Back in January it was Corey Corey Corey.
Now it’s iPhone iPhone iPhone.
On the tip of every tech-teen’s tongue.
And it will take Cyberia into its next era.
The era of: The Smartphone.
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Voice, then text communication have been the core functions of mobiles since they rose to prominence in the late 90′s.
But only in the last few years has other, more exciting functions been widely incorporated, such as cameras, video reordering and calling, Bluetooth transfer, picture transfer (MMS), and theinternet.
Mobiles have already had their fair share of cyber-issues – text bullying – text addiction – fake sender id’s, scams, the spreading of party details, the production and access of inappropriate content, and theft to name a few.
But their focus, in general, thus far, has still been on talking and texting.
And that’s all about to change.
Smartphones have been around for years. But they haven’t really taken to kids yet – rather their prominence is in the business community.
And because the focus of mobiles so far hasn’t been their extra features – such as internet – the negative effects of such things on mobiles hasn’t been that big, pretty minimal.
But the focus of Smartphones is just the opposite – the internet, camera’s and all the like – to make them as useful as possible.
The Nielsen Online Australian Internet + Technology report 2007 looked at the difference between features of mobiles, and the use of them. The biggest difference was to do with mobileinternet. The report found that although about 66% of mobiles had internet functionality – only about 27% of people who had it, used it – so less than half who have it use it.
I think the 2 main reasons why the mobile internet hasn’t been embraced by kids are; 1) It is very expensive to use and a lot of the time kids are worried because they’re not sure what the cost will be and 2) The sheer effort of visiting, navigating and using the web on tiny little screens is so inconvenient kids just can’t be bothered to.
And that wasn’t making businesses money. So Apple came up with a cunning plan – to address these issues – creating a mobile with internet that people will love to use. So they firstly put in wireless internet – so when you have access to that, which in many places there is – the internetwill be completely free – and make it much easier to use, to navigate, to type in addresses, have multiple pages sites, click on links, zoom in and out and all the like. Essentially, to make mobileinternet use as convenient as pyshically possible.
And make it cheap. Very cheap.
Through Apple’s own research, they found the main reason people didn’t buy the original iPhone was that it cost just too much. I was expecting it to be near $1000 when it came out in Australia. So they cut it right down into a really competitive contention, around $250 for the smaller model – and with some phone plans – free at first.
Sounds very profitable – that’s why we’re soon going to see a flood of other, similar devices coming onto the Aussie market soon – such as the HTC Diamond, Nokia N96, Blackberry Bold, Samsung Omnia and the LG Secret.
Don’t have any doubt though – none of them will conquer the iPhone. Apple just has that invinsible X-factor.
So say goodbye to mobiles. Welcome to the rise of the smartphone – the iPhone perhaps being the catalyst of this rise.
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So how does this associate with the main cyber-safety issues of: Bullying, Addiction, Privacy, Security and Inappropriate Content?
Firstly, the simple increase of time kids spend on the net – on social networking sites and MSN, that smartphones will result in, will obviously increase the internet-bullying that goes on.
And if there is wireless internet in a school – expect kids to be looking down under their desks all day – as instead of doing maths, they’ll be on MySpace. And they won’t have to worry about the cost – wireless internet is free of course.
It’ll increase the amount of coordinated technological harassment taking place – groups of kids will sit around planning their cyber-attacks on social networking sites and MSN – more cyber-gangs, if you like.
Kids will film, and take photos of other kids secretly, or knowingly but without consent – manipulating them and doing whatever they want, embarrassing and humiliating them via visual means.
So it will increase and intensify internet-bullying quite a bit.
Then comes addiction.
Now it’s easy for parents to take a physically grounded PC out of a kids room and put it in an open family area to help prevent internet addiction. It’s a little harder for kids to smuggle laptops into their rooms and be on the internet wirelessly under their covers throughout the night – but it is happening.
And mobiles aren’t as much of an issue – text addiction is just not as common.
But the pure portability of smartphones, not much bigger than credit cards – detached from all but kids hips pockets, will change this all. If you have wireless internet at home – or your neighbours have open networks, which many do – then kids will be able to go on the internet as much as they want throughout the night – possibly without their parents having a clue. Chatting on MSN – Social Networking in the dark hours – what could be better?
Addiction, and the time kids spend online, will get out of control. And it’ll be extremely hard to stop.
Privacy shouldn’t be inflicted upon that much.
Security will a bit – more bluetooth connections to hack, and a lot of valuable material to steal.
And it will be an inappropriate content nightmare.
Girls, and fewer boys, already take pictures of their nude bodies and send them to certain people on mobiles – and often, for many different reasons, they are forwarded on and spread around and around until everyone’s seen them. They feel destroyed. Just this week statistics were released revealing that 32 Victorian teens were charged with the production of child pornography over this sort of thing in 2007! - link – Obviously that is just the tip of the ice berg, but none-the-less, this will be happening much, much more.
And such a portable, and personal device will open up access to porn like never before – again with wireless internet behind closed bedroom doors at night – and with their hefty hard drives a whole load will be able to be saved to watch whenever they desire.
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So what can be done?
As always, educate – but no matter what the impact won’t be able to be controlled as effectively as in the past. That’s because of the portability.
Parents will have to understand that giving kids these portable, multifunctional devices is giving them the ability to look up any material whenever they want, as long as they have wirelessinternet. So essentially parents would be saying I have my full trust in you, have this. And many kids are trustworthy – so as long as they are, and don’t show risk factors, then that may well beok.
But at home wireless networks, if parents are concerned about addiction, should be turned off at night time. But sometimes that won’t work because neighbours will have them… which really leaves no option – other than to ban the devices at night.
Schools as they always do can filter the internet at the source (installing a filter on the devise itself will be most likely disabled my a kid in minutes) – but I expect a range of proxy applications to soon be made that will help void any filters at the source anyway.
To stop inside-class wagging schools could consider disabling access to wireless networks in certain classes, time’s etc.
Clear cyber-safety policies backed up with effective education programs teaching clearly how to prevent/deal with any bullying should be implemented to ensure that is kept at a minimum.
This should also make kids vividly aware of the possible ramifications of sending inappropriate pics of oneself to others – and to stop porn being saved, spread … well just like controlling neighbour network addiction … will require someone much smarter than me to figure out how to fix.
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All strategies of dealing with the Internet based problems that could be dealt due to the physically grounded nature of computers in a house will now become redundant.
The PC will really be in the pocket.
Apple, a company thats image is nothing less than cutting edge, is in a perfect position to consider and help address these issues through funding research and education programs themselves – but this will really show, whether behind their slick face, Apple is just in it for the money.
So unless, again I say, we get the education and strategies to all the parties involved – the rise of the smartphones will conquer us all too soon.