• Teen-distributed child porn. This is a nightmare I wish we could help all children avoid: Last fall in the state of Georgia, 15 high school students aged 15-17 were identified as victims in what is basically a child-pornography distribution case. The distributors were their classmates, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) reported this week. In interviews with the victims, local and state law enforcement discovered that a group of male students had been sharing pornographic images of themselves and encouraging female classmates to do the same. "According to investigators, some girls were peer-pressured into taking inappropriate images of themselves and sending them to the boys. Others complied with the boys' requests for pictures because they had crushes on the boys. Many of the girls suffered from low self-esteem or did not understand the seriousness of the situation because 'everybody is doing it.' Few realized their images were being circulated throughout the school and, in one case, traded with a suspect in the United Kingdom. In another case, one of the boys was charging students at the school $25 to view graphic images of one of the female victims. As of this writing, investigators have tracked down hundreds of images, and at least one video, involving these victims." The investigation continues - the police don't think they've identified all the victims yet - and "it is undecided at this time what criminal charges, if any, will be filed." NCMEC says investigators hope the case will spark discussion about Internet safety.
  
  This case may not be as extreme or unusual as we'd like to think: Within 24 hours of receiving this report from the National Center, I received an email from a parent in another state. She was asking for advice because a group of teen girls she knew of were "being pressured into sending nude pictures of themselves to male classmates." I suggested she contact NCMEC (800.843.5678). [See "Self-published child porn," which I posted in mid-2004. NCMEC hasn't yet posted the above report to its site, but here's the correct page for when it does.]
• The 'IWWIW' generation? "I definitely think [technology] is a divider," Jane Buckingham told Rachel Abramowitz at the Los Angeles Times, "and it's something that will continue to be a divider. If you don't text message, if you don't twitter, it will change your day-to-day reactions. I don't think [technology] is horrific and negative. At some point, technology will become so integrated into our lifestyles, we won't notice it, but right now we feel its presence a lot." Buckingham is founder and head of The Intelligence Group, which interprets the consumption interests and patterns of Generation Y for marketers (who pay $2,500 a head to listen to her), the Times reports. That's a key point I'd like to highlight here: We parents notice technology; our children really don't. We know when we're online. Our kids do, yes, in that they're using a tech tool to communicate or socialize, but they don't make the distinction we do between online and offline. They don't think about it as they socialize. So right now, as Jane Buckingham says, "technology is a divider" between the generations. I disagree, though, that it will continue to be for the very reason that it is being "integrated into our lifestyles." It won't be a divider between our children and their children when they have them. Something new will divide those generations, I suspect. Kind of like something else Buckingham talks about, which I think divides us and our kids: the access they have to things, each other, info, etc. Buckingham's "mantra" for our children's generation, Abramowitz reports, is "I want what I want. I want it when I want it. And I want it how I want it," or "IWWIW," the acronym at the top of Buckingham's PowerPoint presentation. Kind of depressing, when you consider that's what marketers are paying big bucks to hear so they can go out and create advertising messages for our children that "say" our product/service will satisfy those very "legitimate" consumption needs. (I think I'm sounding very old. Maybe it's the turn of the year.)
• Generation gap on copyright, P2P. When New York Times tech writer David Pogue gives talks on copyright law and ethics he has a little interactive segment where he describes lots of situations involving copying songs, CDs, DVDs, broadcast movies, etc., and asks for a show of hands from people who think this or that situation is ok, Pogue writes. He's illustrating all the shades of gray - or at least people's perceptions of the shades of gray - of copyright rights and wrongs. "Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I'd ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed... I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example [of what he usually finds some people saying is wrong], looking at me like I was nuts." That there might be something wrong with file-sharing, etc., simply does not compute. But there isn't just a generation gap here, of course. There's also a reality gap: the media industry's reality vs. that of its increasingly digitally literate customers. Speaking of that, in a new move to combat piracy the IFPI (the global equivalent of the US's RIAA), is "asking European lawmakers to require Internet service providers to use filters to block" file-sharing, the New York Times reports.
• Online 'friending': Nothing that new. A commentator who used to be a "pre-Facebook teen" makes an excellent point about today's social networking: Things haven't changed much since pre-social-Web days. "Categorizing and ranking friends existed long before these social-networking sites came around," writes L.A.-based writer and editor Sara Libby in the Christian Science Monitor. "Adults baffled by the proliferation of MySpace and Facebook are confusing themselves by viewing the use of these sites as a completely new and foreign phenomenon. Kids who network with friends online aren't affecting their ability to create real, face-to-face friendships any more than typing a term paper affects their ability to address a postcard by hand. Kids are still kids. Online networking is just an updated version of collecting choice yearbook signatures or, in my case, wearing a friend's picture on a T-shirt," Sara says, referring to the "buddy shirts" of her high school years. "It became a status symbol to invite the most popular people from the team to take a buddy pic with you, then to wear that shirt around school. The cooler the people in your picture, the more impressive the shirt was." Now it's online "friending" that allows public display of teens' social status.

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