Watch this interesting video that shares a lot about how fast social networking has moved into our world and how rapidly it’s changing the way people interact, work, and play.
Go to the Socialnomics website to see sources of the information, statistics, and data.
You may need to turn down the music.
Preteens are savvy media consumers, and among the kids I know there is significant buzz about Michelle Obama’s views on Facebook. “Pre-teenagerdom” is such a difficult and challenging time for parents and for the kids themselves. Many children want to hurry up and become teens and joining into social networking activities is one way to make them feel older and even wiser. Feeling and sometimes believing that your parents simply don’t understand technology is another way. So it’s a bit of a blow when the First Lady and First Mom — a person many of them admire — tells their parents to slow things down.
A Few Other Reports
Check out the Techlicious Facebook Privacy Guide, posted by Josh Kirschner on February 8, 2011 over at the Techlicious website.
Maintaining control over privacy settings is a required and critical technology task for each Facebook user. Since sharing information is one of Facebook’s primary missions, the company wants to collect and share as much personal information as possible with its advertisers. Facebook sets most new features to share data then when they first debut on the site, and to be fair, social networking is all about sharing information. Thus it is up to each individual to determine just how much information to put out there, making conscious decisions about what the world can see, what close friends can view, and what to keep private.
Our children and their friends are enthusiastic Facebook users, but they do not always focus on the need to pay attention, on a regular basis, to privacy settings. I’ve written many privacy posts on this blog including Getting Serious About Online Privacy and Keeping Track: Adolescents in the Digital Age, pieces that focus on the importance of maintaining family privacy when individual members engage in so many digital activities. Knowing the connection between many social networking sites and advertisers — and the impact it has on a user’s privacy — is critical for everyone, but especially for teens.
Continue reading “Facebook Privacy Settings: New Guide from Techlicious”
The website MarketingCharts.com offers some interesting charts as well as explanations that tell how people make use of social networking sites. Check out Younger See More Soc Net Benefit. Just a few paragraphs down on the same page is a section that describes the social networking habits of middle age and seniors — Older Soc Net Dramatically Rises.
Take a look, also, at some of the charts that depict all sorts of World Wide Web user statistics. Links to a few interesting charts are below.
According to a December 15, 2010 USA Today article, people over age 65 are the fastest growing group of social networking users. Seniors Surge on Social Networks, by Janis Lloyd, described Generations 2010 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a report that examines the variation in Internet and social networking experiences among various age groups.
For adult children whose parents are older seniors, the Pew report presents fascinating data. “While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.” This change occurred between 2008 and 2010. What a great way for digital native grandchildren to interact with their grandparents.
The USA Today article also points out that the U.S. Administration on Aging has released a guide to help older people learn about life online, from joining social networks to hooking up to Skype and exploring Google.
You might enjoy reading this blog posting from a few months ago when I wrote about discovering how my mother, in her early 80’s, was using Facebook.
The blog Techlicious has a great posting on Facebook privacy updates, especially vis-a-vis groups that a user joins. In Facebook Groups and App Dashboard Provide New Privacy Features Josh Kirschner, offers his suggestions about how to set up private groups, and he also writes and embeds a video about the third-party dashboard that Facebook is rolling out.
Best, but not surprising quote, “… assume everything you post could become public at any time.”
When you talk about social networking, texting, and other digital activities with your children, you cannot use the word privacy too much in your conversations.
As the parent of a Brown University alum, I occasionally check the Brown Daily Herald, the engaging student newspaper that kept me connected during years when my child did not necessarily let me know what was happening. By reading the student newspaper I could find out who was speaking at the university, why certain important issues concerned Brown students, and what significant faculty research projects interested me. More importantly during that time, an amazing woman, academic superstar Ruth Simmons, Ph.D., assumed the presidency of the university, and from that moment on, there was never a dull moment, at least from my perspective, anywhere at Brown or in the Daily Herald.
This week I read with some interest a Brown Daily Herald article about the visit of dana boyd (yes, she spells her name with no caps), a Brown alum (’00) who has established a reputation as an astute observer of the social networking culture and the issues that arise from so many of us using one or another of these virtual communication tools. Her research has focused especially on teens and social networking.
Continue reading “Social Networking Researcher, dana boyd, Speaks at Brown University”
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