A whole lot of us know that 13 is Facebook's minimum age, but fewer of us know that the reason for that is not kids' online safety but a law called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act designed to protect the privacy of kids' data – a law administered by the Federal Trade Commission, which right now has it under review. COPPA requires parental consent before sites can collect any data from … [Read more...] about Kids lying to Facebook, not their parents: Study
social media research
From Europe, Top 10 online-risk myths
The EU Kids Online researchers look at young people's Internet use in a child-centric, contextual way and confirm how individual their Net use is. The individuality of their online experiences is a theme I've seen over and over in North American research too over the past 10 years, as a journalist and as a member of two national Net-safety task forces, highlighting the importance of a … [Read more...] about From Europe, Top 10 online-risk myths
How teens view ‘the drama’
I've written a lot about "the drama" at school as a context for bullying and cyberbullying, suggesting that we can help our kids build resilience and avoid trouble by helping them get a little emotional distance from it. A commentary in the New York Times by social media researchers danah boyd and Alice Marwick clarifies what teenagers themselves think of drama. First, it's not all bad. It's … [Read more...] about How teens view ‘the drama’
Adults’ texting catching up with teens’
US cellphone owners aged 18-24 now send "an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day," reports the Pew Internet and American Life Project in a just-released study, and "that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month." Which means that young adults are getting very close to the level of teens' texting – well, teens' texting about a year ago, at 3,339 texts/month, according to Nielsen figures … [Read more...] about Adults’ texting catching up with teens’
Adults’ social networking more than doubled since 2008: Study
I'm not sure "the graying of social networking," as Pew puts it, quite describes what Pew discovered in its latest look at adult use of social sites in the US. It's more the mainstreaming of social networking, I think. "Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago," according to the just-released report … [Read more...] about Adults’ social networking more than doubled since 2008: Study