EYE ON THE KIDS: Young children (under the age of 12) are "conspicuously absent from large-scale inquiries into youth social networking practices." So says the latest report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center that looks at a new generation of social networking forums and how children interact with them. In an age where kids are finding ways around age barriers to social networking sites (mandated by COPPA), the report advises future studies of children's media to "include a greater age range of child users and a broader definition of what constitutes as social networking." We're not talking about Facebook and MySpace, but ever-increasing video and project sharing communities and virtual game worlds. Detailed case studies cover a range of popular online destinations, from the fun and gamey Club Penguin and Little Big Planet, to more formal educational sites like Scratch and the Cisco Networking Academy.