UK Kids Make Up Nearly A Third of Stardoll's Userbase

Statistics are a funny thing - pretty useful for supporting claims or for justifying a particular subject/site of study, but also immensely malleable and oftentimes downright ambiguous in terms of how they can be mobilized, interpreted, reinterpreted, etc...depending on who is reading them, how they are read and categorized, and how they are framed within the surrounding discussion. As a qualitative researcher who focuses mainly on case studies, ethnographic research and design analysis, I have a pretty casual relationship with stats - I use them to support arguments, but don't generate any of my own. I'm also deeply suspicious of statistics, thanks in part to a wonderful stats course I took in my final year as an undergrad at the University of Ottawa, which focused as much on how stats can be misused and abused as it did on reading and analyzing them.

I was reminded of this when I read the recent batch of internet use stats published by Nielsen Netratings UK, which describes its findings as indicative of key differences in the internet preferences of UK kids vs. teens vs. adults. Their new study provides a top ten list for three age groups - kids under 12 years, teens aged 12 to 17, and then adults. The sites included in these top ten lists are ranked based on what percentage of the site's total audience belongs to each group (you can check out the complete listings over at Marketing Charts). This is a somewhat unique way of measuring "popularity" - for instance, some of the sites ranked low on the list actually attract a larger number of individual kids than the top ranked sites. From these stats, Nielsen Netratings concludes (as outlined in the press release as well as in media coverage of the report):

Entertainment sites have the greatest affinity with under 12s; for 12-17 year-olds it’s games sites and for 18-22 year-olds it’s student and video sites.

However, anyone familiar with these sites - particularly the kids' (under twelves) sites - will notice that the sites have been categorized in inconsistent or odd ways. For example, here's the list for the under twelves...notice how many of them are "games" sites, but aren't classified as such:

Websites with the greatest percentage of UK Unique Audience under 12 years.

1. Stardoll 32% (representing 108,000 child users) (categorized as a targeted "portal"...why not online game?)
2. Club Penguin 29% (196,000 users) (categorized as "kids, games, toys" - why not online game?)
3. Nick 25% (76,000 users) (also "kids, games, toys")
4. LEGO 25% (98,000) (also "kids, games, toys")
5. Cartoon Network 24% (107,000) ("kids, games, toys")
6. BBC CBBC 24% (318,000) ("kids, games, toys")
7. CBeebies 20% (293,000) ("kids, games, toys")
8. Disney Intl. 19% (146,000) (categorized as "multi-category entertainment", doesn't mention that it includes some of the most popular online games for kids around)
9. RuneScape 16% (87,000) (online game)
10. MiniClip 15% (239,000) (online game)

By my count every one of those sites includes a pretty significant gaming component, but for some reason, kids are described as having an affinity for "entertainment sites", whereas teens are the ones identified as favoring online games. For comparison's sake, here's the same list for 12 to 17 year-olds (also by Nielsen):

1. Frengo 26% (117,000 users) (mobile content download site))
2. RuneScape 25% (138,000) (Online Game)
3. Bebo 19% (919,000) (online community)
4. BBC Learning 5-19 19% (184,000) (educational content)
5. FreeOnlineGames 18% (112,000) (online game)
6. AddictingGames 17% (100,000) (online game)
7. Metro Lyrics 17% (108,000) (music)
8. MiniClip 15% (240,000) (online game)
9. LimeWire 12% (350,000) (downloading program)
10. Meebo 12% (87,000) (instant messaging)

I'm not sure, really - only three of these sites are online games, and they have pretty low percentages and rates of participation. What I'm mostly curious about here is how the categories used to make sense of the data were constructed, and why? My own interpretation of the data says that for kids, online gaming and cross-media entertainment (that incorporates different forms of content, gaming interactivity) is key, whereas teens have a much more diverse range of online usage habits but tend toward communication-based activities. Either way, the percentages provided are only somewhat useful...I'd much rather know the proportion of total child and teen users for each site (not just those from the UK), as well as the proportion of total UK users first, and then the percentage of UK kids and teens second, in order to get a better sense of national and international usage patterns, demographics, etc.

Of course, the point of a press release isn't to provide complete and comprehensive data...just to pique our interest enough to purchase the full report. But it disturbs me that so many media and news outlets take press releases such as this one on face value...I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of articles listing Stardoll as the most popular site among UK kids (though listed as an entertainment site and not as a game, which it clearly is), and "online games" as the preferred activity for UK teens, without any additional critical assessment or contextualization about what these findings might really indicate (or not) when examined in a tiny bit more depth. Meanwhile, the CBBC's amazing success at attracting nearly three times as many UK kids under twelve as Stardoll has (318,000 vs. 108,000) may very well go unnoticed.

Cerise Interview

I was contacted a few weeks ago by Thomas Cross of Cerise Magazine, an awesome online gaming magazine for (and often about) women, to do an interview about Gamine Expedition and my thoughts about being an academic games researcher. I was really pleased with the scope and direction of the interview questions, and very happy with the result, which you can read here in the August issue. Thanks so much to Thomas for getting in touch with me - it was an excellent experience all around. This month's issue of Cerise is also quite excellent, comprising a number of articles exploring the theme "Fight Like a Girl"- check it out.

Resource Alert: Decoding the Digital Kid

The latest issue of KidScreen magazine includes the inaugural edition of a new regular column, written by Dr. Warren Buckleitner and focused on various aspects relating to "Decoding the Digital Kid". Many of you are likely familiar with Buckleitner from the Children's Technology Review (he's the editor), from his gig as an adjunct assistant professor of communications at NYU, or from his many articles and media interviews. He also runs the Dust or Magic Institute on Children's Interactive Media, an industry-focused annual review (and critique) of commerical children's technology products for educational and consumer markets. The new Kidscreen column is, as Buckleitner describes:

"designed to help KidScreen readers working in the digital media and product space better serve their target audience. In my 25 years as an educator and child development researcher, I've learned that reaching children through interactive media involves a different psychology than that used in developing linear media.

What I'm hoping to do is highlight one aspect of this interactive magic in each column and shed some light on what goes into making a top-notch digital application for kids.

The first edition is focused on how designers can make lots of money by instilling "Feelings of Ownership" (FOO) in children - highly reminiscent of my recent exploration of "affective labour" in kids' virtual worlds, but coming at it from the opposite position. He cites the Wii Mii's, Will Wright's The Sims and Spore, Play-doh and Mr. Potato Head as examples of successful mobilizations of kid's "FOO", and outlines four points to "keep in mind" when trying to attract and/or captivate the child audience, that include providing avatar/environment customization features and space for storing items/content. With a background in elementary education and child psychology, as well as many years of experience with children's technology design, Buckleitner has a pretty high level of expertise and knowledge when it comes to understanding how to translate commercial priorities into design choices. I think this new column will be a very useful resource for understanding how design choices are made, industry principles, and the ways in which theory becomes translated into product design.

America's Army On the Radar

The US Army's online, first-person shooter game America's Army, has been getting a lot of heat these days, as international criticism grows around the game's function and targeting as an army recruitment device. Peace activism groups and civil rights groups are particularly concerned about the fact that the game is targeted to young boys, aged 13 to 16, and that the Army is using the game to specifically target boys from more disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. One of the major issues here involves international laws around child soldiers. As anti-war group Direct Action to Stop the War describes on its website:

The military recruitment of children under the age of 17, however, is a clear violation of international law (the U.N. Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict). No attempt to recruit children 13-16 is allowed in the United States, pursuant to treaty.

