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The European Framework for Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Children is a self-regulatory initiative of the mobile industry, which puts forward recommendations to ensure that younger teenagers and children can safely access content on their mobile phones. The recommendations are as follows: * Classification of commercial content - mobile operators' own and third-party commercial content should be classified in line with existing national standards of decency and appropriateness so as to identify content unsuitable for viewing by children and younger teenagers; * Access control mechanisms - appropriate means for parents for controlling children's access to this content should be provided; * Education and awareness-raising - mobile operators should work to raise awareness and provide advice to parents on safer use of mobile services, and ensure customers have ready access to mechanisms for reporting safety concerns; * Fighting illegal content on mobile community products and the Internet - mobile operators should work with law enforcement agencies, national authorities and INHOPE or equivalent bodies to combat illegal content on the Internet.

Texting is a form of wireless communication where users send or receive short, digital messages electronically. Texting is also known as SMS (Short Message Service). Although the bulk of texting is done via mobile-to-mobile devices, websites and companies are also jumping on the bandwagon. Some companies allow users to "web text" by sending and receiving text messages to mobile devices from their computers. Many provide the service for free. Text messaging is an extremely popular method of communication. CTIA-The Wireless Association®, the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry, reported that over 48 billion text messages were sent in a one-month period in 2007, which averages 1.6 billion messages per day.

As more and more people have access to computers and mobile phones, a new risk to youngsters has begun to emerge. Electronic aggression, in the form of threatening text messages and the spread of online rumours on social networking sites, is a growing concern.

Talking on cellphones is passé for students who use them for networking and sending photos. Mobile Social Networking Software - the next wave of virtual community - is already appearing on cellphones, beginning with college campuses. These under-25s (the target market for early adoption of hot new gadgets) are using what many observers call the next big consumer technology shift: Mobile Social Networking Software, or Mososo. The sophisticated reach of cyber-social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, combined with the military precision of GPS, is putting enough power in these students' pockets to run a small country.

mobiSiteGalore creates history by launching a revolutionary free service that for the first time in the history of the Internet enables anyone to build mobile websites using just their basic mobile phone\n\n

Ask a teacher to name the most irritating invention of recent years and they will often nominate the mobile phone. Exasperated by the distractions and problems they create, many headteachers have ordered that pupils must keep their phones switched off at school. Others have told pupils to leave them at home. However, education researchers at The University of Nottingham believe it is time that phone bans were reassessed - because mobile phones can be a powerful learning aid, they say.

They came from pretty much every sector-nonprofits, government, wireless executives, and think tanks-to a day-long conference in Washington D.C. on how to respond to the panic du jour over kids, mobile phones, and sex

Child safety experts, policymakers, leaders in the nonprofit sector and the wireless industry joined together on 4/22/09 at the Wireless Online Safety Conference, co-hosted by the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) and The Wireless Foundation, to discuss the challenges kids face in a mobile online environment and the vital role education plays in keeping them safe.

An online bullying survey was completed by 216 students - 93.7 percent were freshmen- enrolled in the University Experience classes at Kansas State University. The goal of the survey was to determine if bullying behavior followed students from high school into college and how freshmen perceived bullying. The survey used the cyberbullying definition provided in Kansas' anti-bullying law, which took effect in January 2008 and was revised in July to include cyberbullying. The law requires schools to develop anti-bullying policies, plans and preventative measures. Cyberbullying is the use of any electronic communication device, such as e-mail, instant messaging, text messages, blogs, mobile phones, pages, online games or Web sites, to create an intimidating, threatening or abusive environment.

A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth.
Ben Rigby and Rock the Vote have put together a book for activists, politicos, and organizers called "Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0." It is a how-to guide to help those who want to mobilize using the web, focusing on how organizers can leverage blogging, social network sites, photo/video sharing, mobile phones, wikis, maps and virtual worlds.

As any parent knows, tweens are crazy about cellphones. Those hoping to delay such a purchase--despite cries of "But everyone else has one!"--take note: 46% of U.S. tweens (ages 8 to 12) use cellphones, but only 26% own them, according to data released Wednesday by Nielsen Mobile. These "mobile borrowers" use their parents' phones when they go out with friends or on short trips, says Sally DePiro, a Nielsen product manager who worked on the report. The borrowing is more than an occasional habit: About 50% take their parents' phones more than three times a week. The key age for these early adopters is 10. While kids start using borrowed cellphones, on average, at around age eight-and-a-half, American tweens generally acquire their own phones between the ages of 10 and 11, reports Nielsen.

Trends suggest that mobile phones have educational potential. Cell phones are often tolerated in schools as long as they are turned off during lessons; sometimes they're banned outright. But as mobile technologies continue to improve and pioneers find innovative ways to use them, it's only a matter of time before students are admonished for not bringing their phones to class.

For kids, bullying by mobile phone or PC is a real and growing problem. This NCH and Tesco Mobile sponsored site is designed to help teachers, young people and parents understand and prevent text bullying.

When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today's cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand-and limit-how children use new media

More than one in ten children has had a sexually explicit conversation online, according to a study that details how youngsters spend their time on the internet and their mobile phones.

Marketers convened in San Francisco this week to figure out how best to reach teens on the Internet. The answer: It's all about the mobile phone.

Part of a wider effort to use technology to extend learning beyond classroom walls and the six-hour school day. Internet buses may soon be hauling children to school in many other districts, particularly those with long bus routes. The company marketing the router, Autonet Mobile, says it has sold them to schools or districts in Florida, Missouri and Washington, D.C.

Chances are they're banned - to stop students texting their friends all the time, or worse still, cyber-bullying. But are schools missing a trick?

When it comes to texting while driving, teens are a particular risk group considering that, according to Nielsen (PDF), "The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of 2,899 text-messages per month" and apparently some of those texts are being sent and read from behind the wheel.

After interviewing a college student in June, Tory Johnson thought she had found the qualified and enthusiastic intern she craved for her small recruiting firm. Then she received the candidate's thank-you note, laced with words like "hiya" and "thanx," along with three exclamation points and a smiley-face emoticon. "That e-mail just ruined it for me," says Johnson, president of New York-based Women For Hire Inc. "This looks like a text message."