Children and Media

YouTube said it is rolling out new protections for children viewing videos on its site, an effort to satisfy federal regulators who in 2019 fined the company tens of millions of dollars over alleged privacy violations. The changes, which include limitations on data collection and advertising, are a step toward addressing concerns from advocacy groups who have complained the Google-owned company has run afoul of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which forbids tracking and targeting users 12 and under.

Advocacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to step up enforcement of a federal privacy law that prohibits website operators from knowingly collecting data from children younger than 13 without their parents' permission.

Only a third of rural California households have internet access, compared to 78% of urban households, limiting the number of students who can finish online homework assignments, according to an EdSource analysis analysis of California Public Utilities Commission data. While low-income families are the most likely to lack internet access because the additional payment is too much, there's also a lack of service providers and options.

Pediatricians and consumer advocates are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate practices for collecting online data about children, amid concerns advertisers might be manipulating children with targeted ads.

Rep Grace Meng (D-NY) announced the introduction of the Closing the Homework Gap Through Mobile Hotspots Act, which would create a $100 million grant program for schools, libraries, US territories, and federally recognized Indian Tribes to purchase mobile hotspots to help close the nation’s homework gap. They would use the funds to create mobile hotspot programs for students to have internet access to complete their homework. As many as 12 million students in the US lack broadband at home.

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), the principal membership association representing the US state and territorial educational technology leaders, announced the release of the Broadband Imperative III: Driving Connectivity, Access and Student Success. This report advocates for equitable, reliable, robust broadband access both on and off campus to prepare all students for life and work. This report builds upon SETDA’s earlier work, including the groundbreaking Broadband Imperative series of reports and State Broadband K12 Leadership reports.

This large-scale study explores how kids age 8 to 18 in the US use media across an array of activities and devices—including short-form, mobile-friendly platforms like YouTube—to see where they spend their time and what they enjoy most. Combined with the data from the 2015 report, the 2019 census gives us a clearer view of how young people's media use has evolved over time.

Ninety-nine percent of America’s schools now have high-speed broadband connections capable of providing enough bandwidth to enable their students and teachers to use technology in the classroom. 46.3 million students and 2.8 million teachers in 83,000 schools have the Internet access they need for digital learning. This success is due to the collaborative effort of governors in all 50 states along with federal policymakers, service providers and school districts.

You may be old enough to remember the “vast wasteland” moniker that JFK’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Newton Minow, applied to broadcast TV’s handful of channels in the early 1960s. Well, a new generation of Minow has come up with a label for the new generation of multiplatform video. “Toxic Swamp.”