The group points to a recent report published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), entitled Soldiers of Misfortune, which describes various ways in which the US Military is using Pentagon-produced video games, military training corps, and databases of students' personal information to recruit youth under the age of 18...oftentimes during school class time, and disproportionately targeted at poor and minority students. The report itself is well worth a thorough read - the descriptions of the intimidation and coercion tactics used by the military recruiters sent to interact with American high-school students are positively chilling. In terms of the America's Army videogame, the report includes a fascinating analysis of the game's success and function within the army's larger recruitment strategies [Note: The report also makes some brief claims about media effects and videogame violence that I think are unsubstantiated, and anyway not within the focus of this post, and therefore not included in the following excerpt]. Here's an excerpt:

The Army uses an online video game, called "America's Army," to attract young potential recruits at least as young as 13...As of September 2006, 7.5 million users were registered on the game’s website. As of February 2005, the Pentagon was investing about $6 million each year in the video game.

Launched in July 2002, the video game is a recruitment tool that aims to generate recruits. According to Army personnel testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the goal of the then-new recruiting effort that included the "America's Army" video game was to penetrate youth culture and get the Army into a young person's "consideration set." The game's website features a link to the Army's main recruiting website. According to a survey of recruits at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Army’s video-game development team found that about 60 percent of recruits had played "America's Army" more than five times a week, and four out of 100 said they had joined the Army specifically because of the game.

"America's Army" explicitly targets boys 13 and older. On the video game's official webpage, in response to the frequently asked question "Should Children 13+ Be Exposed to What the Army Does?," the game's Army developers argue it is suitable for children as young as 13, stating, "In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington and the Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression. Today they need to know that the Army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms." As quoted by the New York Times, the video game project's deputy director stated, "We have a Teen rating that allows 13-year-olds to play, and in order to maintain that rating we have to adhere to certain standards... We don't use blood and gore and violence to entertain. That's not the purpose of our game... We want to reach young people to show them what the Army does, and we're obviously proud of that. We can't reach them if we are over the top with violence and other aspects of war that might not be appropriate. It's a choice we made to be able to reach the audience we want."

Hmmmm...my keen sense of the obvious is picking up on a pretty deep contradiction here. However, I do agree with the deputy director's assessment that wars are filled with "aspects" that are not appropriate for children. *shudder*

Anyhow, the game and the ACLU report are both making headlines. For example, Michael B Reagan's article for Truthout, which is getting a lot of bloglove, traces the game's evolution from its release in 2002 at the E3 convention, to the huge problems with portraying war as blood-free. Other articles, such as Keith Stuart's contribution to The Guardian Game blog, point out that America's Army is hardly alone in promoting a "positive representation of the army experience". Meanwhile, Andy Chalk's recent post for The Escapist News discusses the Direct Action to Stop the War inclusion of Ubisoft in its public criticisms of America's Army, for the company's role in the development and distribution of console versions of the game.

I suspect that we'll be seeing a lot more controversy around this issue if/when the US Army opens its first "Army Experience Center, a combination recruiting center/video arcade/retail store to promote serving your country." According to an article by Holly Sanders that appeared in the June 15th edition of the New York Post:

Rumored to be coming to Times Square, it'll be like the Disney Store, except with guns and camouflage. The 14,500-square-foot center will be a multimedia extravaganza with high-tech gadgetry, including flight simulators and life-size soldier video games.

That person greeting you at the door? That's an actual Army officer.

While the Army will sell a small amount of merchandise at the venue, the focus is on building "brand experiences" that give potential recruits a taste of military service.

The reason I've added the "if" (above) is that the Post isn't exactly a reputable publication, and I haven't been able to find any coverage that doesn't trace back to it as the original source. On the other hand, there are currently a lot of job postings looking to staff something called "Army Experience Centres" (for example, this one), although the employer is listed as "confidential" and so these don't quite support Sander's story...yet. But this is definitely something to keep an eye on over the next several weeks. The convergence of marketing, gaming and military recruiting isn't something I've been following too closely, but now that studies are showing the extent to which this phenomenon involves kids and teens, it's not likely something I'll be able to ignore for much longer.

Update: Sept. 5, 2008: Confirmation! : According to the MediaPost the Army Experience Centre, a military-run arcade and recruitment centre, did indeed open this week in Philly. Check out the full story here.

New FTC Report on Kids' Food Advertising

Via Kevin Freking and the Associated Press, news this week of a new report conducted by the FTC on the status of food and beverage marketing to children and teens. The report, entitled Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation, found that (cited from the press release):

44 major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion to promote their products to children under 12 and adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the United States in 2006. The report finds that the landscape of food advertising to youth is dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and Internet. These campaigns often involve cross-promotion with a new movie or popular television program. Analyzing this data, the report calls for all food companies “to adopt and adhere to meaningful, nutrition-based standards for marketing their products to children under 12.

Out of the $1.6 billion, as Freking writes, $200 went to "cross-promotional campaigns" designed to ensure repeat exposure over several different formats. This included the use of about 80 films, TV shows and videogames to promote food/beverages to children. Cross-promotional strategies accounted for nearly 50% of restaurant food (and fruit & vegetable!) advertising expenditures.

For example, characters from Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean appeared in ads that were shown in movie theaters; and on television, product packaging, the Internet, and in-store displays. According to the report, food marketers created special limited-edition snacks, cereals, frozen waffles, and candies “in honor” of these movie characters. In cross-promotional campaigns, television ads and packaging often directed viewers to a Web site where they could enter a sweepstakes to win a related premium, such as movie posters, character action figures, and cash. Consumers might also be directed to "advergames" (video games advertising a product), free downloads such as screen savers and ring tones, podcasts, and online video episodes known as "Webisodes."

As the advertising industry was quick to point out in their own coverage of the report, the total spending was much less than previous studies had indicated (sometimes up to 10x as much). It just goes to show you what a couple of years and a whole lot of controversy, industry self-regulation, strategy shifts and governmental monitoring can do...and the FTC report acknowledges the progress that the food and beverage industry has made during this period. However, the FTC wants the industry to do a bit better, particularly since the largest portion of the advertising spending goes to promoting unhealthy foods. The report and press release outline a number of recommendations, which you can access here.

There was also some much-needed nuance in the report's discussion of Internet ad-spending, pointing out that internet ads cost much less than television...something to remember when making comparisons based solely on expenditure, and not on frequency. As Freking reports,

"The Internet — though far less costly than television — has become a major marketing tool of food companies that target children and adolescents, with more than two-thirds of the 44 companies reporting online, youth-directed activities," the FTC report said.

Coincidentally (just kidding!), the Council of Better Business Bureaus' (CBBB) also released its first report on the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), concluding that its members were indeed complying to their pledges (as vague and minimal as these actually are) and that rogue food giant Nestle has finally agreed to join the Initiative.

A number of academics and child advocacy groups weighed in on the report, including Kathryn Montgomery, who was interviewed in the AP article, and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). Says Montgomery:

"On the Internet, it's virtually an unregulated media environment and one that's hard for people to keep track of. Parents who are concerned abut their children's eating habits have to understand that you can't just look at what's happening on television. That's not the way it is anymore. It's a pervasive marketing environment."

