Guides demystify popular photo-sharing apps and walk kids and parents through safety and privacy features Palo Alto, CA, May 21, 2013 – ConnectSafely.org, a leading Internet safety nonprofit, today announced the publication of two new and timely parents’ guides to Instagram and Snapchat, answering the Top 5 questions parents have about these photo-sharing apps so popular [...]
Tips for Strong, Secure Passwords
A strong password is your first line of defense against intruders and imposters. Never give out your password to anyone (except your parents). Never give it to friends, even if they’re really good friends. A friend can – accidentally, we hope – pass your password along to others or even become an ex-friend and abuse [...]
Why not a gazillion ‘likes’?: Getting wise to gamification in social media (& life)
Likes in Facebook and Instagram, +1′s in Google+, (potentially) “HISCORE(s)” in Snapchat are fun to get (though there isn’t much evidence having a HISCORE is a big deal for Snapchat users yet). They’re a great example of gamification, a word that’s increasingly heard in pop culture as much as education. There’s nothing wrong with liking [...]
Help Support an Inspirational Picture Book for Kids and Get a Copy for Yourself
Children’s book author Trudy Ludwig, who specializes in books “that explore the colorful and sometimes confusing world of children’s social interactions,” is working on an extraordinary project that deserves widespread support. She’s collaborating with illustrator Craig Orback on a 32-page picture book titled Gifts from the Enemy, based on the true-life story of Alter Wiener, a teen survivor of five prison [...]
TMI for parents in social media – for now, anyway
A lot of unusually thoughtful points about parenting in our collective, global social media environment are made in this recent New York Times article: “Cyberparenting and the Risk of T.M.I.” Pamela Paul writes that, for this generation of teens, it’s not Big Brother so much as Big Mother and/or Big Father. “Yes, we know contemporary [...]
Researcher dispels five myths about missing children
by Larry Magid David Finkelhor, the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire and a researcher for the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children, has written an incredibly useful article for the Washington Post, debunking 5 myths about missing children: 1. Most missing children have been [...]
Snapchat photos can be undeleted as well as captured: When it matters
by Larry Magid I recently wrote about Snapchat, the popular photo sharing app that allows users to share photos that will self-destruct from between 1 and 10 seconds after they’re viewed. As I said in that story, there are many reasons people use Android and Apple iOS app and that, despite worries about sexting, most kids [...]
‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc., Part 3: Bias in the news coverage
Sexting is the latest subject of “intersecting panics about technology, youth, sexuality, raunch culture and celebrity,” Australian author and research Nina Funnell wrote me after I heard her speak in Sydney in March. “While these panics all pre-existed the phenomenon of sexting, they have found new life and form” with it. Along with her qualitative [...]
Massachusetts Town Invests In Laptops To Increase Student Enagement
by Larry Magid Click to listen to Larry’s 1-minute CBS News/CNET Tech Talk segment on Natick’s 1:1 program, including an interview with Natick High School principal Rose Bartucci Natick, Massachusetts, a town of about 33,000 people situated about 30 miles west of Boston, has recently instituted a “one-to-one” laptop program, equipping each of its 8th through 12th graders with [...]
New!
New site, new parents’ guides to Instagram & Snapchat
We’ve been busy renovating our site with a new look and lots of new content. While you’re looking around, check out
our new Parents’ Guides to both Instagram and Snapchat. Press release here.
Major update from Pew on teens’ privacy practices in social media
Contrary to how they’re typically represented in the news media, “few teens embrace a fully public approach to social media,” Pew Internet reports in a major new study, “Teens, Social Media and Privacy.” Yes, they share more about themselves than we did as teens, but “they take an array of steps to restrict and prune [...]