Over the past few months, there's been a push among some to suggest that file sharing is really a marginalized behavior, only done by a small group of people -- and that with just a little education (and maybe a few big legal victories, such as the ones against Jammie Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum -- combined with new services like Spotify), perhaps it can be brought "under control." The "evidence" given for this has often been a case study in how to use statistics to delude yourself, often looking at the total percentage of people or internet users who engage in file sharing. But, the fact is that ignores the real issue: which is that kids today (tomorrow's consumers) are file sharing at a very high rate. A new study, sponsored by UK Music (the UK organization that's looking to get ISPs to put in place some sort of blanket licensing plan) has found that over 60% of kids in the UK admit to file sharing, with 83% of those admitting to doing it regularly, and those surveyed claiming to have downloaded an average of 8,100 tracks. Think about that for a second. 8,100 tracks.

While the defenders of the old system want to liken file sharing to a problem like shoplifting, at some point you have to realize it's something entirely different. This isn't a marginal behavior done by "bad kids." This is about as common as can be. Oddly, the BBC tried to spin this report to say that file sharing has dropped, but that "drop" was only 2% and it's within the margin of error of the survey -- meaning there's no actual evidence that it dropped. The study also contradicted that other study we wrote about recently (also in the UK) that claimed that kids were replacing downloading with streaming services. In this survey, 78% said they had no interest in a streaming service, and 89% saying they'd never pay for such a service.

Given the two conflicting studies (both sponsored by biased parties), you have to question the results of both. But, given the fact that kids are more likely to deny file sharing activity these days, rather than admit to it (knowing they could get in trouble for it), you have to wonder if this study even undercounts the actual activity.

Now, once again, let's make a clear point: I'm not saying this is right or legal. I don't think anyone should download music from an artist who does not authorize it. But the fact is that file sharing is not a "small thing" among kids today, and to think that there's some sort of magical method of getting it to go away is wishful thinking. Given that we're seeing more and more artists learn how to embrace file sharing to do better with their own business models, at some point it's time for those fighting against it to recognize -- from the copyright holders' perspective -- that it's better not to fight what consumers want, but to embrace it, combined with a smart business model, and stop worrying.

President Obama is the latest in a rather long line of politicians to start calling out video games as being something that is bad for kids and should be taken away from them, as encouragement to go outside and play:

The second step that we can all agree on is to invest more in preventive care so that we can avoid illness and disease in the first place. That starts with each of us taking more responsibility for our health and the health of our children. It means quitting smoking, going in for that mammogram or colon cancer screening. It means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.

Of course, there's been very little evidence that playing video games alone somehow leads kids to be less active or to play less outside, but it may also be worth putting this into a historical context. Tom sends in a look back at some old quotes from Scientific American, where the last one on the page, written in July of 1859 -- yes 150 years ago -- sounds quite similar to Obama's comments on video games, but is in reference to that pernicious child-obesity-causing monstrosity we call "chess":

"A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises--not this sort of mental gladiatorship."

You heard them! No more chess playing, you kids!

A new study from the UK says that parents underestimate by half the amount of time their kids spend online, while 81% of those parents surveyed said they had a good idea of what their kids look at online, but just 31% of kids agreed. All this happens in spite of more than half of British parents saying they put filters or other sorts of controls on the PCs their kids use, suggesting that -- surprise, surprise -- those controls aren't particularly effective. Furthermore, the survey would seem to indicate that what's lacking here aren't technological controls on kids' online behavior, but rather a lot of parental attention. Trying to outsource parental responsibility to some technological solution isn't going to work -- but the responsibility shouldn't be to fully or accurately monitor kids' online behavior (which is largely impossible anyway), it should be to educate kids to protect themselves and behave responsibly on the internet.

Stats out of the UK say that the number of students taking IT and computer courses is falling. Fewer students are taking IT courses at the GSCE level, or at ages 13-16, and consequently fewer are studying and getting qualifications in it at sixth-form level, or when they're 16-18, and the country's Office for Standards in Education says this is cause for concern given the importance of IT skills in adult working life. It is certainly true that modern, advanced economies demand workers with computer skills, but perhaps the growing pervasiveness of home computers means that students are getting sufficient hands-on training, and don't have as great a need for dedicated computer coursework as they once did? Also, the Office says that the schools doing the best job of teaching IT and computer skills are those that spread computer resources across multiple subjects, and don't use them solely in specific IT courses. One would imagine that students' general computer skills have risen across the board over the last several years, and they pick them up through their other coursework, and of course, their personal lives. Curriculum should adjust to reflect this, and if there is less call for general computer skills, IT coursework should be refocused to provide students interested in IT careers the best base possible from which to work.

For the past decade or so, the press and certain politicians have been somewhat successful in building a moral panic about video games and the supposed harm they do to children. The problem is that there's almost no evidence that this is true -- and almost all of the evidence that claims this is true doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Often, the moral panic-inducing results are actually either the researcher or (more likely) the press coming up with a conclusion that does not match with the actual study results.

However, in just the last year, we've finally been seeing prominent researchers and politicians start to push back on this notion of video games causing harm. Last year, two Harvard professors came out with a book reviewing all of the research and adding some of their own, all of which showed no evidence that video games made kids violent (in fact, it found that it was the kids who didn't participate in video games that you should be worried about.

