Rewired State goes teen and scores

Work for peanuts team by Julia Chandler

Public Strategy has a great and comprehensive post on Young Rewired State- Dame Emma Mulqueeny's baby held over the weekend at UK Google HQ.

Two projects leapt out for me:

'Blab to Betty - confidential unpatronising sexual health advice'

Something like this is sorely needed as sex ed is rather notoriously bad in the UK - it's one of the reasons we have such high teenage pregnancy rates. But also for young lesbians and gays sourcing advice and education online isn't good enough because censorware often blocks access via schools and libraries and if you're monitored at home you don't want to be surfing advice, community or sex ed websites. So a text (? post doesn't give details) service could help fill a gap in provision.

'Blog-o-tics taking Bills plus blog search searched for emotive terms to create overall attitude score'

This rang bells for me and then I remembered I'd seen something which sounded similar in the 2008 US Election: Virtual Vantage Points monitoring of blog reaction.

These split the blogosphere into conservatives and liberals and picked up on text mentions in each. The idea from Young Rewired State sounds like taking this further.

I'd pulled out Text clouds from them for March 17 to see reaction to Obama's big speech on race.

Another group it reminded me of was what 6 Consulting (formerly from Cambridge) do in social media monitoring.

Neither of these ideas won anything but I can definitely see a space for both.

Texting + driving = death

This video, produced by Brynmawr filmmaker Peter Watkins-Hughes in conjunction with Gwent Police and Tredegar Comprehensive School, has quickly become an international viral hit. Featuring young women from the school it has very little dialogue so has featured on blogs all over the world because the visual message is extremely impactful (literally).

'Cow' tells the tale of Cassie Cowen, ‘Cow’ to her friends, whose life is changed forever after an horrific crash.

Since the film had its premiere in June, it has attracted attention from the BBC and it is hope the film will become part of the core schools programme across Wales and the UK.

This is the viral hit but it's only one part of a 30' short film which covers the crash itself and its emotional aftermath.



Texting while driving makes you more than five times as likely to end up in an accident.

I understand that some car manufacturers are developing vehicles which will automatically disable mobile phones.

No, you cannot look at the naked pigs

Image by inju via Flickr

I have posted numerous times about the 'issues' with web filters. Their side-effects and their lack of evolution (despite manufacturer claims).

So the news that China was softening its requirement that all new computers come loaded with a censorware program called (honestly, something lost in the translation) Green Dam Youth Escort because of over-blocking comes as no surprise.

While the government claims that the software is aimed only at blocking violence and pornography, it has emerged that it also blocks discussion of homosexuality and other non-pornographic gay content. It had even been found to block pictures of pigs, mistaking the image for naked human skin.

It must be progress, China-wise, that they feel the need to respond to such inanities!

Amusing, but this is exactly the same scenario which school web administrators find themselves in in the UK all the time - having to decide whether to unblock something (think gay, sex education, abortion, history of Nazis) the machine has decided is damaging.

Despite what they tell you, the people selling this stuff know that it is possible to get around it. However they also know, like the regime in China, that for most people it works. Censorware works.

And that's the problem with censorware, anywhere. Unless it is democratically controlled it is privatised or state-controlled censorship.

Cute animals: RIP Lucky

This cute kid is saying last words to beloved goldfish Lucky. Dad videotapes and Mom cracks up in the background :(

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

What's the point of the IWF?

Rory Cellan-Jones reports on a small ISP which is challenging the Internet Watch Foundation's anti-paedophiles methods.

This is their idea of a black list, compiled from reports by the public, which ISPs are asked to use, somehow 'protecting children online'. The blacklist onto which a Wikipedia page found itself and was then withdraw after a justified uproar.

Zen Internet, a small Rochdale-based ISP, Rory reports, "has not yet implemented IWF's recommended system because we have concerns over its effectiveness. Our Managing Director, Richard Tang, is going to meet Peter Robbins the Chief Executive of the IWF to discuss these concerns."

Rory also says that children's charities are pressuring for the few ISPs who don't automatically follow the IWF's line to be forced to do so.

He quotes an IWF critic, Dr Richard Clayton:

"Everybody thinks they've done something by blocking this stuff but in practice it makes very little difference to who sees it and it's quite expensive."

The Wikipedia episode just highlighted what webbies already know - the blacklist is just a waste of time.

Why? Because most of this material is held abroad and the IWF is ineffective about getting it removed.

But it would obviously suit government to give into the children's charities and pressure ISPs because they would be 'seen to be doing something'. But the material and the pedophile networks exist on the 'dark net', a place you're unlikely to inadvertently stumble on. Those distributing it aren't going to have it in places where law enforcement might easily find it.

So this beggars the question which I made during the Wikipedia episode: 'what is the proven value of the IWF?'

What - exactly - are they achieving?

If you're trying to stop criminality and the exploitation of children, why aren't the police funded to do the job? Where else do you see amateurs, like the IWF, being presented - and being funded - as our best hope to 'protect children' ?

I think it's time for webbies to really step up and demand the government stops faffing about and that the IWF funding spent on this pointless blacklist goes to specialist police who can really challenge the distributors of material that exploits children.

• Past post, Privatised censorship and actually protecting children

POSTSCRIPT

Comment from another small ISP on Rory's blog, nailing the IWF's dodgy business interest:

1) They only provide a list of Child abuse Images hosted outside the UK. They issue takedown notices to anyone hosting this content in the UK but this has an interesting side effect, see later.

2) This list contains only a few thousand http urls - nothing more and an insignificant fraction of the amount of website urls in the world.

3) They don't provide any technology to enable this filtering, they leave the technical implementation to the ISP

4) They refuse to allow an open source implementation of the filtering because of concerns that it would allow the list to become public.

5) They charge a minimum of 5000 pounds per year for access to the list (going up to 20k+ for people who want to use the IWF approved branding etc).

6) There is no oversight on what goes on to this list, we only have the word of the IWF that it contains Child Abuse Images that infringe the appropriate laws. No ISP is going to risk looking at the sites on the list to check. There is nothing to stop them from adding sites critical of the IWF to the list, or for the scope of the list to be increased to block other types of sites.

7) The preferred method of blocking is to pretend the file could not be found and not to draw attention to the IWF list.

