Sexting is the latest subject of "intersecting panics about technology, youth, sexuality, raunch culture and celebrity," Australian author and research Nina Funnell wrote me after I heard her speak in Sydney in March. "While these panics all pre-existed the phenomenon of sexting, they have found new life and form" with it. Along with her qualitative research on sexting among 16-to-25-year-olds, … [Read more...] about ‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc., Part 3: Bias in the news coverage
Search Results for: "moral panic"
Law enforcement & social media now working together
This is a significant sign of progress: The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is working with Facebook on consumer privacy education. We're still only in the first half of this decade, and in the second half of the last one, the state attorneys general were threatening legal action against a social media service – MySpace, the most popular one of that time. Now NAAG is actually … [Read more...] about Law enforcement & social media now working together
What we know & don’t know about kids’ online socializing: Key study
Imagine a game in which a child not only discovers, collects, creates, and/or customizes 2- and 3-dimensional art objects that s/he then shares with fellow player-creators, but also creates his/her own levels of play. Imagine the literacies players could be developing in the process of playing such a game, including social literacy, through sharing, "liking," and reviewing each other's … [Read more...] about What we know & don’t know about kids’ online socializing: Key study
‘Research’ aimed at fueling fear: Prime example
There's research and then there's "research." Let's take a look at the latter: the very credible-sounding "National Survey on American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XVI: Teens and Parents," linking social media use to drug abuse in teens. How could the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) publish a commentary and call it research? I can think of no better … [Read more...] about ‘Research’ aimed at fueling fear: Prime example
From comic-book panic to sexting panic
Compare sexting to the comic book panic of the 1950s, a thoughtful commentary in the Boston Globe suggests. "Huh?" you might say? Yes, back then, "a broad swath of the United States was convinced that crime and horror comic books were turning the nation’s children into murdering, raping monsters. Hearings were held, and eventually federal authorities pressured publishers into creating the Comics … [Read more...] about From comic-book panic to sexting panic