By Sharon Duke EstroffI chose Poptropica.com as the site of my latest undercover mom investigation because of its first-place ranking in the 5-to-10-year-old bracket. With 20 million unique accounts and counting, it is indeed a heavy hitter in the burgeoning children’s virtual world market.But I was also intrigued by the Poptropica's educational spin. The site's parent company is Family Education … [Read more...] about Undercover Mom in Poptropica, Part 1: Virtual World with educational elements
Search Results for: bullying
Harassed online, teen star bites back
Miley Cyrus, aka Disney's Hannah Montana, has tweeted against cyberbullies. She "posted an angry tirade on her Twitter page following a flurry of criticism about her weight after she joked about her thighs jiggling," Reuters reports. She told her harassers to stop calling her fat, writing, "I don't even like the word. Those remarks that you hateful people use are fighting words, the ones that scar … [Read more...] about Harassed online, teen star bites back
Ed campaign on sexting in Oz
Not at all surprising (because what are borders or continents, where social technology's concerned), the New South Wales government is educating its teens about the risks of sexting too. "The government has produced a fact sheet for schools, parents and young people to warn about the possible lifetime consequences of the growing practice," the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The NSW minister of … [Read more...] about Ed campaign on sexting in Oz
Where will online teens go next?
Some of us are watching to see if, now that so many parents are joining Facebook, teens will migrate somewhere else (see this post, suggesting that mobile texting might be a sign of diversification vs. mass migration). In her YPulse blog, Anastasia Goodstein just asked a good (related) question: "Should Large Social Networks Give Teens Their Space Back?" Teens have always needed to have hangouts … [Read more...] about Where will online teens go next?
Live video streaming from phones
Think mobile Webcam. This is just the sort of tech development that's good for us parents to think about out of the gate: software that turns mere camera phones into videocams, making it that much easier for people to "broadcast" whatever they want live to the Web or another phone. Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute blogs about a spectrum of implications in the Huffington Post, … [Read more...] about Live video streaming from phones