From this you can see that you are paying a significant sum for the list plus have to then spend additional cash and resources on a filtering system which then only blocks a tiny fraction of sites and adds overhead to every single page request.

....

* If you don't block these images you are supporting Child Abuse - How would your boss feel if we told him you supported Child Abuse (Direct quote from an IWF "saleswomen")

Postscript 2: Search and suicide

Now have a research author response: see below.

The responses on the British Medical Journal (BMJ) website are mounting up to the 'search and suicide' research they published and which I dissembled.

I mentioned before how a Japanese researcher responded about how they are using the web to directly intervene - Outreach in the Real World - here's a bit more detail. (NB: The BMJ may force you to sign up to view these responses in full).

Not only are online approaches expanding, but outreach-based interventions in the real world are expanding as well. The "Guidelines for Response to Advance Suicide Warning Cases on the Internet," released in October 2005, includes a statement that Internet community organizations can disclose the content of private communications to a third party in emergency situations. As a result, the National Public Safety Commission in Japan reported that among 121 cases of suicide warning on the Internet in 2007, the police identified 105 individuals based on provider information. Of these, 72 cases were intervened by police and other aid measures, while the remaining 33 cases were determined as pranks. Sixteen cases could not be identified because of access from unspecified terminals, such as Internet cafes.

I have absolutely zero problem with this - it's about saving life in the final analysis, not privacy. I can't see why the NHS cannot negotiate similar protocols in the UK. The model is there to learn from. Is that happening? I very much doubt it.

Other BMJ responses are mainly from Hong Kong researchers, but all give a very different take on where research should happen.

'Suicide and internet use levels-- the evidence is lacking', for example, says "the evidence for an association between internet use levels per se and suicide ideation are scant .. it is practically impossible to differentiate visitors drawn by morbid curiosity, boredom, transient dysphoric mood or even academic interest from those with actual suicidal intent, caution should be exercised in interpreting their results."

Another, 'Positive and negative influences of the Internet on suicide', says "the Internet may have beneficial effects on suicide and to better understand the phenomenon both positive and negative influences of the Internet on suicide should be considered." These researchers say that "suicide prevention and intervention can be provided through the Internet for those who have suicidal ideation and visit those sites".

Especially if you use the web to put your positive services in the middle, as the Japanese appear to have learnt.

An American researcher says, "we suggest further studies to be conducted by Biddle and her colleagues comparing the actual traffic to both pro-suicide and suicide prevention websites and focusing future studies on the actual online behaviors of suicidal individuals."

Too right. "Actual online behaviors" being a crucial element to any research around search.

It's very noticeable that there aren't any responses from the UK - how does Biddle et al's research get funded I wonder and why are these other countries seemingly looking at far better and more productive avenues vs. suicide and the web than the sort of web-bashing, headline-grabbing rubbish we're churning out?

NB: I have received no response to email from either the researchers ('Biddle et al') or the charity Sane, which was quoted by the BBC. Help is obviously not wanted as they know it all. Neither, it must be said, have I had much response from search industry bodies and media I contacted. As I have said numerous times before, the industry is lousy at PR. They will wait until regulatory bodies and ill-informed politicians start proposing draconian and irrational legislation before they start dealing with their social impact.

May 5th addition: research author response

Lead author David Gunnell, Professor of Epidemiology Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, has responded to my critique amongst others on the BMJ's website. I will note that I wrote to Gunnell and he didn't reply. This is relevant in the context of this response.

We are pleased to see the interest and broad range of views provoked by our paper. There appears to be consensus amongst correspondents about the potential of the Internet both to provide help and to cause harm. Several correspondents have helpfully highlighted additional approaches to altering the results of Internet searching in favour of minimising risk to individuals experiencing serious suicidal thoughts and planning suicide.

Some contributors (Grohol, Canning, Fu, Knight) express surprise at our focus on methods of suicide.

Not me, wasn't expressed by me.

Furthermore Fu points out that some suicidal web-users may have already decided on their method of suicide and be searching for technical information about its implementation. We agree. However, as we explained in the opening paragraph of our paper, we focused on methods of suicide (rather than Internet resources for suicide in general) because research evidence suggests that one of the strongest media influences on suicidal behaviour concerns its affect on the choice of suicide method used.[2,3] Choice of method, in turn, influences the likelihood that a suicidal act will result in death,[4] and so may have an impact on suicide rates. We assumed that some Internet influences on suicide are likely to be similar to those of other media such as TV and newspaper reporting. In keeping with this Fu highlights the possible role of the Internet in relation to the spread of carbon monoxide poisoning as a method of suicide in Hong Kong. Thus we chose the search terms likely to be used by individuals with serious suicidal thoughts who are planning their suicide attempt. We felt it important that organisations offering support to suicidal individuals should endeavour to ensure their sites occur high up on the list of 'hits' retrieved by searches making inquiries about suicide methods.

But they didn't focus on methods. The search terms they chose, which they didn't explain the genesis of in detail, barely included specific methods - Fu's point. If, as there is strong evidence of, people take clues from media reporting - 'copycats' - then surely it would help to look at what methods are shown/described in reporting and take cues from there? This they didn't do. And it's difficult to make recommendations - especially such dramatic ones as they did - when the initial sources "terms likely to be used by individuals with serious suicidal thoughts who are planning their suicide attempt" are so apparently weak.

We agree with Grohol and other correspondents that additional aspects of the Internet in relation to preventing and provoking suicide are worthy of academic study. Indeed this is something we wish to pursue. However, we felt in an area about which much is conjectured, but little empirical data exist, a focussed inquiry into one relevant aspect was appropriate.

In which case they picked the wrong area. Surely going to source - what is known about how suicidal people connect to information and then act on that information, taking cues from well-developed experiences like the Japanese - would be a more productive avenue. For example, what is the role of UK social networks? Where is research lacking on the actual connections prior to suicides? The assumption here was 'search engines' - and everything flowed from those assumptions. Again and again, the main issue here is researchers who aren't webbies, don't understand how the web works, make assumptions, don't talk to the right experts, then leap off with claims which are - plainly - false and suggest solutions they are not qualified to suggest and lead people down more false trails.

In a single brief research paper it would not have been possible to cover the range of aspects suggested by Grohol. We disagree with Grohol's suggestion that we painted a pessimistic picture.

