Tag: social networking

Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, electronic communication, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Young Social Media Users Support the First Amendment

Posted on by Marti Weston
Click to view this image, by Column Five Media, depicting survey results.

Via Milwaukee Journal Online, an interesting article, As Social Media Grow, So Does First Amendment Appreciation, describes research conducted by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation has taken four surveys, beginning in 2001, to learn more about what high school students know and understand about the First Amendment of the Constitution. (Read the First Amendment here.) The Knight Foundation website explains how that group got started with this work

… after surveys of American adults conducted by The Freedom Forum showed that even modern-day support for the First Amendment is neither universal nor stable. In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, support for the First Amendment plummeted. Suddenly,  the nation was almost evenly split on the question of whether or not the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees.’’ Continue reading “Young Social Media Users Support the First Amendment” →

Posted in parents and technology

10 Safe(r) Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids

Posted on by Marti Weston

Over at KQED News, Linton Weeks wrote a July 11, 2011 article describing the need and desire of younger children to participate in social network activities (despite the expressed doubts of many parents). In his article, 10 Safe Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids, he lists ten kid-friendly social networking sites along with editorial comments on topics such as privacy and parent administration options.

If I were writing the headline, I would use the word “safer.” Why safer?  Continue reading “10 Safe(r) Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids” →

Posted in digital parenting, parent child conversations, parent education, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Learning More About What You Don’t Know

Posted on by Marti Weston

I am just back from a huge technology conference in Philadelphia, the International Society for Technology in Education(ISTE), and I blogged from the event uploading nine or ten entries on a separate MediaTechParenting page. I also tweeted — sometimes using Twitter myself and at other times just watching, reading, and processing the tweets of others.

During the week — before, during, and after the conference — Twitter was my most important communication too. Over the four days it let me know where especially great workshops and presentations were occurring, helped me discover other people who shared my interest, kept me up-to-date about who was blogging, informed me about presenters who were sharing resources beyond their presentation rooms, and yes, even announced the location of the special snacks each afternoon. Without the #ISTE11 Twitter handle, and also the continuing backchannel tweets on #edtech and #edchat, my week would have been slower, less interesting, and nowhere near as dynamic.

Continue reading “Learning More About What You Don’t Know” →

Posted in digital parenting, grandparents, parents and technology, social media friends, social networking

Kids, Tech, Social Media, and Grandparents!

Posted on by Marti Weston
Read about my daughter and her grandmother on Facebook.

Great article in the Wall Street Journal about kids and grandparents and the ways they are communicating with one another. In her May 9, 2001 article, OMG! My Grandparents R My BFF!, reporter Molly Baker takes readers on a “magical mystery tour” highlighting the ways generations are interacting (and sometimes leaving out the generation in the middle).

Last August I wrote about this digital family experience in a post, Yes! Grandma is on Facebook, on my other blog, As Our Parents Age. Below is an excerpt of a post about my daughter and her grandmother.

Join Facebook?  For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook. Still I refrained.

Continue reading “Kids, Tech, Social Media, and Grandparents!” →

Posted in acceptable use, American Academy of Pediatrics, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parent education, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part I

Posted on by Marti Weston
AAP Media History Form

This morning I was thrilled to read the newest American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy focusing on social media and children. The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Families, written by a group of pediatricians and led by Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe (also the author of CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Digital Kids in the World of Texting, Gaming and Social Media), provides a set of social media guidelines for physicians to use with teen and tween patients as well as with parents. Published in March 28, 2011 edition of the journal Pediatrics, the social media statement describes the benefits and risks of the digital world, avoids judgmental comments, and suggests strategies that can make is safer for children.

Continue reading “Pediatricians, Parents, and Digital Kids, Part I” →

Posted in acceptable use, cultural changes, digital parenting, family conversations, parent child conversations, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?

Posted on by Marti Weston

Join Facebook?  For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, and of course the kids at school were all over it, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. Way too different, I thought. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook (she spoke these words in bold). Still I refrained.

At some point, however, I became aware that my mother and my twenty-something daughter were communicating with each other more than usual. They knew things about each other that I did not know. Finally my daughter mentioned that her grandmother  — my mother — was on Facebook and that the two of them had “friended’ one another. That’s when I called Mom, at that time age 81. She explained that her fellow workers from the Obama campaign, exceptional young people she called them, had arranged virtual reunions on Facebook. They wanted her to participate and helped her get started.

So, like many of today’s parents, I found that I was in the middle, but basically out of the generational communication loop. By the time I tuned in, my mother had over 100 friends, all people she knew in one way or another (no strangers and privacy settings in place, she reassured me), and quite a few in her age-range. I signed up for Facebook.

Continue reading “Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?” →

Posted in cultural changes, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, social media, social networking, technology changes

Video – How Social Networking is Changing Our World

Posted on by Marti Weston

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.