Seventeen magazine recently asked me if the BeReal app is safe for teens. Here’s their article about that, which is great but of course lots got left on the cutting floor. Here’s my full take: The way this Paris-based app is designed, it’s actually safer than a lot of other apps because it’s made for sharing just among friends. Accounts are private by default. People have to ask permission to … [Read more...] about BeReal & being real about safety & privacy
How this new app might well be safer…
...and what that has to do with content moderation Fizz just might come to be known as the kinder social media app. I know, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah sure.” And I do understand. But, from some great reporting by TechCrunch, I picked up on two design features that, together, could give this new app the edge where user safety’s concerned. They are that it has… The local factor. When … [Read more...] about How this new app might well be safer…
Why partner with teens on tech: Great new book
At this transitional moment for digital tech and youth online safety, the new book Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adult Are Missing) feels almost miraculous to me. The first reason why is that it’s more about teens than screens. Since the beginning of public concern about youth online safety in the late 1990s, we have been almost obsessively focused on the technology, not so … [Read more...] about Why partner with teens on tech: Great new book
The latest on US teens’ social media use
Amid all the talk of teens and ‘digital wellbeing’…
...there is actually little known about teens’ wellbeing itself, without the digital part – even though “we find a near universal decrease in life satisfaction during adolescence,” write the authors of a study just published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. “This decrease is steeper than at any other point across adulthood.” The study fills us in a bit. It offers some explanations as … [Read more...] about Amid all the talk of teens and ‘digital wellbeing’…