Talk to the PR, what headlines have they generated? How helpful are those headlines? It is highly irresponsible for such researchers to step back here and say 'we're not responsible'.

We described a number of beneficial aspects of the Internet - highlighting advice and information sites. Indeed we report that 13% of our hits were for sites offering support or information about suicide and 12% discouraged suicide. We also highlight that in England, whilst use of the Internet has increased in recent years, rates of suicide have declined. Thus harmful impacts of the Internet on individual acts of suicide are either being offset by beneficial effects or the impact of other suicide prevention activities.

Yes, they mentioned this. But it wasn't their headline. As I showed, searches for 'suicide' appear to be going down. But this wasn't their headline or reported anywhere at all in the subsequent headlines generated from the cues they gave reporters (i.e. the press release). Look at it this way, if the media is a causal factor the researchers just failed to get the media to report the existence of suicide help and to only focus on the existence of harmful websites.

Some of the assertions made by Canning are incorrect. The sites we reviewed were restricted to the first 10 results for each search. The searches 'methods of suicide' and 'suicide methods', which, like most users, we carried out without the quotation marks, do, in fact, yield different sites.

Ok, point taken. Search engines are improving. Though results are barely different. What else makes up "some .. are incorrect".

The interview data we used to inform our search strategy referred to interviews that were conducted with people who had survived nearly fatal suicide attempts. Two of the twelve individuals we have interviewed to date used the Internet to research their methods and indicated the terms they used. We can think of few better methods of identifying search terms than from such individuals.

This detail wasn't in the paper. Two individuals? And remembering terms they used? On this headlines around the world was built? If you want 'better methods', look to the Japanese. It is actually possible to backtrack from the machine they used and find exactly what they searched on. Security services and police do this sort of thing all the time. Further, Gunnell's response doesn't take on board my point that existing industry methods will tell you what terms are most searched on. They couldn't think of methods because they didn't think to ask experts in that field.

Canning makes some good points regarding the relative use of different search engines. We agree, weighting our findings according to site use may have been more informative.

No, not doing it completely undermines the credibility of the numbers reported. Especially the headline numbers cited at the top of the paper.

We did report that searches of Google, the most frequently used search engine, retrieved the highest number of pro-suicide hits and so weighting our findings by site would be unlikely to substantially alter out findings. Canning also provides a series of useful suggestions regarding strategies for reducing the accessibility of pro-suicide sites and working with the Search Engines themselves.

Why do I have 'useful suggestions'? Because I work in the web area. These researchers don't. They couldn't 'think of few better methods' because they didn't 'think' to collaborate with people such as myself or - actually - true experts who do this sort of thing for a living.

The influence of the Internet upon an individual's risk of suicide and upon population suicide rates is currently uncertain. Our study has shed some light on one aspect of the Internet. Further research is needed to ensure there is a more evidence-based debate on the Public Health impact of the Internet on suicide.

But the paper still stands and the publicity is out there. Is this response letter going to do anything about that? Are the researchers going to take their public responsibility seriously?

This is not an academic question. Decision makers are, unfortunately, far more likely to listen to people like Gunnell than people like me. Gunnell does not indicate here that they have learnt from the reaction that further research must happen by drawing on collaborations with industry and experts in the web field.

This is defensive. This is about covering their academic asses. How does this approach help us actually deal with doing the right sort of research which will lead to the right sort of solutions and actually help those they claim to want to help?

References
1. Biddle L, Donovan J, Hawton K, Kapur N, Gunnell D. Suicide and the Internet: BMJ 2008; 336:800-802
2. Hawton K, Williams K. Influences of the media on suicide. BMJ 2002; 325:1374-1375
3. Schmidtke A, Hafner H. The Werther effect after television films: new evidence for an old hypothesis. Psychol Med 1988;18:665-676.
4. Miller M, Azrael D, Hemenway D. The epidemiology of case fatality rates for suicide in the Northeast. Ann Emerg Med 2004;43:723-730

