A vital piece of the global online safety puzzle has just fallen into place: Australia’s eSafety Commissioner’s Office this week unveiled its Safety by Design tools for Internet companies everywhere. They’re the outgrowth of extensive international research and consultation with people in industry, government, academia and advocacy, including youth and parents – a process eSafety started in … [Read more...] about Key piece of the puzzle: Australia’s ‘Safety by Design’ tools
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How our kids can become ‘indistractable’
I was almost too distracted over the past couple of days to write this review of Indistractable. But there’s some real “digital parenting” wisdom in it, so here we are, blog post done. For example, co-author Nir Eyal says, “Teach traction.” The opposite of distraction isn’t focus, as we typically think. It’s traction, which “comes from the Latin trahere, meaning ‘to draw or pull',” Eyal writes. … [Read more...] about How our kids can become ‘indistractable’
Could platforms design for 2nd chances?: Insight from key study
No stage of life is easy, but being a teen is hard in a very particular way. “Adolescence is a period of rapid cognitive, social and emotional development,” said researcher Amanda Lenhart, Health & Data lead at the Data & Society Research Institute in New York, at a conference this week, for example. “They’re a protected legal category. They don’t have the same power or ability to make … [Read more...] about Could platforms design for 2nd chances?: Insight from key study
Finally! A YouTube (flexibly) designed for kids 9-12
Tweens are no longer little kids, but they’re also not yet teens. Like all their peers, younger and older, 9-to-12-year-olds love to explore and mess around with media, especially video. They want to be safe so they don’t have to worry, which means they really don’t mind a little help from parental types, but they also don’t want to be contained in an app for “little kids.” YouTube Kids, which … [Read more...] about Finally! A YouTube (flexibly) designed for kids 9-12
Pepe the Frog, GameStop & the gamification of reality
You probably heard about GameStop, the WallStreetBets subreddit, Robinhood app and what’s been called the biggest “short squeeze” in 25 years – all of which was last week boiled down to the phrase “meme stock mania.” You also may’ve heard of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character created for a comic book in 2005 that somehow, in a weird, circuitous, Internet way, became a meme for the alt-right, … [Read more...] about Pepe the Frog, GameStop & the gamification of reality