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Category Archives: Youth

From child development to children’s rights

Major update from Pew on teens’ privacy practices in social media

21-May-13

Contrary to how they’re typically represented in the news media, “few teens embrace a fully public approach to social media,” Pew Internet reports in a major new study, “Teens, Social Media and Privacy.” Yes, they share more about themselves than we did as teens, but “they take an array of steps to restrict and prune [...]

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Kids, Instagram & its new feature ‘Photos of You’

03-May-13

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, [...]

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Social cruelty on Ask.fm & the whack-a-mole tendency

22-Apr-13

Remember Formspring.me? Three years ago some terrible trolling that reportedly involved teens in New Jersey made the site, which announced it was shutting down* last month, a national news story in the US. Teens’ viral adoption of Formspring and its format (ask a question, get an anonymous answer) reportedly took the site by surprise. Disturbing [...]

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Australian teen panelists on social media: Meaty insights

26-Mar-13

My visit to Australia for the World Congress on Family Law & Children’s Rights has been rich in hospitality and insight – I’ve had the privilege of talking with people in government, online-safety advocacy, industry, school (students!), primary and secondary education, research, of course many parents and grandparents, and even “Australia’s Dr. Phil,” as Michael [...]

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Australian government gets digital advice from kids

22-Mar-13

Doesn’t it just make sense? That government programs aimed at educating youth actually consult youth about what works for them? The Australian federal government is doing just that in what I hope becomes a model for other governments. “The Youth Advisory Group (YAG) on Cybersafety program for 2013 has been launched [this week] with the [...]

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Teens’ tech getting very mobile: New study

13-Mar-13

Ninety-five percent of US 12-to-17-year-olds use the Internet, 93% have access to a computer at home and 71% of teens with that computer at home share it with other family members, according to a study released today – the biggest explanation, most probably, for why teens’ Net use has gotten so mobile. It allows them [...]

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Tech parenting smarts from teens: Australian study

05-Feb-13

Perfect for making Safer Internet Day 2013 smarter is a new study from Australia about how Net safety works best: open communication and growing competency on the part of parents every bit as much as kids. That’s really boiling down an insightful study from the “Living Labs” at University of Western Sydney that paired up [...]

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About 2 Presidents, an inauguration & youth rights

23-Jan-13

Ron and I went to see Lincoln on Inauguration Day. I finally got to reflect on it on my bike ride before the long trip to that wintry other coast for EduCon (which is also about forward movement). How fitting it felt to my husband and me to watch Lincoln, a film about “that other [...]

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Important granularity on Net risk for teens: Study

17-Jan-13

An article in the medical journal Pediatrics this month makes significant additions to what we know about youth risk online in two areas: parenting and risk factors for older teen girls (the sample was girls 14-17). The authors of “Association of Maltreatment With High-Risk Internet Behaviors and Offline Encounters” pointed to what we already know: [...]

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Mining Minecraft, Part 1: Little gamers’ digital play through a teacher’s eyes

12-Dec-12

Editor’s note: This week, my holiday gift to you, dear readers. Below you’ll find Part 1 of a three-part series of guest posts by teacher Marianne Malmstrom about what students learning in digital environments can teach all of us – parents, educators, risk prevention experts, and anybody else who works with young people. Editing this [...]

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