There is no data cited, but the San Francisco Chronicle's Mommy Files blog reports that "a growing number of tweens and teens, mainly girls, are posting videos on YouTube asking commenters if they’re ugly." Writer Amy Graff says, "Type ‘Am I ugly?’ or ‘Am I pretty’ into the YouTube search box and dozens of videos pop up." Sexuality researcher, author and educator Kris Gowen pointed one such … [Read more...] about ‘Am I pretty?’ videos by teens
Archives for February 2012
Is Pinterest an interest at your house?
It may well have come up in your household because Pinterest.com – the photo-focused social network service that started in 2008 – seems to have gone viral all of a sudden. Unique visitors to Pinterest.com grew 400% last fall, CNN reports, calling it "2012's hottest Web site." Why so viral now? FastCompany suggests it's 1) the exponential-growth factor (what I pin gets "re-pinned" by my followers, … [Read more...] about Is Pinterest an interest at your house?
Revisiting copyright law – worldwide
Shades of the US's SOPA (anti-anti-piracy legislation) debate in eastern Europe, quite literally (see this Associated Press story): Street and online protests in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, remind me of a killer TED Talk by copyright legal expert and Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig: "Reexamining the Remix." Do … [Read more...] about Revisiting copyright law – worldwide
Too focused on fear of multitasking?
"A flighty mind may be going somewhere," writes Hanif Kureishi – a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist, and short-story writer – in the New York Times. In a very personal account of a "wretched [five-year] period" at the bottom of his class in a suburban-London secondary school, he writes about how some of us really need distraction, and how can we parents really tell (as his couldn't … [Read more...] about Too focused on fear of multitasking?
FTC finds kid apps’ privacy practices ‘disAPPointing’
The US Federal Trade Commission has turned this week's wakeup call about mobile-app privacy into a conference call, adding kids' privacy to the conversation. The title of its just-released report "Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Disappointing" (that's the FTC authors' cute italicization) summarizes the Commission's conclusions well. But to make their point crystal clear, the … [Read more...] about FTC finds kid apps’ privacy practices ‘disAPPointing’