In response, the CCFC's Susan Linn released a statement emphasizing the FTC study's various limitations and highlighting its many gaps in terms of the spending modes included in the final figures. These include:

* Program-length commercials/Integrated product placement:

"Companies report $46 million for character or cross-promotional brand licensing fees. However, most cross-promotional arrangements do not require a fee. In 2006, there were 81 media properties used by the target companies to promote their brands. These cross-promotions turn entire programs and movies into advertisements for the foods they promote, yet they are not counted as expenditures."

* Prime-time advertising:

"The total expenditure figure does not include spending for advertising and product placement on general audience programming watched by children, even though primetime shows such as American Idol and The Simpsons typically have larger child and teen audiences than programs considered children’s shows.

* In-school advertising:

"In-school advertising does not include regional and local or franchise spending for fast food companies. For example, McDonald’s infamous report card advertising in Seminole County Florida was sponsored by a regional marketing association and would not have been counted in the FTC Report."

* The full implications of online marketing:

"As the FTC notes, internet advertising, particularly on company sponsored websites, is relatively inexpensive. Expenditure data does not begin to capture its impact—the amount of time children spend with the sites and the frequency of their visits."

As both Linn and Montgomery point out, what the figures do not show is how the food and beverage industries, along with the marketing industries, are shifting their strategies...both to better target kids who use various forms of media, and potentially to get around regulatory restrictions, which already lag behind industry practice. The CCFC's last point about internet advertising is key in this respect. There's only so much that an assessment of dollars spent can really measure. Of course, this is also true of traditional media...for example, a study conducted last year out of the University of Arkansas found that a year into the food and beverage industry's self-imposed ad restrictions, very little had actually changed within the kids' media advertising landscape.

Virtual-to-Real World Play Patterns

The Toy Industry Association (TIA), in collaboration with the NPD Group, just released findings from a new study on kids, toys and online play. According to Virtual Worlds News, the report, entitled Online Play: Earning Mom's Trust and Children's Interest, is "designed to help industry players understand what’s driving moms and kids ages 2 to 14 to social, gaming and/or entertainment" sites. Key findings include:

* 28% of kids who use social gaming/entertainment sites have "purchased either a physical item or digital content from these sites."

* Many kids spend upwards of 16 hours a week in virtual worlds - "creating avatars, playing games, earning and spending virtual currency, and socializing."

* Online-offline toys offer "enhanced play value and are the glue that bonds these digital natives...to a new generation of play."

* Kids rarely go online alone, and siblings play a large role in the online experience. ("suggesting an opportunity for content that can appeal to multiple consumers with team-oriented participation.")

* Gaming is the primary activity driving kids' internet use ages 2 to 14: 76 percent of all kids on the internet are "drawn" to social and gaming sites. Furthermore, 75% of 6-to-8 year olds and over 90% of kids over 8 yrs are accessing online content.

Additional findings will be presented at the upcoming Virtual Worlds Kids conference (September 3rd in LA). A big thanks to Izzy Neis for the head's up.

More Star Wars Brandstravaganza

I was expecting to see a lot of news coverage this weekend of the big Star Wars: The Clone Wars toy launch that Lucas/Toy'R'Us had organized to introduce the new tie-in toylines for its upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated film (opening in theatres August 15th) and television series. So far, however, the interweb has been eerily devoid of photos and stories of the event, which is too bad as I'm quite curious to see how the whole thing unfolded. Just like a Star Wars film opening (or as became custom whenever a new Harry Potter book was released), Toys'R'Us had a whole midnight extravaganza planned, with anticipation building over the past several weeks as giant in-store clocks counted down to launch time. Weird! Anyway, here's a description of what Toys'R'Us had planned for this weekend's launch (from last month's Playthings magazine):

The biggest celebrations will take place at Toys “R” Us Times Square and Toys “R” Us Mission Bay in San Diego [***to coincide with ComicCon of course***], where Star Wars aficionados will be encouraged to come dressed as their favorite character and take part in a “Cloned Costume Contest.” Star Wars enthusiasts attending these two events will also be treated to trivia, games and prizes. As an added bonus, customers who purchase Star Wars merchandise at any Toys “R” Us store during the midnight events will have the opportunity to receive special gifts, including a Star Wars Holographic General Grievous action figure from Hasbro or a Lego reversible poster.

I'll keep an eye open tomorrow morning for any interesting coverage, and will add some links and/or commentary if anything good comes up. In the meantime, there have been some pretty interesting articles written in the past few weeks around the Clone Wars toys/marketing strategy that might be worth checking out, including:

Douglas Quenqua's New York Times piece on the cross-promotional history of Star Wars films and toys.

The above mentioned Playthings story about the toy launch.

This great article that appeared in a recent edition of The Escapist, written by Spanner, which explores Star Wars merchandising and "collectibles".

Kids Outsmarting VW Safety Systems

Kids' virtual worlds expert Izzy Neis wrote a great post last week on how kids are outsmarting, bypassing and subverting the safety systems in online games and vw's. Her post (complete with comments and some great Youtube examples) discusses a piece that appeared on NetFamilyNews, describing the "Top 8 Workarounds" kids are using to bypass the chat restrictions and break the rules in Club Penguin. The original author, Anne Collier, is a journalist and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, and her list is derived from both her own experiences as well as from the results of in-game field work conducted by Atlanta-based parenting columnist Sharon Duke Estroff. Here's a summary of Collier's list:

"1. Beating the language filter."
By "putting consecutive words in separate message "bubbles,"" adding spaces between letters, using capitalization and punctuation, etc. In BarbieGirls, I've seen many of these same practices, along with misspelling words or spelling words phonetically to get around restrictions.

"2. Code lingo."
Using secret code to communicate. Not just initialisms (like LOL and POS), but also "text-formatting tricks that get around safe-language rules: e.g., if language filters don't allow numbers, kids share their ages by expressing them in dots. For example, they ask, "How many dots are you?" and get back: "I'm ........."" I've also seen examples of wearing certain clothing items as a way of communicating real life identity (such as gender, etc.).

"3. Identity theft, kid-style."
I've seen this quite a lot over the past few years, kids claiming to have "hacked" (or to have been hacked) or "stolen" (of have been stolen from) someone else's password. But the reality is usually that the two shared passwords at some point, and the tersm "hacked" or "stolen" become a way of describing a misuse or abuse of the other person's password (and trust) to do something mean. This seems to be the case in Club Penguin as well, as Collier writes: "Password-sharing, however, is rampant in kid virtual worlds - a popular way of offering and accepting best-friend status. It becomes a problem when your "best friend" logs on as your avatar and makes it break the rules so you get kicked out."

"4. Stealing virtual possessions."
"Kids also use peers' passwords to steal their virtual clothes, furniture, and other in-world possessions". For the victim, this means starting over, and for the thief, they get the extra social capital associated with having lots of items, and with having "hacked" the system (see above). This also links into real world peer relationships - Collier writes - "as Sharon said, a lot of penguins know each other as humans at school too." We can definitely imagine how this would work for bullying and social exclusion.

"5. Abusing abuse reporting."
As Collier describes, "Kids can report other kids for all kinds of vague reasons, but they don't have to give a reason - all they have to do is press a button on the player card and the complaint goes straight to the monitor," Sharon said.

"6. Using safety features to bully."
Players always have the option of blocking or ignoring other players, and they use these tools to ostracize and exclude.

