You may've noticed this: More than the usual number of people with phones in their hands have been bumping into things and each other lately. That's because of Pokémon GO, which market researcher MFour announced the other day had passed Twitter as the U.S.'s No. 1 app. "Fully a third of U.S. Android smartphone users 13 and over have downloaded the augmented reality game that’s become the talk of … [Read more...] about When Pokémon GO really gets epic
Jane McGonigal
The videogame discourse: Default to open-mindedness!
My heart sinks when I see uncritical thinking in commentaries from Internet safety advocates about the media young people love – thinking that defaults (and contributes to a society-level default) to fear that new media's harmful and young users are either potential victims or up to no good. Take videogames, for example. We know that… "Videogame play is pervasive throughout our society," as … [Read more...] about The videogame discourse: Default to open-mindedness!
How to grow resilience, Part 2
This is the second of two posts about the internal online (and offline) safeguard resilience. Here's Part 1. Another perspective on resilience: this in a TED Talk in Edinburgh in 2012 in which game designer and author Jane McGonigal shares some simple ways people of all ages can build resilience – the four kinds (physical, emotional, social and mental) that science says increase health, … [Read more...] about How to grow resilience, Part 2
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 likes and other gamification forms (more on this in minute). … [Read more...] about Why not a gazillion ‘likes’?: Getting wise to gamification in social media (& life)
Puzzling over ‘Internet addiction’
While the US mental healthcare field is considering whether "Internet addiction" is a disorder, it doesn't seem to understand how vast and diverse Internet use is. When a CNN reporter asks psychiatry professor Charles O'Brien at University of Pennsylvania – chair of the working group that determines whether disorders make an official list in the United States – about it, both use "Internet … [Read more...] about Puzzling over ‘Internet addiction’