NB: this response was published in full the next day by the BMJ.

~~~~~~

One thing which I did notice on returning to the BMJ's website to look at responses is that they are carrying a blog by a breast cancer victim which appears to be doing it's job - explaining day-to-day reality to practitioners.

I really appreciate the way you are looking at things.Your blog is an eye opener. As a practising physician, it has changed my outlook towards my patients and their illnesses.

Or sortof a blog, posts form part of a category called 'From the other side', which isn't flagged at their top level navigation (and NB again, probably behind a firewall).

It's by Anna Donald.

I should introduce myself before launching into a blog which I hope is not too depressing: living in the shadow of death. This is my starting point, as I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (I lit up “like a Christmas tree” on the scans) in February 2007. It was not a complete surprise - I’d had primary breast cancer - not terribly high risk - in 2003. But disappointing that so much treatment hadn’t cured it.

I hope to write about things that may interest doctors, other health workers and policy makers about what it’s like to have life threatening disease; to be on the other side of the doctor-patient divide, and to experience 21st century health care for a chronic disease (Sydney’s hospitals are pretty similar to Britain’s), from a quality-of-care perspective.

One commentator puts the value of Anna having a voice in a nutshell:

There is a tremendous amount that we can learn from you as you write to us about your experience and insights. We all have challenges which can bring us to a brink (physically, emotionally, spiritually), and it is encouraging and healing to share thoughts and experiences. This can help us to gain empathy and become better health advocates, personally (for others and for ourselves) and professionally

The kids are alllrreight

'Social Citizens' is a really fascinating paper from the Social Citizens project, sponsored by the Case Foundation. It's about young people (Millennials’) and how they are using online tools to connect to, initiate and run causes — the flip-side of the MSMs obsession with the negatives about the young and the Internet:

In October 2007, Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times that young people are members of Generation Q. He meant “Q” for quiet, and inactive, on the important social questions of the day. The celebrated American globalist could not have been more wrong. This generation is making noise, whether adults can hear it or not.

You may have read echoes of this attitude in the tabloids (the 'hoodie' image above features prominently in the Daily Express).

The authors are very impressed with the scale and depth of youth engagement with change using the new technology in what they report on - just think of their impact on corporate behaviour. They go so far to compare them to the 'greatest generation' who fought WW2, and I don't think that's over the top given what we face with climate change:

One example of Millennials’ online activism is Causes on Facebook. In the spring of 2007, Project Agape posted its “Causes” application on Facebook. Within six months, more than 30,000 Causes were created on the social networking site, supporting over 12,000 existing nonprofit organizations. A brief survey of Causes on Facebook reveals an array of mainstream, apple-pie efforts, typical of Millennial activism. They are more practical than poetic, more passionate and less ideological in their activism efforts. Few could argue with the worthiness of helping orphans in China, trying to find a cure for AIDS and ALS, eradicating breast cancer, and helping underprivileged children learn to read.

However, the Causes application is different from traditional approaches because users are drawn to the cause first, then the institution (or group of volunteers if no formal institution exists). Joe Green, CEO of Causes on Face-book, describes the network interaction for causes this way: “There could be 1,000 causes aiming to help SaveDarfur.org with lots of different leaders and networks and lots of people reaching out in many ways.”

The paper documents a stack of other examples; 'Invisible Children' is one, which grew from four young guys' visit to Northern Uganda.

Preview:



[55' Movie on Google. 'In the spring of 2003, three young Americans traveled to Africa in search of such as story. What they found was a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them. A story where children are weapons and children are the victims. The "Invisible Children: rough cut" film exposes the effects of a 20 year-long war on the children of Northern Uganda. These children live in fear of abduction by rebel soldiers, and are being forced to fight as a part of violent army. This wonderfully reckless documentary is fast paced, with an MTV beat, and is something truly unique. To see Africa through young eyes is humorous and heart breaking, quick and informative - all in the very same breath. See this film, you will be forever changed.']



This is one of the most moving documentaries I've seen in years.

The authors see a flip side though, and speculate that this mightn't all be good:

Specific policy outcomes are not a significant component for most Millennial activist efforts. Social capital is the new commerce and the end result of many cause-related efforts spearheaded by young people.

Social action is a safe place to express a personal identity, and is much safer and easier than in the political arena with its inherent conflict and most often less-than-lofty outcomes. Danah Boyd (UofC Berkeley) explains, “We are living in a time of the elongation of childhood where kids are kept out of public life and only glimpse it through the mass media. Their lives are so heavily regulated and controlled, they don’t see a public world outside of the celebritization of political candidates.”

Is it possible to envision a very large generation of citizens who lead their lives at a great distance from government, even lives infused with causes, volunteering and a hopeful outlook about the world. Can government really be irrelevant to their lives, and, if so, is this a good thing for society? Is it important that young people are engaged in public policy advocacy? Is our tendency to connect only with like-minded people using our on line and on land social networks a good thing for activism or a critical bottleneck to the effective scaling for causes? Are social change institutions critical to the future of Social Citizens and their causes or are they becoming old-century anachronisms of top-down hierarchies that can’t survive much longer?

What draws their involvement? Conflicts like Israel/Palestine get less attention from this group as they're less clear, more grey, than ones like Darfur.

But one thing the authors don't do in discussing negative disengagement from 'government' is make the connections with the Obama campaign — perhaps because it's partisan or just because the campaign's happening now — which exists because of a/the Internet and b/the same sort of new bottom-up/shared/devolved organisations which young people are establishing. This has seen an enormous increase in active political engagement by young people - and voting - though what will happen to 'the movement' once he's elected President is a moot point.

What they do have is some ideas:

Political participation can and should be more meaningful than political campaigns, such as the possibility of careers in public service and policymaking, including serving on committees and task forces for local government efforts.

A major cautionary note for anyone interested in engaging young people in conversations about the role of government and policy issues is that these conversations must be authentic and spin-free, or youth will quickly tune out.

Now there's a big take-away for the oldies. And don't think this is just America. Most UK young people use social networks.

Go here for a bigger view than below

Read this doc on Scribd: Social Citizens Discussion Paper

NB: scribd embed script is not Blogger friendly!

Postscript: Search and suicide

Following my quite stroppy contact with the British Medical Journal (BMJ)'s Editor, my response has finally been published with one element removed because "it is damning the research in an unverifiable way".

It is notable that in a comment on my blog (paulcanning.me.uk) Graham Jones who runs the Internet Psychology web site said that he'd met some people who were connected to the research and "they were suitably embarrassed in private when I pointed out the simple flaws in the research".

I'm told that it took so long because they needed to check every single line "as we are liable for anything posted on our website". That paragraph is certainly unverifiable by them, unless they contact Graham, but it's also the sort of thing which might well upset the privately embarrassed.

Because I could only give them text without links, this means that the Letters Editor must have either had to go back and figure everything out from scratch or - more likely - get something of an education in this area from following the links on my blog.

All in all, quite satisfying.

Now let's see what, if anything, the BBC says from my complaint and the lead researcher from my letter ... I've had no response from my help offer to the charity Sane ...

Postscript: More responses are now appearing in the BMJ. I particularly like this one from a student at Otago Uni in New Zealand:

The selection of terms in this study did not include 'prevention', 'help', 'assistance', 'counselling' and were designed to return the sites they retrieved. Search engines ("web dragons") need skillful handling.

I wasn't at all sure what he meant but Web Dragons comes from a book of the same name, by Ian Witten, who's a New Zealand professor.

More seriously, a researcher from The University of Hong Kong reports his suspicions that users search for particular methods:

For instance, carbon monoxide poisoning by burning charcoal has been portrayed by the mass media in Hong Kong as an easy, painless and effective means of ending one's life since 1998.

Methods are described in the local media - something the UK media is not supposed to do - then people search for them. He concludes:

In view of the global nature of Internet, it seems logical that a global effort is needed to contain the negative effect of Internet on suicides.

Somebody's Baby

Please post this if you can to help it go viral.

• In memory of Lawrence "Larry" Fobes King
• UK: Schools OUT

Why suicide prevention charities are idiots

Another rubbish piece of web reporting from the BBC (and now all over) - only because it has a medical/doctor aura it's accepted as gospel.

People searching the web for information on suicide are more likely to find sites encouraging the act than offering support, a study says.

Researchers used four search engines to look for suicide-related sites, the British Medical Journal [BMJ] said.

The three most frequently occurring sites were all pro-suicide, prompting researchers to call for anti-suicide web pages to be prioritised.

'Frequently occurring ' means bugger all. The vast, vast majority of searchers don't get past the first ten results and most of those don't get past the top three

I cannot know what exactly their methods were because this information isn't in the public domain - it's behind a payment firewall. (NB: Postscript below - terms and full research is now available)

So unless they send me the research, I (or joe/jill public) has no way of countering this biased reporting and what appears to be shoddy research except what's in this article and what we can guess happened.

The researchers, from Bristol, Oxford and Manchester universities, typed in 12 simple suicide-related search terms into the internet engines.

They analysed the first 10 sites in each search, giving a total of 480 hits.

Altogether 240 different sites were found. A fifth were dedicated suicides sites, while a further tenth were sites that gave factual or jokey information about suicide.

Meanwhile, 13% of sites were focused on suicide prevention while another 12% actively discouraged it.

Well I just did a Google search - 70% of UK web searches, mostly to google.com rather than google.co.uk - on 'suicide' (NB: with 'safesearch' off) and Wikipedia was #1, as usual. Yes, this includes a link to a 'suicide methods' page - it's an encyclopedia. It also has a page about torture and one on necrophilia. What do they propose to do about that? Have Wikipedia be filtered through a charity? Or the government?

• the next result directs people to the Samaritans
• next is suicide.com, run by an author called Melody Clark - doesn't appear to be 'encouraging it' from what I saw
• then news sites links
• then Mind's website
• then Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• then a page from kidshealth.org
• then a page from SOON Ministries (anti)
• then a Times article
• then netdoctor

Alongside this were a number of text ads from suicide prevention charities, including Samaritans but mainly small or religious ones, and one business ('Cremated ashes made into glass: "Keep the memory"'). I scanned Yahoo and MSN - almost exactly the same.

On google.co.uk, Mind is #1, some smaller charities appear as well as the BBC but otherwise it's similar to google.com. The Samaritans are way, way down - they need the text ad - and Sane not in the first 100 results.

The article isn't telling me what the other terms used were. But I can run a keyword suggestion tool. That gives me (for UK market) the number of daily searches for the particular keyword :

suicide 7788
suicide girls 4921 - a band
suicide girl 438 - fans of that band
teen suicide 429
how to commit suicide 408
suicide methods 375
assisted suicide 349
suicide poems 237
teenage suicide 205
physician assisted suicide 190

As you can see, searches on the simple term 'suicide' are far more prevalent and this list is almost identical to the USA's. As I don't have the details on these 'twelve terms' they researched I don't know what the prevalence/total number of searches on them actually are, let alone if that can be broken down by age group by any method. But I can guess that metric didn't feature in the research.

'How to commit suicide'

Again, Wikipedia, news and religious sites make up the top ten for 'how to commit suicide' on google.com. Only at #9 do I get a website about suicide methods. And this is a very long tract by anarchists. Further down there's the Hemlock Society and some others

These top tens change. Particularly because 'freshness' is more of a consideration than it used to be - hence news results. These researchers don't mention video, but that is now prominent in Google results (the ones in results are all jokey).

Notably, no UK charity like the Samaritans and with the exception of Mind shows up until way down the list on that search term on google.com or google.co.uk.

On both google.co.uk and google.com the Samaritans and some smaller charities and businesses advertise and survive.org.uk appears also in top ten search results on google.co.uk though these are dominated by news.

Lead researcher Lucy Biddle said that because of the law, self-regulation by internet providers and the use of filtering software by parents were the main methods used to try and prevent use of pro-suicide sites.

But she added: "This research shows it is very easy to obtain detailed technical information about methods of suicide."

Yes, if you are determined to find it you will find it. Doh! Just like bomb making recipies and rants against the Chinese government if you are Chinese in China. Filtering software is notoriously about sales and fear and only really 'works' with white lists or massive over-blocking/policing ('Great Firewall').

Her research did not demonstrate that finding pro-suicide websites is "very easy". Contrary to assumptions, I haven't seen evidence that shows that kids and teens are that much better, if at all, at finding things online using search engines than anyone else.

What I can say is that searches for 'suicide' are going down. This is a Google Trends search using the terms 'suicide -attack -Iraq -Afghanistan' to roughly exclude suicide bombers (I checked common keywords in news reports).



This does not include the press coverage of the Bridgend, Wales suicide cluster from earlier this year tied to peaks, because that volume is too low to display in that graph, but would likely be responsible for the early 2008 peak. See 'Bridgend' vs 'suicide' below.



For general searches for 'suicide', the general trend appears to be clearly down. Some good news you won't read in reporting.

Apart from no numbers on what the actual usage is of 'pro-suicide' sites, another point is whether the websites which charities and government create are actually helping kids and teens. I don't know but I'd like to - there's obviously nothing about that in this research, why some kids and teens might be turning to these sites they want to ban in the first place instead of 'official' ones.

She said internet service providers could pursue strategies that would maximise the likelihood that sites aimed at preventing suicide are sourced first.

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, agreed something should be done.

Well

• how about running your ads next to more search terms than just 'suicide'. (Only Sane isn't doing any in the first place.)
• Or employing some Search Engine Optimisation specialists to make sure that your pages come up first. They might even do it for nothing or just the publicity.
  
• Or working with other charities to make sure you cover every possible term and intervene via content and ads on other sites or through social networks (simply creating a page on Mind's website, already high-up results, which is titled 'How to commit suicide' would immediately help).
  
• Or fixing your own website where the first result on a search for 'suicide' is 'The National Suicide Prevention Strategy report'.
  

Here's the beef - I would class the actions of such charities in making NO effort to ensure that their pages turn up tops on such search terms as 'How to commit suicide' as IRRESPONSIBLE. There are no excuses and to behave as if this is someone else's responsibility - let alone ISPs - is childish and pathetic PLUS it lets down kids and teens. Yes, this makes me very angry!

"We remain deeply concerned about the possible influence of the internet on suicide rates, not least the ease with which information about particular methods can be found with a simple web search."

"These sites are preying on vulnerable and lonely people."

And you, Marjorie Wallace, are not doing your job properly, you are failing the very kids and teens you claim to be helping and you are simply looking for someone else to blame.

As for the BMJ and these so-called researchers ... and as for the BBC. Who the heck do they think this actually helps? This is badly researched scare mongering.

This is exactly what happens when you set up walled gardens and fail to relate to the wider web - I am not seeing the NHS or government portal directgov anywhere in these results and that 'can't be bothered' mentality dominates the charity sector as well.

Hardly surprising when the 'National suicide prevention strategy for England' contains no mention of either the web, the internet or even chatrooms.

The same goes for health information for teens and kids on a wider scale than just suicide prevention - we're looking at an abdication of responsibility online and a willingness to blame others.

What Sane and other charities should do:

1. Talk to the search engines, they are very interested in getting results right and can and do 'tweak' them. They won't 'censor' sites or stop indexing the whole web but they will help and advise on improving positioning.
2. Don't talk to the ISPs! Talk to the search engine experts such as the Search Marketing Association.
3. Talk to social networks about teaming up with them and others to create widgets and other tools so kids and teens can help others.
   

As well, these people would probably do it for free or cheaply. It would be very straightforward to out-manoeuvre the sites you hate online. What resources do they have vs. what resources do you have?

But for kids sake stop behaving with fear and horror about the web and start using it rather than expecting someone else to do your job.

I am afraid that none of these people are listening, though, (the news media is already known to be a bigger encourager of suicide than the web). What they are developing is an righteous effort, like has happened in Australia, which will result in a censored Internet for all of us - and no real help for those they claim to be helping.

