Friday, March 06, 2009
Teen's suicide over sexting
Labels: mobile communications, nude photo sharing, sexting, teen suicide
Undercover Mom in ClubPenguin, Part 3: Anybody here speak English?!
I’m beginning to understand why kids are so obsessed with Club Penguin. It’s a posh ski vacation via DSL connection. There’s snow tubing, ski lifts, and an ice hockey rink; a coffee shop, pizza joint, and discothèque; even a beach complete with surfboards, sun umbrellas and an outdoor fire pit (photo links below). And they’re all packed like sardines with friend-seeking penguins (upwards of 20 million of them, estimates UK-based virtual-worlds research firm K Zero). I feel so hip, so happening, so popular!
Next day: Not feeling quite so hip and popular today. Mainly because all my would-be penguin pals seem to be speaking a foreign language. Sure I recognize a few words, like “hi” and “igloo.” I’m even holding my own at deciphering the horrific misspellings (sorry, it’s the teacher in me). But ROTFL? NVM? What is this, penguinese?
Following some snooping around the Internet for an English-Penguinese translation guide, I’ve surmised that the mysterious lexicon is actually a series of cryptic acronyms and shorthand that kids use to communicate online. More Pig Latin than Greek, you might say. "ROTFL" is “rolling on the floor laughing” and "NVM" is “never mind.” Kids also use “emoticons” (e.g., the smiley face) to communicate their moods of the moment.
Mom Break: From a parental supervision standpoint, this is not good news. Not only are our kids hanging out in a parallel universe, they’re speaking in alien tongues while they’re at it. This generational fluency gap is bound to result in millions of parents not understanding what their kids and their friends are discussing. Worse yet, not every cyber-acronym is innocuous (i.e. "PRW," or "Parents Are Watching"). Granted, the Disney Company - which acquired Club Penguin in 2007 in a 700 million dollar deal - has filters in place to prevent shady shorthand from infiltrating the conversational landscape. But the reality remains that staying a cyberstep ahead of the Net generation can be tough - even for Mickey Mouse. I found one clever penguin inserting an extra letter in order to use language that's not allowed in Club Penguin: He asked someone, "Are you gay?"
Next week: "Cold Shoulders." Here are my intro to Undercover Mom and Part 1 and Part 2 of Sharon's series.
Undercover Mom's screenshots [Anne here: Sorry I can't embed them in this blog at the moment!]
Labels: ClubPenguin, kids virtual worlds, Sharon Estroff, Undercover Mom
Facebook: 'Facelift,' lawsuit
Labels: cyberbullying, design changes, Facebook, lawsuit, Long Island
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Digital native-eye-view of parenting
Labels: digital natives, Mom Song
Girls' (social) fashion 2.0
Labels: collaborative design, Fashionology, girls sites, social media
Sexting in Canada too
Labels: Canadian research, Cybertip.ca, sexting
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Young practitioners of social media literacy!
Labels: Henry Jenkins, Knowclue Kidd, Marianne Malmstrom, media literacy, new media literacy, Peggy Sheehy, social media literacy, Suffern Middle School
The Dunbar no. & online social networks
Labels: Dunbar number, Facebook, friends lists, MySpace, social networking
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Xbox Live hackers, Koobface worm
Labels: Koobface, malicious hack, TrendMicro, Xbox Live
*Social* classifieds: Safer
Labels: Facebook, MySpace, online classifieds, Oodle
Monday, March 02, 2009
Terms of use: Social Web bill of rights?
Labels: consumer privacy, Facebook, Terms of Service, terms of use