Some things never change. And one of those is the fact that kids love to keep secrets from adults. When you're a kid and everything seems to confuse you, it's nice to see parents powerless for a change.
It turns out that one such child, according to Channel 9 in Minneapolis, found out that his parents not only didn't have a clue, they bought him the hardware. We're talking about the Sony PSP.
He brought the portable gaming device to school and by the end of the day; he was grounded for a month and suspended from school for a while.
Mom and Pop thought the PSP was a harmless game- and it is. But leave it to kids to get sneaky.
His school's library had a Wi-Fi connection. And he used his PSP to log onto the Internet. And once he was on the Internet, you know what kind of sites young boys visit first. He found out how to do it from other kids using their PSPs to do the same thing.
Some parents might be clueless, but lots of other adults are finding ways to cash in on the technology. Channel 9 found numerous web sites that cater specifically to the PSP.
The FOX 9 Investigators tracked down the owners of one of these sites. Two 19-year old brothers run it.
Reporter: "Are you trying to target kids with this?"
Website Operator: "Not at all, because it's really hard to get money, or advertising if you have only kids coming to your site."
His target audience, he says, is the over 30 crowd that owns PSP's.
Reporter: "How do you know you don't have some kid who's 10, 12, 14 years old going on to your website?"
Website Operator: "We really don't know their ages, or their gender."
David Walsh/National Institute on Media and the Family: "We need to know how it works. We need to know the capability. We need to be clear with our kids ahead of time about what the ground rules are."
They're rethinking the policy that allows students to bring portable games for use outside of class time.
Jana Hennen-Burr/Elk River Schools: "We need to put some structures in place to keep things honest."
For starters, they want to make the school's wireless Internet connection a lot more secure.
Sony, the maker of the PSP, told us that parents should be responsible for monitoring the content their children are viewing. But Walsh says game makers have a responsibility too. They should let parents know that their product could give a kid easy access to that kind of material..