"7. Digital "Spin the Bottle.""
Collier explains how traditional pre-teen games for exploring sexuality and dating have been translated into virtual worlds. Here's her description of one specific example of "virtual spin the bottle":
"An example in Club Penguin: "Spin the Fish," only the fish doesn't spin; "you have to pretend it does," according to young CP lifestyles blogger Imatweetybrd, whose blog Sharon found. "You either say 'I'll spin!' or someone will tell you to spin. Then, most likely, you are just going to say 'spin,' then 'it landed on [the penguin's name that you like most]. At that point, you go up the person and say 'mwah.' Then your turn's over. Your penguin might like you back and ask you out or maybe you want to ask him out, then you guys can leave the game or whatever.""

"8. Kid avatars have cheats too."
I've found this particularly true in Club Penguin as well - the only real way to play and make $$ is to figure out the tricks and "cheats" - most of them are pre-programmed (part of the game's design) and passed along throughout the player community by word of mouth (and possibly through the in-world newspaper as well, though I still have to check on this). Collier and Sharon found that cheats are also circulated outside of the game, on the various webpages that provide tips, walk-throughs, etc....sites that are easy to find through any search engine, and -- as Collier points out -- a totally normal part of gamer culture.

Awesome! And be sure to check out both Collier's post and Izzy's post for some additional analysis, examples and commentary.

Games for Kids? Why Not!

I found this great article by Nick Gibson in Developer Magazine a couple of weeks ago, on why the digital games industry should get in on the current wave of virtual worlds and MMOGs for kids. The article contains quite a few gems, as Gibson points out:

The children of today represent a generation for whom interactive entertainment is an integral part of growing up. They are also a generation comfortable and highly adept online. Combine these and you have a new games frontier of colossal potential but one in which most ‘traditional’ games companies appear largely disinterested. As a result, this new market for children’s MMOGs and virtual worlds is witnessing a stampede of companies from outside of the games industry, especially from the toy and TV industries.

Indeed! He also offers a pretty concise overview of the market, which he describes as follows:

Most [kid-targetd MMOGs] feature simplistic gameplay, are browser-based, developed in Flash and opt for low-res cartoon graphics over the verisimilitude sought by hard-core developers. Almost all of the worlds are offered for free but feature advertising and/or optional payment models such as subscriptions or retail purchases (e.g. toys or cards) which unlock exclusive parts of the world. Around 40 per cent feature micropayments, mostly geared around avatar and virtual world customisation. We estimate that subscriptions and micropayments in children’s MMOGs and virtual worlds alone generated over $300m in 2007 and will grow over 30 per cent this year. Add in advertising and retail sales and it becomes easy to see why there is so much interest in this market.

The rest of the article is full of great points and tidbits. Here's a summary of the ones I found particularly noteworthy:

- Gibson reminds readers about the 2005 BBC survey, which found that 98% of UK kids aged 6 to 15 years play games at least once a month (most once a week), and that "games were rated as the single most important medium" for this same age group.

- Gibson estimates that there are currently 50 child-focused virtual worlds, with 45 more in development. This contrasts somewhat with the "112" figure that's been floating around, but upon closer inspection, that list did include a number of vw's and MMOGs for teens (not kids), as well as sites that don't really qualify as virtual worlds.

- Around 25% of these virtual worlds that have already launched are based on existing kids' properties.

- He lists slightly different population size figures than I've seen elsewhere for big vw's like BarbeiGirls and Habbo Hotel, including a 12 million monthly user rate for Neopets.

- Kids' MMOGs feature a variety of business models. Some are merely cross-promotional tools. Others are "extremely profitable". He points out that development costs within this market segment are "a fraction of typical MMOGs."

- Kids' games might be technologically more simple than traditional MMOGs, but they also pose some complex challenges, including the need for ongoing maintenance and development, continuous customer interaction, and the "myriad challenges of dealing with children (content, security, legality etc.)".

I wonder here about the logic of identifying "rudimentary technology" with kids'MMOGs...surely this is a consequence of the lack of prior experience of the developers involved, or the promotional focus of many of the branded MMOGs. If more game development companies got in on the action, I'm sure the landscape would change drastically. It's wrong to assume that child players/audiences naturally translates into lower quality products. It also ignores the growing sprinkle of sophisticated MMOGs for kids that are coming out...

But imagine what the games industry could do with this emerging market...how different it would look with Blizzard and EA at its helm, instead of Mattel and market research companies.

Sesame Street Relaunch

There's a great article by Elizabeth Jensen in today's New York Times about Sesame Workshop's massive overhaul of its SesameStreet.org website. The article focuses on the organization's use of child-centred design research in the planning of its new site. Here's an excerpt:

Like the "Sesame Street" television show, the site was based on research. In this case it involved about 100 children of all socioeconomic levels at three preschools in the New York area, said Glenda Revelle, vice president for research for Sesame’s digital content. The research found that children did not want a linear television-like experience on the Web site, she said, and that online as on television, they responded strongly to having a Muppet guide them.

So unlike other Web sites, which rely heavily on Flash animation, this one features a live-action Muppet video that welcomes children with a new educational theme every day.

The hope is that the site will eventually become the main point of entry for the Sesame Street audience. And in keeping with tradition, the site is aimed at lower-income kids, so the plan is no monthly subscriptions. The site will also introduce a new safety option - Playsafe, a proprietary, trademarked, downloadable program that makes it difficult for children to leave the Sesame website.

Hmmmm...digital playpen, or forced brand loyalty? Just because it's Sesame Street doesn't mean we shouldn't question the motives behind forcing kids to stay on one commercial website. For all its awesomeness and goodwill, Sesame Workshop is still a global media giant - with annual revenues nearing $100 million, and multiple licensing initiatives underway.

Anyway, the site relaunches on August 11th, but will be previewed at this weekend's BlogHer conference.

Kids Apparently Really Love Online Video

Via the Center for Media Research, news that a recent Nielsen study on online video consumption has discovered that kids 2-11 watch more online video than any other age group. As the CMR article describes, "per person, kids consumed more streams than those over 18, and spent more time watching online video from home." Here's the breakdown:

Kids aged 2-11 years view an average of 51 streams and 118 minutes of online video per person during the month;


Teens aged 12-17 yrs view an average of 74 streams and 132 minutes per person per month;

Adults aged 18+ view an average of 44.3 streams and 99.4 minutes per person per month.

Where are kids watching all these videos, you might ask? Nielsen provides handy "top ten online video destinations" listings for each age group, which you can view here. Here's the top ten list for kids aged 2-11 years (by unique viewer composition percent; US, Home, April 2008):

1. Disney Records:
49.6% (179,000 individual users) of viewers are between the ages of 2 and 11 yrs

2. EverythingGirl.com:
48.0% (161,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

3. MyePets
47.6% (161,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

4. JETIX
46.9% (159,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

5. Playhouse Disney
43.9% (340,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

6. PBS Kids
43.1% (281,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

7. LEGO
40.9% (137,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

8. NickJr
39.6% (718,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

9. Barbie
39.6% (105,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

10. Nick
39.3% (1,009,000 users) between 2 and 11 yrs

Kids are also flocking to the more well-known online video sites (such as YouTube), and although they represent a smaller percentage of the total audience for these sites, their presence is nonetheless quite significant. For example:

YouTube: 4,129,000 monthly viewers between the ages of 2 and 11 yrs

DisneyChannel.com: 1,324,000 monthly viewers between 2-11 yrs

Disney.com: 842,000 monthly viewers between 2-11 yrs

Myspace.com: 827,000 monthly viewers between 2 and 11 yrs (so much for age restrictions)