Perhaps even more surprising, though, is that some politicians are now pushing back, as well. A study done in the EU Parliament is now noting that video games are actually good for kids, noting that they can help "stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society." The report does, unfortunately, still claim that in some cases violent video games may stimulate violence (though, without much proof), but it's still surprising to see a political report on video games that sees them as being useful.

For years, we've found it amusing when various technophobes or techno-pessimists would bemoan the fact that kids spent so much time online as compared to doing "real" things like reading books. This seemed odd to us, as there was a long period of time where the alternative was kids watching TV. It seems like having kids actively engaged in communicating with others through text is a great way to improve both reading and writing skills -- and there's been plenty of evidence to suggest that, in fact, kids writing skills are getting much better. And, now, the latest report finds that (despite Nick Carr's claim that the Google-era is killing our desire to read long form articles and books) more people are reading such things than just a few years ago.

Basically, the decades long trend of people (of all age groups and backgrounds) reading less seems to have been reversed. However, as Valleywag notes, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts refuses to accept the idea that the internet played a major role in the upsurge in reading. There certainly could be other factors -- and it wouldn't be at all surprising to find out a variety of different reasons for the higher reading rates, but it seems odd to out and out say the internet was a lot less important than other factors.

After spending a year (and who knows how much money) researching the topic, a study commissioned by 49 state attorneys general has determined that there's no simple technological way to protect kids online. They needed a year to figure out that there's no magic bullet, or piece of software, that could keep kids out of trouble? Other shocking conclusions from the report, according to the WSJ: the things kids have to deal with online, like bullying and harassment, are -- gasp! -- pretty much similar to the things they have to deal with offline in the real world; and "a combination of technologies, in concert with parental oversight, education, social services, law enforcement, and sound policies by social-network sites and service providers, may assist in addressing specific problems that minors face online."

The paper says the report is a boon not only to common sense, but also for sites like MySpace, which have contended throughout the scrutiny they've received from the attorneys general that it was impossible for them alone to make kids safe. So the politicians got to grandstand, but now hopefully they'll listen to the report and grasp the fact that several different parties -- including parents, of course -- have a role to play in helping to protect children, and it's not simply these evil social-networking sites putting our kids at risk. It's also worth noting the report came from the Berkman Center at Harvard, which previously noted that as internet use has grown, the number of sexual offenses against children has fallen, providing a nice voice of reason to counteract the politician- or media-induced moral panics that don't do anything to actually protect children.

There's been a lot of talk about how the rise of text messaging is affecting people and how they communicate. We've seen reports about texting's impact on families (verdict: not clear), on the English language (verdict: it's safe), and on students' grammar (it's okay too). But one more area texting is having an impact: young people aren't using their index fingers as much. Apparently because younger people are using their thumbs to text all the time, it's become the digit of choice for activities like ringing doorbells. So will index fingers go the way of the appendix and become some extraneous appendage unneeded by modern man? I just tried typing this post with only my thumbs, and based on that, I think they, and their six other friends, are safe for some time yet.

Forty percent of US teens have sent sexually suggestive electronic messages, a new study says, adding that one in five have sent "nude or partially clothed images of themselves" via email or mobile phone -- fulfilling Mike's earlier prediction, following an overblown report about kids getting naked on cameraphones, that we'd soon be warned about this widespread phenomenon. Let's ignore, for a moment, the fact that this was an online survey, so drawing conclusions about how all teens behave from it seems a little shaky -- but hey, it makes a good headline, right? We'll also suspend our disbelief that teens -- who are likely communicating in similar ways, about similar things, offline -- would do this sort of stuff.

As with so many of these reports about kids' online behavior, any sort of positive takeaway here gets buried. In this case, about 80 percent of those surveyed realize that sending these messages or photos online could cause regret later or embarrassment, and three-quarters of them say it can have serious consequences, illustrating that they have a decent understanding of the ramifications of their actions. Doesn't that paint a little more positive picture of teens, that they aren't just leaping blindly into some morass of sketchy behavior and putting themselves at risk? This parallels earlier reports that have found teens do a decent job of looking out for themselves online. It just makes you wonder if maybe giving teens a little more credit and going from there, rather than trying to paint pictures that scare parents and politicians into action, might be a more effective way to protect teens from all these supposed online problems.

Well, here we go again. USA Today has a report on a "review" of "173 of the strongest papers" from the past 28 years, which found that 80% show some sort of link between mass media and something evil happening to kids, whether it involves obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems or poor grades. And, of course, the folks behind the review are claiming this is all very damning and "something must be done" to "protect the children!" Of course, we've seen this all before. In almost every case, when you look at the actual details of the study, the link is never quite as strong as it's made out to be. In many cases, the link may be a correlation, rather than a causal link (i.e., kids who get bad grades may watch more TV, but that doesn't mean that TV necessarily caused them to get bad grades). Other times, the study's findings are greatly extrapolated in the writeup -- such as the studies that showed that kids get "excited" when they play video games, and extrapolated that to claim kids are more violent because they play games. This isn't to say that mass media for kids is healthy, but we've seen so few studies that actually support a causal link, that it's difficult to take this sort of fear mongering seriously.