~~~~~

Postscript: I have submitted a response to the BMJ, pointing them to this blog post. I have also written to Marjorie Wallace of Sane pointing her to this blog post and making plain that I would freely offer my help and contact others willing to help them improve their search positioning and online help for the suicidal.

Postscript: An anonymous commentator says that the 12 search terms were:

a) suicide; (b) suicide methods; (c) suicide sure methods; (d) most effective methods of suicide; (e) methods of suicide; (f) ways to commit suicide; (g) how to commit suicide; (h) how to kill yourself; (i) easy suicide methods; (j) best suicide methods; (k) pain-free suicide, and (l) quick suicide.

And those showed:

Top 4 sites were Alt Suicide Holiday, Satan Service, Suicide methods.net and wikipedia. In that order first 3 were catigorised as pro suicide wikipedia as Information site: factual.

But as you can see from the keyword search numbers above only 'how to commit suicide' and 'suicide methods ' are frequently used search terms and both are dwafted by searches on 'suicide'.

The daily search numbers for 'how to kill yourself', 216. But for 'suicide poems', not a term they used, 237. 'Suicide sure methods' (Used), 0. 'Most effective methods for committing suicide', 0. 'Methods of suicide' is exactly the same term as 'suicide methods'. 'Ways to commit suicide' 158. 'Easy suicide methods', 11. 'Pain-free suicide', 0 (But 'painless suicide methods', not used, 53). ' Quick suicide', 4.

'Suicide', 7788.

If these are indeed the variants, by what method were those twelve search terms picked? It doesn't appear very scientific, unless I'm missing some additional information.

And none of this lets charities (or government) off the hook because churches and others are already in there topping results by generating links and picking page titles which put them at the top for terms which are searched on.

Postscript: The full text of the article has now been made available on the BMJ website.

This says:

Search strategy
We sought to replicate the results of a typical search that might be undertaken by a person seeking information about methods of suicide. We conducted searches using the four most popular UK search engines and 12 broad search terms—a total of 48 searches. The terms entered were those likely to be used by distressed individuals, determined partly from interview data collected in an ongoing qualitative study of near-fatal suicide attempts and by using search suggestions provided by the engines upon entering terms such as "suicide."

There isn't any further detail on just how they could know what search terms were actually entered 'by distressed individuals' as opposed to ones without distress or how relevant 'interview data' would be in working that out. My look at keywords suggests that they picked the wrong ones anyway and to include both 'methods of suicide' and 'suicide methods' is just inept.

I repeat that the conclusions of the study don't match any real data on what 'distressed individuals' might search on, let alone which terms are most frequently used (a metric which was clearly irrelevant in this study), let alone what we know about search patterns - the sort of information which has been researched to death because it has commercial value, let alone which search engine they probably used. The tenth in a top ten of search results is far less likely to be clicked on than the first, just to pick one example, yet their 'results' are predicated on them having the same value. There is clearly very little understanding of search behaviour by these researchers and this renders all the rest of the study entirely meaningless.

If they had even bothered to ask some of the search marketing/search optimisation specialists probably around the corner from them, or possibly even within the same universities, they would have realised that their methodology doesn't show anything. But as a result of this article being in the hallowed BMJ we now have headlines around the world.

I would suggest that this article devalues the BMJ itself as a source of scientific information unless it is withdrawn. There was nothing scientific about this study.

This is not to say that analysis of how search may contribute to actual suicide isn't valuable, but it needs to be done by specialists who can use the tools established by the industry to track and analyse which sites are the most dangerous and where the traffic to them is coming from - it may well not be primarily search. That could be done. As well, as I have explained at length, the best course is a concerted effort by charities and government to direct 'distressed individuals' to websites which can really help them.

Postscript: I actually got Google search share wrong. It's not 70%, it's 86%. And most of those are to google.co.uk rather than google.com - which has changed dramatically from the last time I looked at this, presumably because Google is getting better at presenting more relevant results and presenting .co.uk because it knows that's where you're searching from.

Postscript: In a comment, Graham Jones who runs the Internet Psychology web site, says that he met some people who were connected to the research and "they were suitably embarrassed in private when I pointed out the simple flaws in the research". Another critic of the research is John M. Grohol, Psy.D. at the PsychCentral website.

And Tango Makes Three!

I'm always amazed at the blind hate which anything to do with same-gender love and kids engenders.

There's a story today in the Mail about a school in Bristol which withdrew this lovely looking book (Reading level: Ages 4-8) because lots of parents complained ("fury!" why is it always "fury!") about supposedly introducing their kids to 'sex'.

Huh? Have any of them seen the book?

Here's a review by Andie A., Minnesota, age 10

And Tango Makes Three is a wonderful book about two male penguins named Silo and Roy adopting an egg that came to be Tango. It's also about two male penguins doing what the other penguin couples do, but using a rock for an egg and finally getting a real egg that hatched Tango the baby penguin. It takes place in New York City in Central Park Zoo. It was written in 2005, so not too long ago. There were so many newspaper articles about it, and the authors thought it would make a good picture book. The zookeeper got the egg from another penguin couple that had two eggs and only could take care of one, so the zookeeper gave the other one to Silo and Roy. So that's how Silo and Roy became Tango's daddies.