Buena Vista Online Entertainment: 455,000 monthly viewers between

Cartoon Network: 431,000 monthly viewers between2-11 yrs

Google Video: 323,000 monthly viewers between 2-11 yrs

Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, June 2008

Behavioural Tracking Under the Microscope (US)

Interesting developments at the Senate Commerce Committee hearings on behavioural profiling yesterday, as US Senators discussed the privacy implications of targeted web advertising, data-mining and the massive amounts of data collection the private sector engages in online. As Ira Teinowitz writes in today's AdAge, senators are somewhat split about whether the practices "go too far", i.e. do they infringe on individuals' Constitutional and civic rights, and/or warrant new privacy laws. However, from what I've read, there also seems to be somewhat of a consensus that behavioural profiling raises legitimate questions about "who watches us and how that information gets used." With exceptions, of course...such as former marketing executive Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). According to Wendy Davis at MediaPost, DeMint called the prospect of new privacy laws "a solution in search of a problem." As Davis writes:

[DeMint] asserts that market pressures will spur online businesses to develop good privacy practices. "It would be my assumption that the businesses represented at the table have a lot of incentives to compete for best privacy policies."

According to Saul Hansell's article in yesterday's New York Times, DeMint added to this: "By the time the F.T.C. acts, the industry would be far ahead."

Luckily, (at least some of) the other participating Senators weren't buying it. As Davis writes, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who presided over the hearing, called DeMint out on his free market logic, stating that "if market forces alone were sufficient to protect consumers, there would be no need for the Food and Drug Administration to conduct inspections, because companies that sold spoiled products would simply go out of business." According to Teinowitz, Dorgan did praise behavioral tracking as "helpful", but also expressed concern that the practice was "like someone following you around from store to store, taking notes on what you do." The Senator was quoted saying:

"There are legitimate questions raised about our traveling over the internet and who watches us and how that information gets used. We need to understand much more about that. I would hope that every consumer, when traveling on the internet, would understand what kind of information trail they leave and who might want to use it."

Some of the strongest statements came from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla), who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and helped draft the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill that is also currently under Senate consideration. He compared the concerns raised by behavioral tracking to those the government has encountered in relation to wiretapping and other Big Brother-type activities. As Nelson described (quoted by Teinowitz):

"What I am struck with is that we [have] a similar issue here. I use the internet to go online to read the newspapers back home. If suddenly the kinds of articles I am reading ... are going to be identified with me so someone can target advertising, I'm going to question the underlying basis of this. In our discussion of snooping of terrorists, we carved out an exception that we don't want the government to go and examine what books we are reading at the local library. Well right here, we have the question of whether we are going to allow other people within the private sector examine the same thing and then use it for a commercial advantage."

It's always surprising how resistant people are to government surveillance and yet so many are also completely open to commercial surveillance. I'm glad Nelson brought it up (though his statements really make me want to go into the FISA hearings and see what position he's taken over in that context).

Of course, the hearing was also attended by industry types (well, their lawyers, anyway) and representatives from the FTC, who contributed their own comments and arguments...some of which I found quite surprising. The big "twist" was that several of the big Internet companies actually sided with privacy advocates on introducing a new privacy law, whereas the FTC promoted self-regulation. Weird! As Hansell writes,

Privacy lawyers working for both Google and Yahoo both endorsed the idea of some kind of legislation. So did — predictably — Leslie Harris, the chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an activist group.

"Google supports the passage of a comprehensive privacy law that would establish a uniform framework for privacy and procedures to punish bad actors," said Jane Horvath, a senior privacy counsel for Google. Mike Hintze, an associate general counsel of Microsoft, said much the same thing.

On the other hand, Lydia Parnes - director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection - denied the need for new legislation, and again defended the FTC's 2007 proposal to strengthen industry self-regulation...a proposal that was, unsurprisingly, endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Parnes stated (as quoted by Hansell):

The commission is cautiously optimistic that the privacy issues raised by online behavioral advertising can be effectively addressed through self-regulation."

At the same time, however, the FTC is still unwilling to give a timeline or say when a final version of their plan will be made available. Hmmm.

For more info, I recommend checking out the Center for Democracy and Technology website. Oddly, I haven't found all that much coverage of the hearing outside of industry publications, but expect that more will surface over the next couple of days.

Bullies on the Virtual Playground

An article that appeared in last Wednesday's LA Times, written by Alana Semuels, caught my attention this morning with its very provocative headline: "In virtual worlds, child avatars need protecting -- from each other". The article discusses the various types of subversive play that children engage in within virtual worlds, focusing on the bullying and insults that seem to be an inevitable part of anonymous online communication no matter the age of the users, as well as how preventing these behaviours is translated into the day-to-day operation of virtual worlds for kids. Semuels provides a good introduction to the various moderation practices and techniques used by VW operators to keep their sites safe for kids (and appealing to parents), which in turn hints at some of the underlying politics of how and what decisions are made when it comes to restricting and limiting kids' online communication. Unfortunately, Semuels doesn't really get deep into these underlying politics, and instead keeps the discussion at the level of protectionist discourse...with a bit too much vilification of child users for my taste. Here's an excerpt:

To keep these worlds from turning into a virtual "Lord of the Flies," websites are monitoring every word children type, limiting them to only preapproved dialogue and patrolling the websites with employees undercover as kids. Some also are giving kids the equivalent of a 911 call, so they can holler for help.

What really caught my eye was that the designers/operators Semuels interviewed also describe using these types of strategies to prohibit "cheating" within virtual worlds. More than simply restricting swear words and personal info exchanges, the game operators also take it upon themselves -- in some cases, at least -- to determine and delineate a pretty specific (and highly idealized) categorization of which play practices are acceptable and which are not. For example:

Other sites have set up stings to catch cheaters, posing as children or watching players who know information that could be acquired only by cheating. Some of the monitoring borders on pesky. Kids sometimes roll their eyes at moderators and continue whatever it was they were doing.

"When in doubt, we err on the side of the user," said Debbi Colgin, head of community and customer services at Habbo, a virtual world that monitors its chats 24 hours a day. "We would rather educate them and warn them than not."

In November, Dutch police arrested a teen who stole passwords and furniture from Habbo users, and they questioned five others. The case is pending.

Of course, this approach to cheating is quite common within digital games, but when it comes to kids, I think we really need to be careful about the translation of ideals (and what is more idealized than childhood?) into an overly-restrictive and narrowly-defined (corporate-)regulation of play. For example, are the notions of property (ownership and theft) that appear to be emerging within the regulation of kids' virtual worlds the same as those found within virtual worlds for adults? Are they more strict, more liberal, are they rights-based, or do they have more to do with social expectations around kids and "fair play"? What happens when "cheating" is both defined and regulated by a corporate entity, as opposed to the player community, parents, social norms, etc.? What space is left for kids to experiment with submitting and subverting rule systems if this type of experimentation is systematically removed from their play spaces? Where should the line be drawn, and whose interests should take priority?

When games are rationalized to this degree, is free play really possible?

