Kids and digital media: removing the fears

[Commentary] Among 6-to-12-year-olds, the top wish in gifts is a mobile device – either a tablet computer or a smart phone. And the top two bestselling video games (names withheld on purpose) involve military shooting. Add these two together and parents may wonder how they can better safeguard their children from the head-spinning advances in digital devices and digital media. They are not alone.

The difficult part for regulators is to balance the protection of children against the risk of slowing innovation in digital media. The new FTC rules, for example, require the industry to make more efforts to avoid collecting a wider range of “personal information” about young children. The agency looked at 400 popular apps for children on the Apple and Google platforms and found only 20 percent disclose their policies on data collection. Yet the industry’s response is to warn of a slowdown in developing new products. Parents, however, still must be the front line for dealing with new media. As Clark found in her studies, parents (mainly mothers) must put more “emotional work” into their relations with their children to overcome their anxieties about digital media. New tools and rules can help parents, but managing the level of burdens and benefits is really up to them.