And Tango Makes Three is a wonderful book. I'd recommend it for people ages 3 to 9. It's also fun for teachers and parents. It has lots of information about penguins. It's based on a true story. I like And Tango Makes Three so much.

Isn't that sweet? And it's a true story!

Roy and Silo were a very famous couple of penguins! For six years they 'pair-bonded' as biologists call it. Silo left Roy for Strappy in 2005 :{ But now they're back together :}

The pair were observed trying to hatch a rock as if it were an egg. When the zoo staff realized that Roy and Silo were both male, it occurred to them to give them the second egg of a mixed-gender penguin couple, a couple which previously had been unable to successfully hatch two eggs at a time. Roy and Silo hatched and raised the healthy young chick, a female named "Tango" by keepers

They exhibit what in penguin parlance is called ''ecstatic behavior'': that is, they entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have [gulp] sex.

[Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name] Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

And this ''ecstatic behavior'' is all pretty normal for animals!

These two are obviously having a 'love spat' ...



What is wrong with people who just see 'sex! sex! sex!' all the time? Yes, the complainants were 'religious' :{ What view of the world around them do they want kids to have ... oh yes, that one ... All the bad reviews object to a zoo keeper saying "they must be in love."

Huh?

And what do the mummies and daddies reading about this fuss in a teacup think? Readers?

The kids aren't alright

Having great fun finding cool, green content for two webspaces — not.

recyclenow is the main, government funded body and they have nothing which can be reused on other sites. But neither does anyone else.

In fact, I'm having trouble tracking down much in the way of even usable video, especially aimed at UK kids as one of the spaces is for kids, and have turned to the EU! I have posted their recycling cartoon before and they also have a well-produced video about global warming.

This is from an American kids cartoon:



But games? Widgets? What I have found is various local Councils commissioning their own recycling games! Which can't be reused elsewhere. Which is nutty nut nuts duplication.

The sole exception is Abodo, which is about green living, from Delib. A little cryptic (is it clear what the below is about?), it's all I've got/found from the UK.



This sort of thing is great for getting out messages



clock from Poodwaddle.com

And it's looking like I'll end up using similar American product to sell recycling and green issues to - especially - kids in my English city. Because there's nothing I can find to use from the UK's various recycling/climate change official and unofficial bodies. Unless a reader can tell me of some fabulous resource hidden away from view ...

'Twittering while holding Milan is just freaking awesome'

Tech pioneer Robert Scoble has just Twittered the birth of his son.

The moment, Twittered:

Hugh: I can't get a good link for Flickr for some reason. Hospital wifi is a bit flaky. Just visit my blog and click the Flickr feed there. 04:32 AM September 14, 2007 from twitterrific
Photos of Milan are up at N01/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photo... 04:26 AM September 14, 2007 from twitterrific
Thank you so much to everyone for your kind wishes! Everyone is doing well. Milan is 9 lbs and was born at 2.24 p.m. today. 04:25 AM September 14, 2007 from web
Phoned-in TwitterGram http://tinyurl.com/2eq4zu 02:55 AM September 14, 2007 from TwitterGram
Milan is here! 02:30 AM September 14, 2007 from iTweet
Phoned-in TwitterGram http://tinyurl.com/ypzj5q 02:28 AM September 14, 2007 from TwitterGram

He notes:

Milan isn't the first baby to be blogged from this hospital [Stanford University], either. http://blog.maxzeller.com/ was born here

More

Bytes · Right on Miss America - MS tortoise/Google hare - Wikipedia Story

• I agree with Miss America [could she be any perkier?] — she wants mandatory Internet safety classes for kids.

• The Guardian's website has a new Science section, very useful when mass media (the Beeb, sheesh) and politicians push nonsense like concerns about WiFi.
  
  
• AJAX is a technology underpining many dynamic web 2.0 apps, so it's good to see this accessify post suggesting that the well-used Screen reader JAWS is including language about support for AJAX in it's next version.
  
  
• When web accessibility is not your problem (MP3, 28MB) - Joe Clark [session notes]
  
  
  
• Scott Karp: Online Publishers Need To Stop Selling Space.
  

  Google doesn’t sell any space. It sells user intentions, i.e. what’s on people’s minds. And that’s a scare resource — there’s a finite number of people thinking about buying a digital camera today.
  