I've been trying to work out a better understanding of the delicate balance between rules and freedom that is needed in order for a game to function -- as a game, as a play space, as a community, etc. -- as I work on the revisions for a paper I co-authored awhile back with my senior supervisor (Andrew Feenberg). This has allowed me to (finally!) get the chance to read Mia Consalvo's recent book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, which explores the practices, importance and implications of cheating, delineating a long history of both (player) cheating and the prevention of cheating (by industry, as well as other players) within digital gaming. I really like the way she tackles the various issues/politics/ethics (et al.) around cheating and play, and how traditional dynamics are altered by the introduction of digital technologies. For example, Consalvo (2007, p.147) writes:

In these instances, code is being used to define particular activities as cheating as well as draw attention to those engaging in such practices. Code is largely repressive, disallowing specific actions and enforcing certain norms of behavior. Player input on this process is limited. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely one-sided. Players may choose not to play on such servers, but that option has its limits. It encompasses an all-or-nothing approach -- either you play by our rules or must find your own way.

While dealing with the topic of cheating and how to curtail it, this framework also relates back to issues of gameplay, and what players, developers, and others believe are correct and incorrect ways to play a game. In addition to highlighting certain social norms for behavior, cheating also lets us see what we consider the correct way to play a game to be, and how that conceptualization has changed over time and become better defined.

Furthermore, the fear that left to their own devices kids will turn virtual worlds into Lord of the Flies is, I think, much more reflective of the long tradition of seeing children and children's culture as something disruptive and unruly that must be contained and channeled by adults. Yet subversive play is also a key component kids' play, as noted by scholars such as Brian Sutton-Smith, Helen Schwartzman, Allison James and numerous others. Recent studies, including the one cited by Semuels conducted at UCLA by Deborah Fields and Yasmin Kafai on teens and cheating in Whyville, can be contrasted with other studies of youth online (such as Rebekah Willett's study of teens and social-networking sites, and Sonia Livingstone's study of kids using chat sites) in their exploration of the layered function of subversive and "inappropriate" online behaviours in young people's construction of identity, peer groups, etc. And an approach that "errs on the side of caution" is (from what I've observed in these games/vw's) unlikely to consider the less obvious value of allowing subversive behaviours to unfold and peer cultures to interact spontaneously.

Not to say that bullying and launching insults in a kids' game isn't problematic -- and mechanisms should be in place for kids to complain about and stop abusive interactions with other kids online. And not to mention the crucial role game/vw operators play in keeping out child predators, a key responsibility that many have taken on with little-to-no governmental or institutional support beyond legislative requirements. But I wish that the press coverage of these issues was more nuanced, and considered some of the other facets involved -- the politics of who decides (and why) what is appropriate and inappropriate within these spaces, whether or not kids are involved in these decisions and what this means for the shape and contents of their digital culture, how a recognition of kids' right to communicate and freedom of expression means accepting that they will sometimes say and do things that adults will not like or deem appropriate -- instead of limiting the discussion to the usual paradigm: wherein complex issues are simplified (and exaggerated) into moral panic, and corporate solutions are offered up (and celebrated) as the best and only response.

******Update******
For a different, more industry-focused perspective (and some good food for thought) on this same article/issue check out Izzy Neis' post on "funsuckers, griefers and bullies". Excellent commentary as always Izzy!.

FCC Inquiry into Product Placement

By way of David Goetzl at MediaPost's MediaDailyNews, news today that the FCC has finally agreed to investigate contemporary product placement and embedded advertising practices in television, radio and cable. The rumors have been flying for the past couple of weeks that this was coming, as both media reformists and unions from the creative industries (such as the Writers' Guild and the Screen Actors Guild) began putting some concerted pressure on the FCC to recognize growing public concern about the lack of transparency when it comes to product integration. Last Friday, the government body issued a split docket Notice of Inquiry (NOI) / Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), and is now seeking comments from the public and relevant interest groups. Here's an excerpt from Goetzl's coverage:

In its notice, the FCC wrote that as product placement becomes more widespread, FCC rules must "protect the public's right to know who is paying to air commercials or other program matter on broadcast television, radio and cable." But it added that the rules must be considered in light of "the First Amendment and artistic rights of programmers."

FCC regulations currently do not cover cable, so extending them to that medium would be notable. But most of what the FCC is exploring could be a game-changer.

For example, one issue under consideration is whether the FCC should mandate disclosures during a program simultaneously as a paid-for sponsorship on the screen. Also up for debate is whether disclosures should be required before or--more radically--before and after a show that includes product integrations.

The FCC has specified that the inquiry will include an investigation into political ads, reality TV, and that new trend of advertising during programming via a banner that pops up along at the bottom of the screen. However, on the issue of embedded advertising in children's programming, there seems to be a little ambiguity. Here's an excerpt from Commissioner Michael Copps' statement:

[T]he NPRM section tees up certain key issues on which we can move directly to rules—such as whether and how to make sponsorship identification more obvious to consumers, and rules regarding embedded advertising in children’s programming.

On the latter point, it is my strong initial belief that embedded advertising in children’s programming is already prohibited because it would run afoul of our existing requirement that there be adequate separation between programming content and advertising. The Commission’s existing policies in this area—which also include a ban on host-selling and tie-ins on children’s programming—target those practices that unfairly take advantage of the inability of children to distinguish between programming and commercial content. I hope we can move quickly to clarify our rules in this area as necessary and to take any appropriate enforcement action.

I'm really hoping that this "enforcement action" will result in some real changes in kids' marketing practices. Although the existing policies might be sufficient -- if they are strengthened, expanded and better integrated (what about cable? what about cross-promotional tactics that seem to loop-hole through existing definitions of "program-length commercial" and "host-selling"?) -- the problem remains that they are not really being respected or enforced. This will have to be addressed. I suppose however that Copps' statement could also be seen as a serious call to action...as these existing rules are tested and retested via the existing complaint system...we'll see.

Although this is just an inquiry, the FCC's announcement just makes me all the more embarrassed by our own government right now -- as the rest of the world seems on the verge of a significant media policy renaissance, our own CRTC is still marching steadfastly (and blindly!) toward media deregulation and corporatization. That said, however, it took the US's initial media policy actions in the 1960 and 70s to get our own government moving again on media regulation, leading to the implementation of many of our better policies and industry standards (including the Broadcast Code for Advertising to Children). My hopes for the FCC inquiry therefore definitely also extend to its causing some public pressure of our own to start mounting against the removal of ad-limits and the rest of the nonsense the CRTC has been up to in recent years.

In response to the announcement (and possibly in retort to Copps' assertion that embedded ads in kids' programming is already addressed within existing policy), the CCFC released the following:

We are pleased that the FCC has begun to respond to the concerns of parents and advocates about the erosion of clear boundaries between programming and advertising. The rise of product placement and product integration is turning television shows – including those watched by millions of children – into program-length infomercials. As part of this new rulemaking process, it is essential that the FCC extend existing prohibitions on product placement in children’s programming to include programs watched by large numbers of children. We also support new rules that would require real time disclosure of embedded advertising in programs for adults so viewers can better understand when they are being targeted by marketers. We look forward to working with FCC on this important process.”

All in all, it's always a good thing when debates start spreading into more formal platforms of the public sphere. First the UK and now the US...fingers crossed that this debate makes its way back to Canada next.

You can read more about the inquiry here:
Ars Technica
Commercial Alert
World Advertising Research Centre (WARC)
NPR
AdAge

New Report: Kids and Consumer Electronics IV

The NPD Group has just released their newest study of kids' media and ICT use, Kids and Consumer Electronics IV. Among the findings released to the public (via press release), lots of useful stats about kids aged 4-14 yrs use of different media forms. Here's a summary:

Bedroom culture
- 75% of children say they use a computer;
- 14% own their own laptop or PC;
- Only 70% say they use a television.

mp3s
- Ownership rates of portable digital music players (PDMP) have increased the most over any other consumer electronic among this age group in the past 3 years, increasing from 4% to 28%;
- 88% of kids who use a PDMP use them primarily to play music;
- 30% use them to watch video content.

