Behind Your Business

AP – European stock markets traded mostly flat Monday as investors shrugged off more sobering news about shaky government finances ahead of a busy schedule of U.S. economic data later in the week.

The Web often is seen as a global watering hole where young adults freely trade personal information, while older users are more privacy conscious.

But 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely than older users of social networks to keep a keen eye on their online profiles and who can access them, says a report out Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Among findings:

*44 percent of those 18-29 say they take steps to limit information available about them, vs. 33 percent ages 30-49 and 25 percent ages 50-64.

*71 percent of younger users of social networking sites actively change privacy settings to limit what they share online, vs. 55 percent of those 50-64.

*41 percent have “untagged” photos of them posted by others, vs. just 18 percent of those 50-64.

Researchers surveyed 2,253 adults 18 and older by phone; margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

“The prevailing notion of young adults is that they have a radically different perception of privacy,” says Mary Madden, the report’s lead author. “But this data show they are every bit as concerned with privacy and are more engaged in monitoring their information than older users.”

Ari Schwartz of the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology agrees. “This validates that young people do care about privacy, though it has to be in the context of their online lives.”

Madden notes that younger users spend more time on social networks, so may have more data to protect. The survey was done before Facebook’s recent privacy tweaks, “but clearly what they’ve done fits in with concerns of younger users.”

Only 4 percent reported having embarrassing or inaccurate information about them released online, unchanged since 2006. About 8 percent reported asking someone to remove information about them; 82 percent said requests were granted without issue.

When self-searchers put their name in…

You’re at the front lines shooting Nazis before they shoot you. Or you’re a futuristic gladiator in a death match with robots.

Either way, you’re playing a video game — and you may be improving your vision and other brain functions, according to research being presented Thursday at a New York University conference on games as a learning tool.

“People that play these fast-paced games have better vision, better attention and better cognition,” said Daphne Bavelier, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester.

Bavelier was being a presenter at Games for Learning, a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video games and computer games.

The event, the first of its kind, was an indication that electronic games are gaining legitimacy in the classroom.

President Barack Obama recently identified the creation of good educational software as one of the “grand challenges for American innovation,” and the federal Department of Education’s assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Jim Shelton, was to attend Thursday’s conference.

Panelists were to discuss how people learn and how games can be engineered to be even more educational.

“People do learn from games,” said J. Dexter Fletcher of the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Sigmund Tobias of the State University of New York at Albany said an Israeli air force study found that students who played the game “Space Fortress” had better rankings in their pilot training than students who did not.

He added that students who played “pro-social” games that promote cooperation were more likely than others to help out in real-life situations like intervening when someone is being harassed.

Bavelier’s research has focused on so-called first-person shooter games like “Unreal Tournament” and “Medal of Honor,” in which the player is an Allied solder during World War II.

“You have to jump into vehicles, you…

AP – Europe has spooked stock investors. Will it spook shoppers, too?

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