Android News
Parents want Android to be more kid friendly, and they are half-right [OPINION]
May 3, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka
Android
Hey, baby, come over here and get some of this Android loving. And do it quick before the Parents Television Council gets in the way because it has Android in sight for some old-fashioned American censorship.
According to an ArsTechnica article, the PTC inspired Apple’s porn-purge of iTunes, and the council now wants the Android Market to have some form of controls to prevent racy apps from being installed.
“We plan to draw attention to other platforms, such as Android, or Verizon’s Vcast service, that aren’t really doing anything,” McKiernan told Ars.” We definitely want to see progress from some of the other handheld devices.”
This is the part where someone says, “When I was a kid…” and someone else makes an all-too-easy reference to The Simpsons classic “Won’t someone please think of the children?” joke. Let’s skip all that and get to the point: the PTC is half-right.
I get sick of lazy parents who expect big corporations to do their jobs, but that’s beside the issue. What matters is that Google shares the PTC’s views but has a poor job of enforcing rules already in place concerning adult materials in the Android Market. As I pointed out last year, the Android Market doesn’t permit adult material; yet there are hundreds (if not thousands) of adult apps ready for your dirty little fingers.
I can search the Market and be inundated by apps that brazenly violate those rules. The self-reporting method is useless because I have personally reported apps that violate the Market terms of service yet absolutely nothing was done. Why set-up a rule if you will do nothing to enforce it?
With that said, I still say the PTC is only half-right because they’re fighting an unwinnable war. Android should not have parental controls baked into the browser because it will be circumvented just as quickly and easily as desktop solutions have been in the past. Anyone old enough to have a smartphone is old enough to get the birds and the bees talk and figure out how to get around parental controls.
Parents need to educate their kids and hope for the best or buy their children one of those crappy feature phones. “Children” can go on YouTube or the web and find material just as bad as what they’ll get on the Market. Heck, teens are doing a lot of the very things their parents are trying to protect them from seeing on the Internet.
ArsTechnica via Phandroid
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Great article! And right on time, too!
We just released our newest Android app called Double Agent and it's in the Android Market already. Double Agent is a monitoring and reporting app that tracks your web browsing, search, and app installation activity and then emails that data to anyone you'd like once each week.
We're aiming this app to track the "important" stuff like web browsing and app installs to be able to track and report what matters, but still leave room for the privacy that everyone deserves on their mobile phones. The website for the app ishttp://doubleagent.mobi and you can find the app in the Android Market by searching for the term "accountability".
We'd love to hear your thoughts on it, too!
My recent post Intro 1
Of course you're right, but you have to understand that parents don't expect to be able to control everything their kids do. Instead, they just want the ILLUSION of control. And since parents spend money on their children, it's better to provide them with this illusion rather than try to convince them that it won't really work.
The Android Market really is a mess though. I think it is the weakest link in the Android platform right now. It needs some serious love. Unfortunately, it needs the kind of love only a parent like Apple is willing to give.
"I get sick of lazy parents who expect big corporations to do their jobs, but that’s beside the issue."
Isn't that *exactly* the issue? It seems to me the parents are going after "someone else" in order to do the work they should be doing themselves. This is nothing new, but with this technology it does bring up other questions:
1) Why are children (determining age needed) using such advanced phones to begin with? The typical argument for a parent to make is that a child needs a phone to get out of trouble. Makes sense, and I agree. But a $30 flip-phone with a family plan will do just as good as a Nexus One when it comes to a phone call or texting dad to pick them up at the mall.
2) These phones are trying (desperately) to get as close to the desktop computer experience as possible – it's the ultimate goal (aside from additional tools like a camera). Having said that, it's inevitable that one will be exposed to things of an adult nature. Let's say we get rid of all the "adult" apps in the market. They can still just open their browser and look at porn on the internet with their phone. We're not getting rid of it from that side, so the work obviously comes from parenting.
What a futile attempt to fight the unstoppable. I remember when the PMRC wanted to put stickers on albums saying "Parental Warning: Explicit Lyrics." It just made kids want to buy them more…and they did. If someone wants something badly enough, they're going to get it.
"children" have no need for smart phones and if you are wealthy enough to afford one for your child (i'm talking to you ptc), then surely you are aware there is a web browser on the device. you know what kind of things are on the web? by your logic, OSX and w7 should have parental controls baked right in.
@@Substance12 – OS X and Windows 7 DO have parental controls "baked right in."
Max, the issue here is that parents want Google to institute parental controls in the market for racy apps, but Google's TOS say those apps shouldn't be there in the first place. If Google would just enforce their rules, it would complete the problem.
Seems to me that parents who look to technology to help keep their kids out of trouble is a parent who actually cares about his children. While it is true that a teen (or adult) who is already addicted to watching porn will get around pretty much any obstacle to get a fix, it seems to make sense to have additional controls in place to prevent accidental exposure, which then might lead to compulsive and deviant behavior. Yes, like it or not, porn is addictive and destructive. Such tools should not replace parenting, and for those parents who want it to – shame on them. However, seems to me that if a child is under 18, then a parent should use every tool at his disposal to foster positive mental and emotional growth in their kids!!
I’m sick and tired of middle American special interest groups being the vocal minority (extreme minority) that get to decide what the rest of the country gets to see. Political correctness is the scourge of this country.
You know the esrb (the people who rate video games) is not a government entity. Do you know why? Because in America it is considered “unconstitutional” for the government to intervene in what you view. So why do we have game stores and movie theaters that won’t allow us to view these materials underage? Because they’re scared of a nonexistent power that shouldn’t even have come into place if the parents aren’t going to prevent it just because the companies say they have rules. This is what will happen with Android, and I’m quite sad to say, they need to just stand up to this power* that everyone in the electronics business fears for no reason because even according to the government it is “unconstitutional” for Google to have to abide by these rules to make stuck up rich parents sleep better.
Oh and P.S. they can always use WIFI to get it online like a certain touch screen device branded with a fruit…
@Mentat
Accidental exposure? We're talking about a several hundred dollar smart phone with a $30+ data plan. How many "innocent" 8-year-olds have them. If my 17-year old daughter wants to watch porn there is not a lot I can do about it. I would argue that 17 is close enough to adulthood to not even matter: hopefully, I've instilled enough responsibility and good sense in her to not have to worry about things like this. Addictive behavior/personalities is not acquired by accidental exposure to things. It's a lot deeper than that.
Any parent who thinks that an electronic parental control will prevent their child from becoming a Gacy or showing up on Dateline NBC's To Catch A Predator is not a very good parent at all.
The best kid friendly app on the market is Sesame Street soundboard. It is amazing. My kid loves it. Keeps him quite the entire car ride.
not realy news…