Hey, kids, if you want to get parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles on Facebook, now's a better time than ever. FB now has a privacy primer for people who are signing up for the first time. "We’ve implemented these enhancements as part of our broader effort to integrate more privacy education into the new user experience," it says in Facebook's blog, acknowledging the "guidance on this … [Read more...] about Facebook’s privacy primer for new users
6-year-old self-taught pre-readers & tablet users in Ethiopia
Earlier this year, some 40 digital tablets (the Motorola version of iPads) were packaged into two taped-up boxes with no instructions and dropped into two Ethiopian villages, each about 50 miles from Addis Ababa and each with about 20 "1st-grade-aged" children, MIT Technology Review reported. The goal in this experiment, which OLPC chair Nicholas Negroponte says has another 18-24 months to go, is … [Read more...] about 6-year-old self-taught pre-readers & tablet users in Ethiopia
Teens, social media & trolls: Toxic mix
This is and isn't about technology. Mostly isn't. But digital media allow for and expose a dangerous blend of two very different aspects of humanness, one destructive, the latter normative: social cruelty and teenage vulnerability (a lot of focus recently having been on the female variety). The cruelty, the extreme version called trolling – which feeds on outrage and weaponizes cultural … [Read more...] about Teens, social media & trolls: Toxic mix
What is bullying & what can be done about it: Lit review
What a project and what a service to anybody trying to get a handle on a long-standing social problem! I'm referring to the recently released "Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review" of more than 150 surveys, articles and other references from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the latest research on bullying all in one place. Although bullying is by … [Read more...] about What is bullying & what can be done about it: Lit review
How to help fix a world problem 1 child at a time
This may seem a little off-topic, as it's not fundamentally about technology, but social media can be a tool in the healing process. Let me explain. More than 5 million US children (275 million worldwide) are dealing with domestic violence – what UNICEF calls "one of the most damaging unaddressed human rights violations in the world today" – and 40 million US adults were once children who lived … [Read more...] about How to help fix a world problem 1 child at a time