If you're a parent, you know how little kids often want to be like their older sibs and other "big kids" they look up to. And that goes for technology too, of course. Enter Talking Angela, an iPhone and Android app designed for teens (and the teenager in all of us) but not for little kids. Though I can see why little ones would find Angela the talking cat fascinating. Yesterday morning I found … [Read more...] about The flap over Talking Angela the chatbot app
About the worldwide ‘selfie’ phenomenon
A nice switch from that other Guardian piece I blogged about was one about the Selfiecity Project. Have you heard of it? It was a project about a global phenomenon reinforced by Oxford Dictionaries declaring "selfie" the Word of the Year late last year (not to mention President Obama's selfie at Nelson Mandela's memorial service). Selfiecity was a project at City University of New York that … [Read more...] about About the worldwide ‘selfie’ phenomenon
How technology will improve the well-being of young adults
Today a guest post about last week's Connect 2014 conference in Melbourne, Australia, by American researcher and sexual health educator Kris Gowen. The 2-day conference hosted by the Young & Well Cooperative Research Center brought together young people, researchers, practitioners and policymakers representing the YAWCRC's 75+ partners in the academic, commercial, nonprofit and government … [Read more...] about How technology will improve the well-being of young adults
Calling our children narcissists on ‘a sociopathic scale’: Really!?
A column in The Guardian's Web site called "Comment Is Free" (I guess you get what you pay for) starts off with an anecdote that reads like the heart-stopping opening scene of a new Netflix crime drama. Nothing wrong with that; grab a few more readers, sell a few more newspapers. What's fatiguing is the writer using a tragic public murder to begin yet another commentary about today's narcissistic … [Read more...] about Calling our children narcissists on ‘a sociopathic scale’: Really!?
Nothing complicated about this: Read ‘It’s Complicated’!
Why is the title of social media researcher danah boyd's new book "It's Complicated"? Not just because "the social lives of networked teens" are complicated (the book's subtitle), but growing up in a networked world is too. And I'd add that it's further complicated when the adults in a teen's life don't have any idea how complicated it is – when they reduce it to "too much screen time." What's not … [Read more...] about Nothing complicated about this: Read ‘It’s Complicated’!