Tag: facebook

S’mores. Sparklers. Snow cones. Sunburns. Fireflies. Remember when summer was simple? Before smartphones and social networks, there was less uploading and more unwinding; less commenting and more savoring.  There’s a new summer now. It’s the social summer, and tweens and teens know it well. It’s those few months away from school where the pressure (and ...

What phone app has over 150 million active users and more than 14 million uploads every day? You might guess Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, but you’d be wrong. Meet TikTok — a video app kids are flocking to that is tons of fun but also carries risk. What Is It? TikTok is a free social ...

Is your family feeling more vulnerable online lately? If so, you aren’t alone. The recent WhatsApp bug and social media breaches recently have app users thinking twice about security. Hackers behind the recent WhatsApp malware attack, it’s reported, could record conversations, steal private messages, grab photos and location data, and turn on a device’s camera ...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — for teachers and lifeguards. For everyone else (parents) we have a little prep work to do to make sure the summer doesn’t lull our kids into digital comas. Most of us have learned that given zero limits, kids will play video games, watch YouTube, send snaps, ...

For a Monday, the school day was turning out to be surprisingly awesome. Mackenzie sat with friends at lunch, chatted with her favorite teacher, and aced her English test. Then came the shift. It happened between 5th and 6th period when Mackenzie checked her Instagram account. One glance showed several posts from the popular girls (yet ...

Over the years kids have succeeded in staying one step ahead of parents on the digital front. Remember the golden days of social? Teens owned Facebook until every parent, auntie, and grandparent on the planet showed up. So, teens migrated to Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat hoping to carve out a private patch of land for ...

What adults call texting, kids call talking. They “talk" on their phones via chat, social comments, snaps, posts, tweets, and direct messages. And they are talking most of the time — tap, tap, tap — much like background music. In all this “talking" a language, or code, emerges just as it has for every generation only today that ...

A new study from Pew Research confirms our collective hunch that 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone and that 45% of teens now say they are always online. No shock there. The finding that is far more worrisome? That despite this dramatic digital shift over the past decade, parents are divided on ...

Spring Break 2019 is in full swing, which means high school and college kids have hit the road determined to make this rite of passage epic. Unfortunately, not everyone will return home with his or her online reputation intact. Despite the headlines and warnings, kids are still uploading their lives 24/7 and not all of ...

It's hard to believe that as savvy as we've become about our tech, people are still getting catfished, scammed, and heartbroken in their pursuit of love online. The dinner conversation between bystanders goes something like this: "How could anyone be so dumb? Seriously? If they are going to be that reckless and uninformed, then maybe ...