Ad4dcss/Digital Citizenship

What You Can Do

If you are concerned about your children
accessing adult material from their wireless phones/devices,
consider the following:

• 
  

  Monitor how your children are using their
  wireless phones or other wireless devices. For example, are they
  using them mainly for talking, or are they using them for
  messaging, taking photos and downloading applications?
  

• 
  

  Check with your carrier to see what types
  of material it offers and what types can be accessed from your
  children’s handsets.
  

• 
  

  Check with your carrier to see if there are
  ways to prevent access to and downloading of content that may
  contain inappropriate material and that is available on a
  per-use or per-application basis (e.g., games, wall paper
  images, songs).
  

• 
  

  Monitor your bill. Any content purchases
  made from a wireless phone should appear on your monthly bill,
  so check your bill to see if any purchases have been made from
  your children’s phones/devices. The FCC requires that the
  descriptions of charges on wireless carrier bills be full,
  clear, non-deceptive, and in plain language.
  

• 
  

  Check with your carrier to see what
  handsets are available for your children that are not capable of
  accessing advanced applications that may contain adult material.
  
  

• 
  

  Check with your carrier to see whether
  subscriptions to wireless data or wireless Internet packages
  also offer access to adult material on your children’s phone.

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.