• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

The meta-trend behind the teen (& everybody) mobile trend

March 22, 2013 By Anne 2 Comments

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 mentor rather than a gatekeeper.”

I’ll get back to the parenting part in a second, but first a bit about the multiplying stories. Facebook itself confirmed the teen trend, writing in its Feb. 1 annual report to the SEC that “we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram.” Good that Facebook owns Instagram, Business Insider suggests (the reasons the article offers for teens’ embrace of mobile while not leaving Web sites in any wholesale way make a lot of sense), but a CNET report cites the comment by Facebook CFO David Eberman in an investors meeting that Instagram is a “formidable competitor” of its parent.

Why so mobile? (The meta-trend)

Facebook’s “too overrun by parents” is the reason given in another CNET report for young people’s interest in so far ad-free Instagram, Snapchat, games, texting and other social cellphone apps. So it’s gotten so that Facebook is to teens what LinkedIn is to adults (buttoned down), according to a business consultant source of CNET’s. Here’s how CNET characterizes tweens’ use of Instagram (which doesn’t have an official minimum age), citing a business consultant: “Tweens and teens are addicted to the idea of eliciting more reactions in the form of likes, followers, and comments…. They employ like-for-like photo tactics, use a myriad of hashtags to get their pictures in front of more users, and promote their desire for additional followers in their profiles.”

Is that what you’re seeing? I’m seeing some of that, but I think there’s also simply the friends-always-at-our-fingertips factor and the micro-customization factor. The former’s obvious food for thought for social media users of all ages. The latter is my theory that, because of the vast diversity and simplicity of mobile apps and because social media use is so individual, the mobile platform now gives users a near infinite number of choices, letting them micro-customize their social media not only to their interests but also to their interest at any given moment. This, I think, is the meta-trend for social media users of all ages (and demographics and cultures).

The Pheed phenomenon

A Washington Post report on teen social media use predictably reports that “some of these apps could make it harder for parents to keep track of their kids’ online activities, pointing to Snapchat, Wickr, Tumbler and Formspring (though the Post apparently didn’t hear that Formspring’s shutting its doors in a week).

Pheed may beat them all though (or be the next mobile phenomenon). Recently called by Forbes “the No. 1 social app,” thanks to teens, Pheed is less than four months old and already has 1 million+ users. FastCompany calls it “a clever mash-up of every social media site that ever existed” because users “curate their own channels with everything from words, photos, videos, live broadcasts, and audio clips.” And “giving users the option to charge for content means that whole tricky monetization question just got a bit easier,” which suggests sustainability. Pheed’s “not a phad,” Forbes quips.

Parenting past the turning point

You control the phones, but it’s not about control. That may sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. I mean, there are of course some areas where parents have control – we buy the devices and the services that run on them, so we have the ultimate say over how they’re used. But total control over something that goes wherever our kids go (and that accessibility is the biggest reason why most parents get kids phones) is both impossible and undesirable. They need space to develop and grow the inner guidance system I mentioned at the end of my post on the latest mobile data – space for a little trial and error that’s social, technical, ethical, and developmental. That builds resilience and competency in our kids, which fosters self-reliance rather than dependence on us. It also models and places value in self-control, which is becoming increasingly important in a user-driven media environment and epoch. Yes, the mobile trend makes it a lot harder to hover, but that’s mostly upside where healthy kids are concerned.

Related links

  • “Growing wiser from social media”: Twitter had its big breakthrough at SxSW in 2007. Now, “because we’re no longer just posting about what we had for dinner – we’re asking ‘Did you feel that earthquake?’, raving about a new character on Smash or cheering on the President during the State of the Union address – there is now a huge opportunity to analyze these conversations for insights into what’s happening at any given time, and get an early jump on emerging trends.”
  • “Of fearless parenting in this unmapped landscape”
  • “Everything you need to know about the new Pinterest” at Mashable
  • Maybe for once teens follows the example of their sibs and friends under 13? A whole six months ago, parent and reporter Michelle Meyers at CNET wrote “How Instagram became the social network for tweens.”
  • “Details, context on Rounds, Vine & other video-sharing apps”
  • “PS4, gaming & the new privacy reality”
Share Button

Filed Under: mobile, Parenting, Social Media, texting Tagged With: Facebook, Instagram, mobile platform, Parenting, Pheed, Pinterest, twitter

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. The flap over Talking Angela the chatbot app - NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    March 4, 2014 at 8:57 am

    […] “The meta-trend behind the teen (& everybody) mobile trend” […]

    Reply
  2. Is Mobile Making it Impossible to be a “Helicopter Parent”? says:
    April 10, 2013 at 2:24 pm

    […] Anne Collier at Net Family News makes the finer point that while the “mobile trend makes it a lot harder to hover,” that’s mostly good […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.