NetFamilyNews.orgIncreasingly, digital media are just part of the rhythm of everyday US family life, a significant new study of parents of young children indicates. The study, “Parenting in the Age of Digital Technology,” conducted by Northwestern University’s Center on Media & Human Development, surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 2,300 parents of children [...]
I am delighted to announce the release of our new parents’ guides to two of the most popular social apps among teens, Instagram and Snapchat. You can read or download and print the free guides at ConnectSafely.org. Just 6 pages – including the “Top 5 Questions” parents have about each app right up front – [...]
Instagram is nothing if not creative – the app itself and its users. When I’m in it watching how the kids who encouraged me to follow them use it, I can’t help but smile. They are creative in/with all parts of the experience – the photos, the filters for messing around with photography, the emoticons, [...]
You may’ve noticed this too: Online and on-phone conversations have gotten very mixed-media – very artful, in a sense. Have you noticed that our children are among the most creative mixed-media conversationalists now? It’s delightful to see the fun they have with this. Take stickers, for example. Because they’re now part of Version 3 of [...]
Path, the mixed-media app for more intimate phone-based social networking, really illustrates how very borderless but cultural social media is. Growing by about 1 million users a month and now one of the Top 20 apps for Android phones, according to the Wall Street Journal, this app that limits your social network to 150 friends [...]
It looks like social networking on desktops and laptops peaked in 2011 at 30% of Americans’ time online – another sign of how mobile socializing’s getting. Computer-based socializing decreased 3% last year for the first time, CNET reports, citing Experian market research. Social networking went down in the UK and Australia during the same period [...]
Wired speculates that, because some Asian texting apps – such as LINE, WeChat, Gangnam Style and Kakaotalk – have “slick user interfaces that focus on simplicity and visually pleasing graphics,” these fast-growing apps will soon cross the Pacific, and at least one of them will take off in the US too. “Today, less is more.” [...]
Users of the popular, fairly new Snapchat app tend to like it because a photo vanishes within 10 seconds or less of being viewed by its recipient. That adds something fun, spontaneous and just “real” to photo-sharing that’s pretty unprecedented in social media. New parents’ guide Here’s why: Typically in social networking, “users tend to [...]
It’s not a PC, a laptop, a tablet or phone; it’s an “ultramobile.” That’s what tech research firm Gartner Group calls what’s replacing desktops. USATODAY says it’s “a fully functional personal computer that is light enough to tote around,” which sounds like a smartphone. You can read more about how it’s different at USATODAY. The [...]
Are iPads bad for little children? I ask that metaphorically, for two reasons: because iPads represent a host of tablets and other touchscreen devices children seem to play with joyfully and intuitively, and because that attraction makes it extra hard to imagine kids could self-regulate that iPad play. And yet they do. Take Gideon, for [...]
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