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Posts Filed under: Kids

Officer Suspended After Encounter with 'Punk Kid' Posted on YouTube

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 15th 2008 at 3:29PM


YouTube is quickly becoming the bane of over-reactive adults everywhere. Web-savvy kids are catching their elders freaking out on video and posting it on video sharing sites like YouTube. The general result: teachers, cops, and other adults are made to look like jerks.

The latest casualty is an officer from Baltimore, Maryland, Salvatore Rivieri. Officer Rivieri had a rather hostile encounter with couple of teens over the summer that started because the teens were skateboarding in a restricted area. The video shows officer Rivieri storming up to the teens, taking one in a head lock and pushing him to the ground twice.

After exclaiming "dude!" when pushed the floor the officer really exploded, "I'm not 'man'. I'm not 'dude'. I am officer Rivieri. Now the sooner you learn that, the longer you'll live in this world."

While the teen obviously does need to learn how to address his elders, he is also 14 years old and doesn't seem to be purposely disrespecting the officer. Rivieri on the other hand is a grown man who some people believe crossed a line. Not only was his verbally abusive outburst uncalled for, but there is simply no excuse for man handling a child like that, especially since (as the officer so eloquently points out) he's not the child's father.

Officer Rivieri has been suspended to administrative work with pay pending an Internal Affairs investigation.

From ValleyWag

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Study Reveals What Your Kids Do Online

by Tim Stevens, posted Feb 14th 2008 at 9:57AM

Symantec Survey Reports on What You, And your Kids, Do OnlineChances are you know reasonably well what you do online (whether or not you're willing to admit it to yourself). You shop, maintain virtual friendships, look for love, and maybe even gawk at some shady material. However, do you know what everyone else is doing online, particularly your kids? Symantec does, thanks to a survey of Internet users from eight countries around the world. While the results are mostly what you'd expect, there are some surprises in there.

Highlights of the survey are the differences in online habits in various countries. Globally, for example, 32-percent of people maintain personal blogs online (hi, mom!), but in China a whopping 86-percent of those surveyed keep personal blogs. Only 41-percent of the global respondents were willing to admit looking at pornographic material online, and about half felt "confident" shopping online. That global figure is actually brought down by the normally tech-friendly Japanese, of whom only 33-percent feel safe doing business over the Internet.

When it comes to children, 76-percent of U.S. teenagers aged 13-17 visit social networking sites, a statistic that explains the amazing popularity of MySpace. In China that number is up to 85-percent. Only about a third of those surveyed reported making friends online, however. That means most of those who are social networking are just connecting with their offline friends. Most interesting, and perhaps disturbing, was that 16-percent of kids surveyed reported being approached by a stranger online. When parents were asked how many kids were approached, they guessed just six percent.

So, again, no huge surprises, but some interesting glimpses at the current trends on the Internet, and perhaps some incentive for you parents out there to get your kids to be a little more open about what they're up to online.

From Marketwire

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'PBS Kids Play!' Teaches and Entertains Children

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 15th 2008 at 4:40PM

'PBS Kids Play!' Teaches and Entertains Children
PBS just opened up its new online service aimed at children called 'PBS Kids Play!' The activities are aimed at children ages 3-6 and is currently available for a free trial as part of the beta test. When the trial ends, parents will be asked to cough up $79 for the year, or $9.95 a month.

Currently the application only officially supports Windows XP, or Vista. A web version of the edu-tainment games are available to users of Mac OS X and Linux, but let's just say it's still a little buggy. Kids play games with characters from various PBS shows such as 'Curious George,' 'The Berenstain Bears,' 'Bob the Builder,' and even 'Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.'

PBS Kids Play! is not a social networking service. There is no interaction between children or with children, so safety shouldn't be a concern. Parents can however sign in and check a child's progress in the educational activities or set time limits on play.

At $79 a year, the subscription is a bit on the pricey side. But PBS Kids Play! is definitely more useful than that tote bag PBS is always pushing.

From Reuters

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MySpace Finally Takes Steps to Protect Kids

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 15th 2008 at 9:46AM

MySpace Takes Steps to Protect KidsMySpace takes a lot of heat for not doing enough to protect the younger members of its site. The site has repeatedly worked with governments to ban sexual offenders, but those efforts have always been reactive to external pressure and bad PR. Now the site is being a little more proactive, announcing a number of measures to help ensure the safety of under-age members.

This includes a number of enhancements to the site, including the ability for parents to list the e-mail addresses of their children and prevent them from creating profiles, automatically marking under-age profiles as "private," and responding within 72-hours to any reports of inappropriate content on the site. The company hopes these measures will help to keep kids safe and, of course, keep angry parents off of their backs. But, we can't help but think these measures will be easy to subvert or abuse.

It would be a funny joke to list all your friends' e-mail addresses as your children and prevent them from using them to sign up on the site (assuming you have any friends who aren't already on there), but the bigger problem is that there's no way to prevent your kids from going to Hotmail or Gmail and getting another disposable e-mail account to sign up with. And there's still nothing preventing them from lying about their age to make a public profile.

Ultimately these changes are positive steps that should help to protect some of the untold thousands of underage MySpace users, but we believe that those who really want to will keep on finding ways around them.

From CNN

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