parenting

Dena Christofferson is 13 years old. She likes to send texts. Lots of texts. She particularly likes to send texts at school.

In fact, in a recent month she sent 10,003 of those curt little messages. And received almost 10,000.

Her parents were a little surprised at this. Not because she told them. But because Verizon sent them a bill for $4,756.25.

You see, Gregg and Jaylene Christofferson, from Cheyenne, Wyo., thought texting on little Dena's phone had been disabled. And $4,756.25 is a lot of money.

"It hit us like a rock," Gregg told NBC's Channel 9 News in Colorado.

Rocks can sometimes rain down in multiples, so perhaps it wasn't entirely a surprise that Dena's school principal called to say she had suddenly achieved five Fs in a semester. Strange that he didn't text, but still.

This was one rock too many for Gregg Christofferson. He got out his hammer and smashed that Verizon phone into several pieces. … Read more

There are very few ways to view job openings, book a vacation, or find that perfect home without plowing through multiple websites and advertisements. Alertpedia is a useful website that saves you time by performing filtered searches based on what you're looking for. The search results are delivered in the form of a daily, weekly, or immediate email. The best part? No sign-up required.

Unlike websites like Kayak or Crazedlist, who deliver an immediate search result, Alertpedia saves you time by doing an automatic, periodical search. You can search for weather, traffic, jobs, travel, YouTube videos, and other categories.… Read more

UPDATED: Corrected list of supported messaging protocols.

Known for its security software, Symantec on Tuesday launched a new program aimed at educating parents about their children's online usage. Norton Online Family, now available in beta, is a parental control suite with multiple levels of restriction and an emphasis on usage reporting.

Citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study that found a huge gap between the percentage of parents versus children who report no online supervision, Symantec says that Online Family is intended to bridge that gap by "fostering communication" between parents and their kids. According to the … Read more

This snooping utility provides almost all the features essential for monitoring a PC, but we were especially impressed with its stealthiness. System Surveillance Pro logs keystrokes, IM chats, applications used, and Web sites visited, and can capture screenshots at user-defined periodic intervals.

The interface makes it easy to locate any log file you need to access. System Surveillance Pro can block Web sites via URLs or detected keywords, and includes a scheduler in case you don't need to monitor PC usage at all times. Like most respectable spying applications, it will send you e-mail reports so you can keep … Read more

Thanks to Dan the Mantern's two-week-long extended vacation, we're left helpless and alone. Luckily for us, the Intern Formerly Known as Mark (IFKM is a bad acronym) saves the day, helping us scrutinize stories like Microsoft entering the T-shirt market, the Knight Rider show cancellation, the first Vietnamese House Representative, and other kooky, borderline-tabloid stories we found on the World Wide Den of Filth.

In today's episode of What's Happening With Those Asians, we discuss an important milestone in Asian American history: Louisiana has elected the United States' very first Vietnamese-American House Representative. It's an … Read more

The National Institute on Media and the Family, a media watchdog group that has spent considerable time taking the gaming industry to task for continually churning out violent titles, turned its attention to parents recently. It gave parents an "Incomplete" grade in its annual report card Tuesday. According to the group, parents aren't paying enough attention to ESRB ratings and don't have any interest in using parental controls.

The study poses an interesting question: "Are parents doing enough to protect their children from violent video games?" The answer, though, isn't simple.

On one hand, we can say that parents haven't done enough to educate themselves about video games since Mortal Kombat and Doom became household names on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have focused their attention on monitoring retailers and imposing strict regulations on developers, in the hope that these actions will help parents who want to keep their children away from violent titles.

But how much control does a parent really have? They can't be expected to watch their children 24 hours each day, nor can they control a child's activity when he or she is at a friend's house where the parents do allow violent video games to be played.

For years, I've seen watchdog groups attack the video game industry for "intentionally marketing to children" and "not doing enough to stop the sale of violent video games to children." And yet, during all those years when the industry was getting hit from all sides, I never heard one group specifically target parents until now.

Now that the NIMF has finally set its sights on parents, does this mean it's time for more parents to take notice and realize that the decisions they make related to violent video games in the home have a major impact on the development of their child?

Absolutely.… Read more

Technology keeps making its way into younger demographics, a trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I caught my 3-year-old trying to send "text messages, Daddy" the other day.

I guess I should teach her the difference between cordless and wireless.

To be globally competitive, the United States does need to inculcate high-tech training earlier in life for would-be developers, and companies like Red Hat have targeted youth as young as high-school age with training programs.

But I don't want my kids immersed in technology too much, too soon. I was a literature major, … Read more

We start today's show a little late today, mostly because Wilson chooses the worst time to launch into a personal anecdote. We love you, Tilson Wang. Anyway, we'd like to congratulate Christina and Rolf for winning our LittleBigPlanet/Motorstorm box art contest! They don't have Photoshop so they got creative with Paint and made an awesome collage of 404 inside jokes! See if you can spot them all in the picture. Thanks again, guys! E-mail your address to the404{at}cnet{dot}com and let us know which game you want! Later on in the show, we get into a discussion about our country's depreciating credit, the best way to finance a new laptop, Circuit sh*tty closing its doors, our president-elect's views on the importance of parenting gamers, and talk a ton of trash on Heroes and Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin. ICE TO MEET YOU.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a U.K.-based charity that aims to protect kids, offered up an interesting study recently. According to the organization, 75 percent of children have seen disturbing images online.

Now, it should be noted that the study polled only 477 kids who went to the charity's site and asked them if they've seen disturbing images, so it may not necessarily reflect the true number of kids who have been exposed to images of pornography, violence, or any other content that would be deemed "unsuitable" for children.

That in mind, the most we can really gather from this study is that some groups believe children are being exposed to too much on the Web. Sure, that might be true, but how can we really solve it?

Oh, wait, the NSPCC has an answer: more parental controls.

"Children are just a few clicks away from innocently stumbling across upsetting or even dangerous pictures and films such as adult sex scenes, violent dog fights, people self-harming and children being assaulted," NSPCC Policy adviser Zoe Hilton said in a statement. "High-security parental controls installed in their computers would help shield them. Social networking sites must also put more effort and resources into patrolling their sites for harmful and offensive material and ensure their public complaints systems are clearly marked, easy-to-use and child-friendly."

You just have to love it, don't you? Instead of looking at parents and saying, "Um, mama, papa, uh, don't you think you should watch your kids a bit better than you have in the past?," the NSPCC is calling on companies and service providers to protect the children instead.

What a joke.… Read more