Mobile phones
- 20% of kids aged 4 to 14 yrs own a cell phone;
- 13% of kids aged 4-5 yrs use a cell phone;
- Communications is the most important driver for cell phone use, but they also use them for taking and sending pictures, as well as playing games.

Pixie Hollow's Mobile Butterflies

Today's edition of the New York Times has an article by Brooks Barnes on Disney's newest website revamp (code name "Project Playground"), which now includes streaming video of some of its most popular feature films. Counted among the new (and upcoming) features, of course, even more Pixie Hollow accoutrements. I'm not sure if this has come up before, but it seems that the new virtual world will also soon have a mobile component. As Barnes writes:

Mr. Wadsworth and his team are also working harder to link cellphones and Disney.com. So far, the company’s mobile offerings for youngsters — notably constrained by the slow adoption of next-generation handsets in the United States — have centered on casual games or personalization items like ring tones. But Disney now sees an opportunity to create an immersive experience that spans from the Internet to the cellphone.

Consider Pixie Hollow, an expanding virtual world on Disney.com that is built around Tinker Bell. (Visitors create a fairy avatar and then mingle with others in a fantasy world, playing games and decorating make-believe houses.)

In the coming months, children will be encouraged to log on to Pixie Hollow with their cellphones, which they can use to create butterfly pets for their avatars — which they can’t do online.

Barnes describes Disney's butterfly strategy as a way of keeping up with the company's fiercest competitor, Nickelodeon. The two are neck-and-neck for "most popular" (as measured by frequency of visits) among kids and families, with Disney slightly in the lead for now (with 28.4 million unique visitors in May, according to comScore Media Matrix). But while Disney visitors stay an average of 44.9 minutes, Nickelodeon visitors stick around for an average 79.8 minutes, mostly due to the continued "stickiness" of Neopets (again, all this is according to Barnes' article). With the Pixie Hollow butterflies, Disney hopes to attract some of that virtual pet love (i.e. affective labour) kids just can't seem to get enough of. From the NYTarticle:

"I'm going to want to use my phone to feed and love my butterfly all the time," said Larry Shapiro, executive vice president for mobile content. "That kind of emotional vesting is what we’re after."

See how they've replaced "emotional manipulation" with "emotional vesting"? Mobilizing children's affect for the purpose of commercial exploitation is becoming an increasingly common approach within kids' digital culture. After a few false starts, quite a large number of companies are now successfully reproducing Neopets' Pavlovian approach to "brand loyalty". Cute and funny virtual pets are quick to turn on a neglectful owner - just talk to my Moshi Monster, who is now sick and cranky from not getting enough attention from me or from my friends (i.e. viral marketing). Preying on the emotional bonds that kids are able to develop with various inanimate (see "transitional") objects, and using the language of this relationship in their interactions with kids, these companies are able to be quite overt about their true intentions -- directing kids to online shopping sites, asking them to get their friends to visit as well, showing them ads and rewarding them for good consumer behaviours. Although most of the marketing going on in kids' digital culture is covert and embedded, this is one area where commercial imperatives shine through loud and clear. Just spend twenty minutes "interacting" with a virtual pet and you'll see what I mean. With the incorporation of cell phones into the mix, the newest goal is to make these relationships more-or-less ubiquitous...a neo-Tamagotchi with a dedicated link back to the advertisers, market researchers and all the transmedia intertextuality of the Disney mega-corp. Eep!

The Harry Potter Lawsuit and CGC

Wondering about the Harry Potter lawsuit and what impact it could have on user-generated content norms, copyright law, and (though rarely even raised in discussions of this case) kids' digital culture? Me too! As everyone waits for the judge to decide whether or not Steve Vander Ark's The Harry Potter Lexicon consists of copyright infringement or fair use, analysts are predicting that the outcome of the case could have some pretty important implications for the future of digital IP. For example, check out this recent video by marketing guru Martin Lindstrom over at AdAge, in which he argues that the Harry Potter case "underscores the growing threat posed by user-generated content for major brands." Hmmm...either that or the growing threat posed by stringent copyright regimes and corporate attempts to squash fair use/dealings for our chances at sustaining a shared, user-based digital culture.

What troubles me about the Harry Potter lawsuit is that although the accused in this case is an adult, the object under dispute is nonetheless children's culture. I doubt anyone, especially J.K. Rowling, would ever go after a child for appropriating her text...though I'm not so sure that this would necessarily extend to the unlikely scenario of a child attempting to publish these appropriations for profit. But the fact remains that these discussions, lawsuits, and (potential) copyright expansions are taking place within the realm of kids' culture, which will surely have an impact on how this culture develops, what space is allowed for UGC in the future, and how kids' perceive what's allowed and not allowed when it comes to branded characters and stories. I doubt there are many Harry Potter fans - of any age - who haven't heard by now that if you write fan fiction about Harry Potter, you could get sued, or at least make J.K. Rowling very upset with you.

I can hear the counter-arguments already - that protecting the rights (and profits) of the author is paramount, and that in today's digital age it's more important than ever that kids learn about copyright at a young age, before they get themselves into trouble. Whatever - the case for fair use (and fair copyright) has been argued at length and by much more eloquent writers than I, and I would point anyone who thinks differently to the works of Rosemary Coombe and Michael Geist, or to the many background documents being used in the ongoing Fair Copyright for Canada campaign. But I also think that when we're dealing with kids, this issue of appropriation and fan culture becomes even more complex. For the past three decades, research into children's culture and play have found a steady rise in the presence (and prominence) of "media traces" (to borrow Maya Goetz's term). And I'm not just talking about branded toys and games here, but also kids' own imaginative and creative expressions. Examples of how kids' themselves incorporate media characters into their everyday lives include everything from role-playing Spongebob and Patrick, to drawing pictures of Pikachu. And many of the arguments against 'media effects' when it comes to the branding and licensing within children's culture focuses on creative appropriation as an important way that kids make sense of the media presence in their lives, as well as engage with the larger culture, challenge dominant ideologies, co-produce a shared culture with other children, etc. Proponents of this argument point out the various ways that kids manipulate branded toys, for example, in unexpected and even deviant ways, completely disregarding or even subverting the scripts provided by the commercial media. A He-Man doll can thus just as easily attend a tea party as engage in a battle with Skeletor, a Barbie doll can be transformed into a magic wand, and a Lego Racers videogame can be used to stage elaborate and repeated Lego-man seppuku.

But just as I've been arguing (here and elsewhere) that technological design can be used to reduce or even eliminate these types of alternative readings and subversive play practices, I also think that legal systems (such as copyright) can be and are increasingly used to limit, contain, rationalize and commercialize kids' culture. And this happens in a variety of ways - through the elimination of opportunities to generate content, or by placing restrictions on what and how that content is generated (limiting freedom of expression and undermining children's agency); through corporate claims of IP ownership over child-generated content and submissions; and by teaching kids from a very young age a corporate reinterpretation of copyright law...ignoring fair use and obscuring the principles upon which copyright was based in the first place. As these practices become the industry standard (and in fact begin to be programmed right into the design of online games and environments), the space for children to appropriate, manipulate, subvert, make sense of and have some sense of ownership over their shared culture becomes increasingly scarce, increasingly threatened.

