Instagram is nothing if not creative – the app itself and its users. When I'm in it watching how the kids who encouraged me to follow them use it, I can't help but smile. They are creative in/with all parts of the experience – the photos, the filters for messing around with photography, the emoticons, the hashtags, and the writing of captions and comments – but in a fun, light way. It's not all … [Read more...] about Kids, Instagram & its new feature ‘Photos of You’
Stickers, emoji & other social-media conversation add-ons
You may've noticed this too: Online and on-phone conversations have gotten very mixed-media – very artful, in a sense. Have you noticed that our children are among the most creative mixed-media conversationalists now? It's delightful to see the fun they have with this. Take stickers, for example. Because they're now part of Version 3 of the Path app, as I mentioned in my last post, and Path's … [Read more...] about Stickers, emoji & other social-media conversation add-ons
The meta-trend behind the teen (& everybody) mobile trend
As the news stories about teens' mainly mobile (digital) socializing multiply, parents seem to be turning a corner too. Monitoring kids on Facebook is "so 2009," Yahoo! News reports. Even the very tech-savvy "Online Mom" blogger Monica Vila wrote recently that "everything went mobile and I lost control" – though calmly (and I think wisely) adding that this taught her "to focus more on being a … [Read more...] about The meta-trend behind the teen (& everybody) mobile trend
Teens’ Top 5 social media picks: DIY survey
Nothing formal and scientific, but a quick up-to-the-minute snapshot: To get a handle on current social media use by teens and young adults, Silicon Valley investor Gary Tan blogged, he conducted a little survey with DIY market research startup Survata. He wrote that he asked just under 546 13-to-18-year-olds and 492 19-to-25-year-olds what social media services they use regularly. What he found … [Read more...] about Teens’ Top 5 social media picks: DIY survey
Instagram’s user-terms update
If Instagram's as popular among high school students in your community as it is at ours, you'll probably be interested in the implications of its latest privacy updates. When it announced that it was updating its Terms of Use and the New York Times noticed the update included the addition of advertising, a lot of users (and reporters) apparently got the idea that Instagram would be using users' … [Read more...] about Instagram’s user-terms update