I love the parenthetical in the headline of "Five Ways to Break Your Kids’ Screen Addiction (and Yours, Too)," by Yahoo family tech columnist Dan Tynan. Because – if there's such a thing as screen addiction and it's not just something fashionable to (anxiously) joke about – what we model for our kids in our own use of phone and other screens has huge influence on them. [You've probably seen videos … [Read more...] about The real goal of unplugging
FB privacy & the social media ‘collective unconscious’ (so far)
Some people read Facebook's near 180-degree change in how new users experience privacy as a response to pressure from privacy advocates and policymakers. I don't think so. It's largely a response to something even more powerful: changes in how users are using social media – all kinds of social media, not just Facebook. We're seeing a lot of the changes right in our own experiences and … [Read more...] about FB privacy & the social media ‘collective unconscious’ (so far)
Net safety’s ‘3 alarmist assumptions’: Researcher
This is news, and not just for the Internet safety field. It's important for policymakers, parents, educators, researchers, healthcare providers and journalists to know about: In the Journal of Child Psychology, sociologist David Finkelhor, one of the US's most prominent experts on child victimization, challenges the "alarmism reflected by so much of the scholarly and journalistic literature" about … [Read more...] about Net safety’s ‘3 alarmist assumptions’: Researcher
Remember: The ‘right to be forgotten’ is shared
A lot has been published and broadcast about Internet users' "right to be forgotten," long before and since last week's ruling by a high court in Europe (see the BBC), including the important points that… Scratching the surface. Suing a search engine to take down links to offending content doesn't mean the content itself gets taken down Who decides? A court has made search engines, of all … [Read more...] about Remember: The ‘right to be forgotten’ is shared
Kik Messenger’s smart new safety features
Kik Messenger, which claims to be the US's 7th most popular social app and ranks even higher in some other countries, today released a new version that gives its 120 million+ users more control over who can text them. Over the past year, its creators at Waterloo, Ontario-based Kik Interactive noticed the app has become "the leading cross-app messenger," they claimed. That means that people who … [Read more...] about Kik Messenger’s smart new safety features