  So what else is a scarce resource online? Locality.
  

~~~~~~~~~~~


NYT: Microsoft Offers a Web-Based Strategy

“We’re not moving toward a world of thin computing,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, referring to systems in which simple processing takes place on a PC, but more complex processing is moved to a centralized computer through a network connection. “We’re moving toward a world of software plus services.” Nearly every Microsoft software application will be transformed with the addition of a Web-services component within 3 to 10 years, he said.

SEL take:

Even as Microsoft says it's defending its home turf, the company is of course trying to aggressively compete in the world of search and online advertising, which is Google's core franchise. Recent purchases of aQuantive/Atlas (for $6 billion) and AdECN, as well as high profile deals with Facebook and Digg, show how serious Microsoft is about being a major player in both arenas ... my guess is that "3 to 10 years" is too long for Microsoft to wait to web-enable its critical applications; because by then the free, online options will be much better.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If you missed it, Clive Anderson's great take on The Wikipedia Story is still on Radio 4's website

The NeoConservative Oliver Kamm responded on his blog and distilled the objectors - to them, Wikipedia represents "an anti-intellectual exercise".

(Gawd knows what's going on with the BBC at the moment. Withdrawn digital services + the complicated sounding iplayer. And have you used their website search lately? Whenever I've used it it consistently fails the same comparison test against Google that DirectGov does)

Search Wikia is Jimmy Wales' latest.

Our Four Organizing Principles (TCQP) - the future of Internet Search must be based on:

• 1. Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.
• 2. Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.
• 3. Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.
• 4. Privacy - Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.

Active areas of focus:

• Social Lab - sources for URL social reputation, experiments in wiki-style social ranking.
• Distributed Lab - projects focused on distributed computing, crawling, and indexing. Grub!
• Semantic Lab - Natural Language Processing, Text Categorization.
• Standards Lab - formats and protocols to build interoperable search technologies.

Bytes · Smart kids - BBC3 satirised - Satisfaction is key

Way too busy to blog much so here's some clips:

• Tom Steinberg's 'Power of Information Review' is available in PDF here.

• Marc Andreessen (Netscape) has popped the idea that we're in another dotcom 'bubble' on his new blog.

• According to The Observer:
  

  Thousands of schoolchildren have made it their mission to break through internet filters in schools meant to stop them surfing 'social network' websites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook.

  
  More power to them.
  

• Privacy International says that Google has the worst privacy policies of any Web company. They have a "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy," it's claimed.
  
  The problem I have with this is that privacy campaigners don't seem to ever realise that the foundations of all Web businesses is consumer trust. This is why banks make special efforts. If Google is ever caught out seriously it will pay in lost business.
  

• Google Sightseeing have started a new site — already — for Street View Sightseeing.

• Media types are apparently on the hunt for an anonymous blogger making life hell for BBC3's young Controller, Danny Cohen. Thetvcontroller is great satire.

• ZDNet interviews Sir Tim Berner-Lee [VIDEO], the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium at the MITX (Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange) Technology Awards. He sounds terribly mid-Atlantic and talks about the (drumroll) 'semantic web'. He doesn't like APIs, he wants you to think SPARQL.
  

• The LibDems put down a motion in the Commons on Friday on the 53rd Anniversary of the death of Alan Turing.
  
  Every programmer or web person should know Turing's name.
  
  I was shamefully corrected (thanks Seb) and, as I've a mo, here's Alan's lifestory from Andrew Hodges tribute website (my emphases):
  
  

  Who was Alan Turing?
  Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher,
  codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time:
  
  1912 (23 June): Birth, Paddington, London
  1926-31: Sherborne School
  1930: Death of friend Christopher Morcom
  1931-34: Undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge University
  1932-35: Quantum mechanics, probability, logic
  1935: Elected fellow of King's College, Cambridge
  1936: The Turing machine, computability, universal machine
  1936-38: Princeton University. Ph.D. Logic, algebra, number theory
  1938-39: Return to Cambridge. Introduced to German Enigma cipher machine
  1939-40: The Bombe, machine for Enigma decryption
  1939-42: Breaking of U-boat Enigma, saving battle of the Atlantic
  1943-45: Chief Anglo-American crypto consultant. Electronic work.
  1945: National Physical Laboratory, London
  1946: Computer and software design leading the world.
  1947-48: Programming, neural nets, and artificial intelligence
  1948: Manchester University
  1949: First serious mathematical use of a computer
  1950: The Turing Test for machine intelligence
  1951: Elected FRS. Non-linear theory of biological growth
  1952: Arrested as a homosexual, loss of security clearance
  1953-54: Unfinished work in biology and physics
  1954 (7 June): Death (suicide) by cyanide poisoning, Wilmslow, Cheshire.
  

  
  

• Worrying statement in a report about a survey on what people want from DirectGov:
  

  "With 60% of respondents saying they want more government services in one place online, all of the insights we gained will be taken into consideration as we plan the future of Directgov."

  
  Sounds like a leading question to me. I hadn't noticed the public clamouring to have their services all just through DirectGov.

• Customer satisfaction is now the most important issue for websites, according to new research by ForeSee Results.
  

  Consumers look at more factors than price, according to the study. Offering the lowest price isn't always the best strategy; it increased overall satisfaction for only 5 percent of the top 100 online retail sites. "Site experience and brand, if improved, will have the biggest payback to retailers," said [Larry] Freed, ForeSee CEO. "On the opposite side we have price, generally the lowest of any other elements."
  
  Retailers that don't allow consumer ratings and reviews, or editorial reviews, on their sites risk letting consumers go elsewhere for the information and transacting with another commerce site, according to Freed. "Those that get reviews are generally more satisfied and apt to purchase than those who did not," he said.
  
  

• SpyBlog seems to be moving around the web (ahem). But it is one of only a few places watching the Government's "vague plans to try to censor the internet".

• New York Times covers Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play
  
  
• Newsnight ran another MSM hit-job on the Web's trustfulness [VIDEO] as a source this week.
  
  First up in their 'argument', Wikipedia. Listen, Newsnight, not only does the MSM NEVER admit it's mistakes but scientific study has demolished many of your arguments. Just look at this Nature story from 2005 comparing Wikipedia with Brittanica (the BBC covered it). Guess who's winning? It's not the MSM.
  
  BBC News job cuts are obviously already affecting Gavin Esler's research assistance.
  
  
• UofC psychology researchers have found another use for Second Life: improving understanding of Schizophrenia. According to The Big Issue, they've set up a Virtual Hallucinations building which will simulate the world as a schizophrenic experiences it. Examples include: voices, changing reflections in a mirror and a bookshop which appears to have fascist literature.
  
  
• For one week only. First (yawnsome) full-length film available on youTube.

Web gives kids surprising new gatekeeper role

What was that postcode again mom?

Where once it was just daughter showing father how to program the Video Recorder, now it's son showing mum how to fill in that form to the government.

According to "Surfin' on Mom's Turf: Cyber Chillin' With 8-14 Year-Olds," a report released by an American marketing company called Stars for Kidz and reported on ClickZ, 14 percent of kids have helped parents prepare their income tax return online.

"In this 8 to 14 age group, these kids are the first strong generation where they have had all these sophisticated levels of technology from childhood, and they function intuitively," said Adele Schwartz, research director at Stars for Kidz.

Additional chores given to kids include

• sharing pictures and e-mails with relatives (38 percent);
  
• looking up movie listings (38 percent);
• responding to invitations, party and vacation planning (36 percent each);
  
• and travel (36 percent);
  
• getting driving directions (35 percent).

"What we see is the kids who are computer competent are becoming pivotal sources of information and planning for the family," said Schwartz.

"Kids think moms [parents] are clueless, while that may or may not be true, kids are quicker and they find [information online] easier."

Interesting stuff.

Certainly my experience is that it's the intuition element which doesn't cross generations easily. What are the implications when the kids control the information flow (apart from mum + dad learning how to search)?