What the Cambridge Analytica story and last week’s congressional hearings with Facebook’s CEO are really all about is that people – not even “just” social media users, voters and policymakers – are waking up to the meaning of “big data.” It’s a big story not only because Facebook has more than 2.2 billion users or because Cambridge Analytica may have helped Donald Trump become president, as … [Read more...] about What just happened: ‘Big data’ got personal
Social Media
A prime minister & a professor: True connecting in a digital age
Two messages in two media – video and text – by a prime minister and a professor got me, and I'm sure many others, thinking about the good, not-so-good and necessary connecting we human beings are doing on digital devices now, at both international and personal levels. I haven't heard a politician from any country speak of using social media the way India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi did at … [Read more...] about A prime minister & a professor: True connecting in a digital age
How brave commenters are growing the power of Lewinsky’s talk
"Together, we have the power to protect the most vulnerable among us." There never was a truer, more urgent call to the world's social media users. It's from Nadia Goodman, TED's social media editor, in a blog post about the digital aftermath of posting the video of Monica Lewinsky's TED talk in the TED site. [This is a followup to my post on Sunday about the talk, which has gotten nearly 2 … [Read more...] about How brave commenters are growing the power of Lewinsky’s talk
Social circles, more than social media, cause stress: Study
Social media itself doesn't increase our stress levels, but our social lives can. We knew that, right? Caring about others can cause us stress when we see them suffering, and that's one of the things social media does: expose our friends' challenges. We can probably extrapolate a few things about our children's experiences from the Pew Research Center's survey of 1,801 adults that explored … [Read more...] about Social circles, more than social media, cause stress: Study
An uncle’s take on social media for kid users
The uncle in question, Nick Bilton, is also a tech reporter for the New York Times, so he's got a certain 30,000-foot perspective on social media that can be helpful to parents (because, even when writing commentaries, [good] reporters have been conditioned to represent things dispassionately, which is helpful in the tech-parenting space). So with his nephew Luca in mind, Mr. Bilton puts social … [Read more...] about An uncle’s take on social media for kid users