Children and Media

In apps marketed for children 5 and under in the Google Play store, there were pop-up ads with disturbing imagery. There were ads that no child could reasonably be expected to close out of, and which, when triggered, would send a player into more ads. Dancing treasure chests would give young players points for watching video ads, potentially endlessly. The vast majority of ads were not marked at all. Characters in children’s games gently pressured the kids to make purchases, a practice known as host-selling, banned in children’s TV programs in 1974 by the Federal Trade Commission.

The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided they don’t want their own children anywhere near them. A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is OK.

America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether. It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating a digital divide. Schools ask students to do homework online, while only about two-thirds of people in the US have broadband internet service.

Some 15% of US households with school-age children do not have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 US Census Bureau data. New survey findings from the Center also show that some teens are more likely to face digital hurdles when trying to complete their homework. 

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly suggested the agency's children's video rules might be unconstitutional. He said a good case could, and had been, made that the rules are an abridgement of broadcasters' speech rights, and thus illegal. 

The Parents Television Council says the Federal Communications Commission needs to answer some fundamental questions before it decides to make any "material" changes to its children's TV rules, which would mean voting on an order stemming from the July Notice of Proposed Rulemakiing it approved launching the review of the rules. The questions PTC says have yet to be answered in the Notice of Propose Rulemaking:

At an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of his Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) said protecting children's privacy is a moving target, but a target that must be hit -- including taking on big companies who collect and mine children's data. Sen Markey said his strategy will be to push for extending COPPA protections to all children under 16 (currently it is under 13) and for an eraser button that allows parents and kids to delete information from their online history (the California privacy bill has such an eraser button).

While most schools in the US boast broadband access these days, there is a homework gap—the problem created when students who use digital learning in class can’t get online at home to finish up their schoolwork. There isn’t going to be a silver bullet on this issue, said Susan Bearden, chief innovation officer at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), during a panel at the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition conference.

As many of you know, since Chairman Ajit Pai took the helm at the Federal Communications Commission, the Commission has been focused on eliminating archaic regulations that no longer make sense. These actions have taken many shapes, from eliminating the main studio rule to eradicating duplicative or non-useful forms at the Commission. In the coming months, I hope that we can bring to order many of these proceedings that we launched in 2017 and earlier in 2018.