21 Oct 2007
How children’s sites see your kids as marketing goldmines
Filed under: Child protection online, International Conference, Privacy Online, Social Networks and Video — Colin McKay
On the second day of our conference, Professor Valerie Steeves spoke about how children interact with popular sites like Webkinz, Neopets and Barbie Girls. We have already provided a brief summary of her presentation and her fellow speakers on the subject, but thought you would like to see her speech. The presentation deck she used for her speech, and to which she refers, is also available online.
11 Responses
10:34 pm
[...] Colin McKay wrote a fantastic post today on “How childrenâ [...]
11:13 am
From about 14:50 of the video on, I heard 4 of the “scariest” minutes of Web audio that I’ve come across in a while. It’ll come up in conversations and on my on blog.
It would have been nice to have a link to your earlier post somewhere in this sentence: We have already provided a brief summary of her presentation and her fellow speakers on the subject,
11:23 am
Thanks – I’ve added the link to the summary.
7:57 pm
Thanks for the insightful presentation.
Just a note — I’d happily add a trackback on my blog, but your “trackback” link on this page doesn’t seem to provide a trackback URL.
8:08 am
[...] The great work of our time is to design, build and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an inter-connected world. Failure by our generation to do so will leave the next one to deal with the reactionary forces of corporatism; something our children are already facing. [...]
9:33 pm
Great presentation. Very scary. As a young mother in the mid ’90’s I always taught my son NEVER to give his name or other personally identifying information online; as we both got older I started reading these EULA’s and privacy policies assiduously – but I know the vast majority of people do not read these contracts. And since civics and media literacy are required high school subjects (the first more so than the second) I wonder if EULA’s and online privacy agreements shouldn’t also be part of the curriculum?
It would certainly be a mistake to leave this subject in the hands of the required tech/data processing/business courses.
9:39 pm
That’s a very good point, and a public education goal we’re looking into. A lot of companies assume that their clients have the patience – or the skill – to read complicated user agreements.
12:35 pm
Fascinating presentation. One wonders how long those online agreements can possibly hold for — nobody reads them anyways — but to target them for children and not put it in plain language is pretty bad.
9:29 am
[...] Here’s the video. Here are the notes. [...]
6:00 pm
[...] Children’s Privacy Online [via Office of the Privacy Commissioner] [...]
5:08 pm
Never give out or use your real name. Pretty basic but by far the most effective way for kids to protect their privacy. Also: dont include your birth year or age as part of your user/screen name. Mixing it up on each site is helpful also. Teach your kids to pretend they’re spies.
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