Schools and parents beware – Smartphone apps can cause you to chew through your monthly mobile data limit in a matter of days, while free versions of apps often end up costing more than the paid premium version and eat up your battery life, new data shows.

There are significant privacy, intellectual property, copyright and disclosure risks associated with the ill-considered use of social networking sites, however, the implementation of regulatory actions may also undermine the social and emerging educational utility of social networking sites for young people. Inevitably the burden of dealing with the risks of social networking sites must necessarily fall on the development of educational strategies designed to equip young people with the skills…

WHEN the Liberal member for Bradfield, Paul Fletcher, and his group of Coalition MPs were preparing their discussion paper on ways to improve online safety for children – released by Tony Abbott on Friday – they came upon a Perth school principal who’d had to sort out a Facebook dispute between two six-year-olds.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has always known his mandatory internet filtering scheme was a white elephant but waited years for a politically opportune moment to dump the failed and toxic policy. Many family family focused groups will be concerned for the safety of children on the Internet having hoped that the filter would create a more benign environment for children.