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Today's tots are more likely to have a laptop within reach (83 percent) than play outside (69 percent). Kids are getting exposed to laptops, electronic games and mobile phones at an earlier age, a study by Ipsos MediaCT found. Households with preschoolers are more likely to have electronics than those with older kids as new parents, who grew up digitally themselves, are increasingly likely to see technology as an educational investment. As more technology is introduced into the household, pre-schoolers are less likely to play with toys, play outside and read and more likely to play games and watch videos on a cell phone.

[Commentary] Ever wondered why most Terms of Service include a seemingly arbitrary age cut-off, banning users who are under 13? It’s because of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which restricts the collection of personal information from kids on the Internet. Sites like Club Penguin or Radio Disney that are aimed at children under 13 are required to get verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children. Instead, most sites simply ban users under the age of 13—Facebook is a famous example—rather than deal with COPPA’s notice and parental consent requirements. It’s not a perfect system, but it has worked fairly well in limiting the amount of information collected from children—while leaving the rest of the Internet alone.

But now the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is proposing changes to COPPA that could create barriers to innovation and access to information for everyone. The FTC plans to put COPPA obligations on plugin developers if they “know or have reason to know” that their plugin has been installed on a children’s site. “Plugins” include analytics providers, advertising networks, social media plugins, embedded videos, or anyone else who provides third-party code for websites. Under the FTC's proposed change, if plugin developers receive a user’s IP address through a plugin that’s been installed on a children’s site, they could face legal liability for collecting children’s personal information. COPPA is the only protect-the-children-from-the-Internet law passed in the late ‘90s that hasn’t been challenged in court. The Communications Decency Act (1996), the Child Pornography Prevention Act (1996), and the Child Online Protection Act (1998) each went to the Supreme Court and were all struck down due to First Amendment concerns about restricting access to information online. COPPA hasn’t faced the same kind of challenge only because it has, so far, been narrowly focused and hasn’t interfered with adults’ or older minors’ access to constitutionally protected information. The FTC is proposing to radically alter that balance.

Hate your Wi-Fi on planes? Think it’s too pricey? Too slow? Don’t blame your flight attendant, blame physics and the high cost of delivering broadband to a metal tube flying through the air at 500 miles per hour. Here’s what it costs and why it’s slow.

Early adopters of the cloud in federal government are showing benefits to the move, according to a new study by Meritalk. The study, titled Mission-Critical Cloud: Ready for the Heavy Lift?, hypothesized that the federal government could save $16.6 billion annually if all agencies moved three “mission-critical” applications to the cloud. About 73 percent of those polled cited security as the primary reason they had not yet made such a transition.