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 teens and peers' parents in front of computer screens to gain insights into … [Read more...] about Tech parenting smarts from teens: Australian study
Risk & Safety
A social media company’s social-emotional learning
One of the fascinating impacts of our now very social media environment is technology companies having to learn a whole lot about the best and worst of humanity – and, for their own and their users' sake, about how to foster the best of it. Facebook, for example, has an engineering team working with empathy researchers, and this has direct impact on young users' social experiences, wherever FB's … [Read more...] about A social media company’s social-emotional learning
Study on long-neglected factor in Net safety: Resilience
As a society, we've been talking about youth online risk for years, but we've only just begun to talk about young people's resilience, which is what helps them keep risk from turning into harm. It's important to know, as the authors of an important new report note, that resilience – the ability to deal with negative experiences without being upset by them – doesn't come from avoiding risk, online … [Read more...] about Study on long-neglected factor in Net safety: Resilience
Important granularity on Net risk for teens: Study
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: that "95% of American adolescents have Internet … [Read more...] about Important granularity on Net risk for teens: Study
Self-definition in social media: I am not my online profile
Think about it. Media literacy no longer protects "only" the quality of the information we take in. It now protects our relationships and even our identities – on several levels. It's an understatement to say we need to be media literate more than ever now. I've posted plenty about the relationships part (social literacy), so this time the identity part, because I've seen no better illustration of … [Read more...] about Self-definition in social media: I am not my online profile