children

Robot nannies could diminish child care worries for parents of young children. Equipped with alarms and monitoring capabilities to guard children from harm, a robot nanny would let parents leave youngsters at home without a babysitter. Sign us up, parents might say. Human-like robot babysitters are in the works, but it's unclear at this early stage what children's relationships with these humanoids will be like and what dangers lurk in this convenient-sounding technology.

 A new study of more than 346 middle-school children indicates that boys are less likely than girls to intervene to protect a bullying victim, especially if the boy is a member of a peer group in which bullying is the norm. The study also suggests that anti-bullying programs that focus on bystander intervention and empathy training aren’t likely to have much impact unless attention is given to reducing bullying perpetration within children’s peer groups.