ReadWriteWeb

For kids under 12 years of age, entertainment websites and virtual worlds are all the rage. My 8-year old daughter plays ToonTown a lot. Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters are also popular in this demographic. But are these types of sites fulfilling the potential and talent our kids have with technology?

In order to help us answer that question, we're asking those of you who are parents of a child aged 12 or under to do a short survey accompanied by your child. With this survey, co-hosted by Boston research firm Latitude, we're hoping to discover what kind of web apps kids want but don't necessarily have right now.

Yesterday we posted a video from the Teens in Tech conference, looking at how teens perceive technology. Today we're co-launching a survey which aims to find out how children 12 years and younger use Web technology. We've partnered with Boston research firm Latitude, which developed the survey tool and will help us analyze the data. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, after which ReadWriteWeb and Latitude will list and analyze the results.

If you're the parent of a child 12 and under, then we invite you to participate in the survey by clicking here.

According to a recent survey of around 3,000 kids, those who text, blog and use social sites such as Facebook have better writing skills than their less technologically inclined counterparts.

This hardly comes as a surprise to us tech geeks who spent our younger days alternating between writing critical theses on esoteric forums and getting assaulted by grammar Nazis on said forums. Although we may take it for granted that voluminous written communication online builds writing skills, others decry the lack of formality in most tween and teen lexicons. Is "text speak" as much a concern as enhanced writing skills are a benefit?

According to a new survey by mobile advertising network Greystripe, mothers with iPhones regularly let their children use their phones, download games specifically for their children and often use their phones at grocery stores to compare prices and check their grocery lists.

Not too long ago, mothers were still considered to be a hard group to reach through mobile applications because they tend to be late adopters. The iPhone's mainstream success has changed this, however, and iPhone moms have now become a desirable target demographic for marketers.

While Crowdflower has forged some amazing partnerships in the past, including a deal with Samasource to launch a training program for Kenyan refugees, the company's latest partnership has a somewhat questionable benefit statement. Crowdflower and Gambit are offering sponsored promotions for gamers to earn virtual currency via cloud-based labor. While the program sounds like a great idea, the pitch we received specified that promotions would help "monetize younger users". It will be interesting to see how parents react to these promotions.

Security firm Symantec has identified the top 100 searches conducted by children online. Popular items in the list include some expected entries like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace as well as queries for popular pop idols like Michael Jackson and Miley Cyrus. However, what's surprising about the children's list is how similar it looks to that of any other online adult - something which seems to imply that our online activities aren't all that age dependent after all.

People on the internet aren't always very nice. While some adults may be tough enough to wade into the snark-infested waters of YouTube comments and other particularly nasty online fora - many children could use a helping hand coping with it all psychologically.

Enter Firefox for CyberMentors. It's a new custom browser made in partnership with the popular anti-cyberbullying organization Cybermentors.org.uk. It's a good looking option for parents.

Yesterday, I was with my wife in the L'Occitane store. The shelves were filled with fragrances, soaps, lotions: all sorts of handcrafted beauty products. It occured to me while looking at the labels that I have no idea how these products were made. I am reasonably versed in chemistry, but the process of manufacturing perfume is not something I know anything about.

In general, I am just not good with physical things, because I am a software person. I've always been fascinated by people who can easily make sense of physical objects, because for me it takes a lot of effort even to put together children's toys. My brain is wired differently, to see patterns in software, not in hardware. But most people are the other way around.

With Election Day upon us, one segment of the U.S. population is under heavy scrutiny: the youth voters. Will this typically apathetic group of voters actually turn out at the polls? Will Gen Y show us that they're not just all talk? For obvious reasons, politically, the actions of this group of voters will have big impacts on today's election. But their actions (or inactions) will also have further impacts on the web and tech, as well.

Continuing our coverage of the mainstream web, in this post we look at some of the most popular websites for kids. We've gathered information from a recent report (pdf) from Nielsen Online, via Marketingvox, which studied the online habits of Britons under the age of 23. We also polled friends of RWW via Twitter.

The Nielsen report concluded that entertainment sites have the greatest affinity with under 12s, games sites for 12-17 year-olds, and student and video sites for 18-22 year-olds. We're all familiar by now with the latter 'young adult' demographic, who are big users of social networks and video sites like YouTube. But let's look more closely at what the under 12 and 12-17 year old demographics are using on the Web.