Friday, December 5, 2014

Kid friendly search engines


One of the most concerning things about technology is that there is a near constant adaptation. Now normally this wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but as companies come up with new technology or safer technology, there are also people out there with a more malicious intent.
In lab today, my partner and I talked about google for kids and how it expanded more on lecture from Wednesday about lifespan and kids.
It’s unnerving how easily accessible things like Ipads and internet access are to children.
I can remember growing up with my older sister and younger brother and we had a bulky old computer and AOL for internet.  My mom would leave for work before we left for school and most nights wouldn’t be home until after 5pm at the earliest.  Since she wasn’t home most of the day, she had put up parental controls on the computer since we each had an account, and she had it so we could only spend 1 hour each on the internet. Of course my sister found ways around that, but it was much simpler technology.

When I spend time at my uncle’s house for holidays, I see my 13 year old cousin on her phone and some of my cousins under 10 playing angry birds all the time. Seeing that Google was working on a safer and more kid-friendly search engine – and the little kid’s “mommy you should tell Google about Thomas the Tank engine because Google obviously doesn’t know about him” comment- made me feel a little better because I have a niece under two and I know it’s practically inevitable that she will get on the internet, and I hope she won’t get into any trouble or tricky situations like her mom, my brother or I did.

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