For more legal discussions of Harry Potter, I recommend an issue of the Texas Wesleyan Law Review from 2005 (volume 12, number 1), which includes a great selection of articles examining how the law is represented within the Harry Potter universe. I wonder if there are parallels between these textual representations and the arguments put forth in the current lawsuit...in the same way that Jarrod Waetjen and Timothy Gibson found intertextual readings of commercialism within and around the Harry Potter franchise (see Harry Potter and the Commodity Fetish: Activating Corporate Readings in the Journey from Text to Commercial Intertext).

Finally, to all my friends and family back home: Je vous souhaite une bonne St-Jean Baptiste!!!!

Canadian Kids Fail to Meet Physical Activity Guidelines, Again

While child obesity rates might be leveling off in the US and France (yay!), the overall health of kids in Canada continues to provide cause for serious concern (if not outright alarm). According to the 2008 Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, released last month by Active Healthy Kids Canada (along with the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute - Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (CHEO-HALO) and ParticipACTION), 90 per cent of Canadian children and youth currently don't meet the guidelines outlined in Canada's Physical Activity Guides for Children and Youth. In the accompanying press release, the organization identified "screen time" as one of the key culprits in kids' declining health, describing:

Instead of being physically active, young Canadians are spending an alarming amount of time in front of television, computer and video screens. In fact, the average child aged 10 to 16-years-old reports screen time up to three times longer than recommended guidelines. Children in this age group are typically spending six hours a day in front of some type of screen, which is the equivalent to 42 hours a week or more than a parent's full work week. And, it's not just children and youth. The Report Card revealed that preschool-aged children are not following their recommended screen times with many spending two hours a day in front of a screen.

Their argument is a fairly straightforward one: screen time = inactivity, which is leading to various problems associated with both weight gain and lack of exercise.

"At a younger and younger age, children are becoming dependent on electronic devices as their sources of entertainment and activity," says Michelle Brownrigg, Chief Executive Officer, Active Healthy Kids Canada (Toronto). "Getting our children active needs to be a collaborative effort. Governments, industry, communities, schools and parents all need to share the responsibility of replacing sedentary time with active play."

The Report adopts a pretty comprehensive approach, giving grades to various aspects of kids' lives that impact upon their opportunities for physical activity (and likelihood of being physically active and healthy). For example, the report card gave families a "D" for their perceptions and roles regarding physical activity, a "D" to the proportion of kids and youth actively commuting to and from school, a "D" to the proportion of kids actually using parks and playgrounds regularly, and a "D" to the existence of by-laws hindering physical activity. On the other hand, parents were awarded a "B" for support and encouragement of their kids' physical activity. Overall, it appears that while screen time may indeed be replacing physical activity, there are also many other dimensions to consider here, including lack of community support and very few opportunities for physical activity built into kids' daily schedules.

The Report also provides a set of recommendations for parents, teachers, health professionals, policy-makers and researchers, and call on these various groups to get more involved in the "battle against youth physical inactivity." Some of their key recommendations include:

* Limiting screen time

* Creating as many opportunities for free play as possible [awesome]

* Not relying on 'active' video games like Wii Fit as a source of physical activity

This last recommendation likely ties into statements made by Active Healthy Kids Canada and University of Calgary professor Nicholas Holt reported in the Canadian press this past April, on the Wii and exergames and their effectiveness in getting kids to become more active. Their conclusions were that although "exergames" are a "positive step" and better for kids than just sitting and watching TV (or gaming), "real" physical activity and exercise are still by far the best options.

I wonder if similar findings will emerge from these other countries as well...that the leveling off of child obesity rates (still not a decrease, by the way) doesn't necessarily translate into better overall health and physical activity rates.

A Berry Berry Effective PR Machine

I read quite a few stories and blog posts last week about Strawberry Shortcake's new look - the origin story appears to be this New York Times article describing the various children's characters of yesteryear that have recently been "made over", updated to better fit into today's kids' cultural landscape. Here's a copy of the "before and after" picture that was included in the bulk of the coverage:

The new look was unveiled last Tuesday (June 10th), along with an announcement of a new partnership with Hasbro, who is charged with manufacturing the accompanying line of tie-in toys (along with the toys for another American Greetings retro favourite, the Care Bears). There's an obvious promotional angle to all this, and reps from American Greetings are quoted at length in the article, describing the long and careful process that went into choosing Strawberry's new look, as well as their plans for Strawberry's return to the small screen. Here's an excerpt:

For American Greetings, updating Strawberry Shortcake was about leaving the troubles of the modern world behind and playing up a fantasy angle, said Jeffrey Conrad, the company’s head creative designer.

Artists produced nearly 400 drawings depicting new looks, then American Greetings asked licensing partners for feedback. With the drawings hanging in a single room, he told focus group members to put Post-it notes on the 20 that they liked. "We refined it from there," he said.

On top of her new toy line, Strawberry Shortcake is getting a new computer-animated movie and a new TV series, starting next year. This time, in keeping with contemporary nutritional concerns, the franchise will downplay the sugary dessert theme and move, as Mr. Conrad put it, "fruit-forward."

"It's also about creating a cohesive line," Mr. Conrad said. "We’re downplaying characters that were part of Strawberry’s world but who didn’t immediately shout out fruit."

Of course, it's no coincidence that all of this renewed interest in reviving characters and properties from the 80s/90s is happening right at the time when the kids who first grew up with these characters are becoming parents themselves. For a great discussion of this trend, check out Susan Gregory Thomas' article on the commercial mobilization of Gen-X nostalgia. But in the case of Strawberry Shortcake, I'm a bit confused by all of this talk of her new look and new "CG" approach. I mean, I am having major deja vu here....Remember this old "new look" from 2003?:

Or this DIC press release from 2004, about the massive success of Strawberry Shortcake's 2003 "relaunch", which included a new animated series, which was later rerun on CBS' Kewlopolis?

Or the announcement made in 2005 about Strawberry Shortcake's then new live-action series?

Or the widely-publicized computer-animated Strawberry renaissance from 2006, which included the "more health conscious" computer-animated Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie and tie-in videogames (for Gameboy and PS2, among others), as well as a
Strawberry Shortcake Dance Dance Revolution spin-off?

Is this a case of mediamnesia, or just another example of the effectiveness of good PR? Likely a little of both.

Update!!!!!: I just read some excellent posts by Amy Jussel over at Shaping Youth about the rebranding of kids' characters...lots of good, provocative analysis, which Amy has followed up on in today's post about the rebranding of Nancy Drew, girls' culture, sexualization, gender protrayal, etc. Great stuff, including a post by Shaping Youth correspondent Dr. Robyn Silverman...I definitely recommend checking it out.

Canadian Internet Use

Statistics Canada has released some new, well, statistics about Canadian internet usage habits. Nothing relevant to kids specifically (the survey only covered Canadians aged 16 years and up), but they did include a few tidbits on teens between the ages of 16 and 17 years, which may be of interest, such as:

* 97% of them use the Internet
* 70% have been using the Internet for over 5 years
* 40% contribute content
* 94% use the Internet for school
* 73% play games
* 90% use instant messaging
* 83% download music
* 42% use the Internet to watch TV

You can find out more on the CBC Website, or by visiting the StatsCan site directly. They also have info on the continuing "digital divides" in Canada, based on income (primarily), education and age, which is good to know.