be providing some cause for concern - or at least insights. The study "shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later," the Associated Press reports. It's about two kinds of learning: declarative (which comes with full attention, which allows memorization) and habit (coming from doing a task thousands of times). The latter isn't as useful and flexible because it requires the same conditions. Like punching a number into a phone 100 times, you have to be using a phone to recall the number. UCLA psychology professor Russell Poldrack "said the problem is that the two types of learning seem to compete with each other, and when someone is distracted, habit learning seems to take over from declarative learning." One could draw from that, the article suggests, that multitasking promotes habit learning.

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