US cellphone owners aged 18-24 now send "an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day," reports the Pew Internet and American Life Project in a just-released study, and "that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month." Which means that young adults are getting very close to the level of teens' texting – well, teens' texting about a year ago, at 3,339 texts/month, according to Nielsen figures … [Read more...] about Adults’ texting catching up with teens’
Archives for September 2011
What Facebook’s ‘Subscribe’ signifies
In social media, the only constant is change. Remember those commentaries about how social networking was "trivializing" friendship by throwing all levels of acquaintanceship under the big digital umbrella labeled "friends"? Well, I always felt the commentators were taking what they saw in social sites a bit too literally and failing to understand how much "real life" socializing rules its online … [Read more...] about What Facebook’s ‘Subscribe’ signifies
FTC’s proposed updates for COPPA
The US Federal Trade Commission has just announced its proposed changes for the 10-year-old Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the law that inadvertently created the social Web's "minimum age" of 13 (in its effort to define an age when all children are developmentally able to protect their own privacy). Because COPPA requires children's sites and services to obtain parental consent … [Read more...] about FTC’s proposed updates for COPPA
Parents & parental controls: Study
You don't hear it a lot, but – based on a new survey from the Family Online Safety Institute – parents sound pretty savvy about their kids' Net use and tech aids for keeping it constructive. The survey of 702 parents of kids 8-17 found that 93% have set rules or limits to monitor their kids' use, 87% are aware of parental-control tools, and 53% have used them. Among parents who choose not to use … [Read more...] about Parents & parental controls: Study
Kids deserve the truth about cyberbullying
When Justin Patchin, professor and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, talks to high school students in school assemblies, he asks them to give him an estimate of what percentage of teens have cyberbullied someone. "Somebody will shout out a number like 60 or 70%. Then I ask them, ok, raise your hand if you think it's higher than that, and the vast majority will raise their hands, … [Read more...] about Kids deserve the truth about cyberbullying