Does tracking our kids’ every move make them safer?
Reflecting on a cellphone app developer’s claim, I’m thinking that tracking our kids’ movements, moment by moment, isn’t the best way to enhance “family awareness.” Those are the words of Chris Hull,...
View Article1 billion smartphones
As of the beginning of this month, there are now a billion smartphones being used on the planet, up from 708 million a year ago, MobileBusinessBriefing.com reports, citing data from Strategy Analytics....
View ArticleTexting apps taking over the world, it seems
You know that texting doesn’t just happen on phones, right? Kids can (and do) download a free texting app to any wi-fi-enabled device – iPod Touches, iPads, Android tablets, etc. – and text with their...
View ArticleGlobal mobiles: Research
Almost half (46%) of the world’s people now have mobile phones, according to The Economist, citing research from GSMA, the international mobile carrier association. That’s 3.2 billion people who “have...
View ArticleGreat opportunities launched on Safer Internet Day
Now here’s an interesting question, one that young digital media users don’t hear a lot: “What does the good side of the Internet look like?” They’re invited to submit a creative answer to that...
View ArticleDetails, context on Rounds, Vine & other video-sharing apps
The company behind Rounds – a video hangout app for mobile and Web – has decided to keep the socializing just among friends. Referring to its “young user base” (it says 70% of its users are under 25,...
View ArticleApp developed by a 7-year-old at school
Talk about authentic learning! A first-grader not only gets to learn how to develop a cellphone app, she creates her own game, presents it a showcase event at a nearby university and then – when it’s...
View ArticleFacebook’s ‘Home’: New layer in the mobile layercake
Although as of this writing, a search of Google News turned up nearly 2,000 news stories about it, the new uber app for Android phones that Facebook unveiled today isn’t really big news for families. I...
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Snapchat: Privacy as perishable as the photos
Users of the popular, fairly new Snapchat app tend to like it because a photo vanishes within 10 seconds or less of being viewed by its recipient. That adds something fun, spontaneous and just “real”...
View ArticleApp ambition: Fun media-sharing for small social circles, planet-wide
Path, the mixed-media app for more intimate phone-based social networking, really illustrates how very borderless but cultural social media is. Growing by about 1 million users a month and now one of...
View ArticleVideo viewing increasingly ‘mobilized’
If it ever really did, screen size no longer has anything to do with the length of a video people will watch. “Smaller screens aren’t deterring people from watching more videos on their tablets and...
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Instagram adds video
Facebook’s little photo-sharing app just became a video-sharing app too. Whether they’re using Apple or Android phones, Instagram’s 130 million users can now simply pick whether that image they want to...
View ArticleWith this teen texting study, only methodology was news
The methodology for a just-released study about teens and texting was new, but the findings don’t seem to break much new ground – unless the news media had picked up on what the researchers didn’t...
View ArticleWhy Louis C.K. doesn’t let his kids have phones
The video has gone pretty viral over the past few days. On Conan O’Brien’s show last week, Emmy-award-winning comedian Louis C.K. explained why he didn’t want to give his daughters (aged 7 and 10)...
View ArticleAbout the worldwide ‘selfie’ phenomenon
A nice switch from that other Guardian piece I blogged about was one about the Selfiecity Project. Have you heard of it? It was a project about a global phenomenon reinforced by Oxford Dictionaries...
View Article‘The gold’ of connected learning, innovation worldwide: The learners
You know that maxim that “necessity is the mother invention” (it goes back at least to 16th-century England, according to Phrases.co.uk). Well, South African journalist Tony Shapshak recently showed in...
View ArticleApple’s newest smartphone ‘parental control’
Apple unveiled a whole slew of features coming in the next iterations of its operating systems for the iPhone (iOS 8) and Macs (OS X Yosemite), coming to a device near you in the fall. Among them was...
View ArticleNew from ConnectSafely: ‘A Parents’ Guide to Mobile Phones’
It’s hard to know exactly how many kids and teens have mobile phones right now, but we do know that over a year ago more than a third (37%) of US 12-to-17-year-olds had smartphones, up from 23% in...
View ArticleMobile rules in the US now too
It’s now clear that, where Americans’ use of digital media is concerned, mobile rules. “The days of desktop dominance are over,” declares top digital market researcher comScore in its latest mobile app...
View ArticleAn app for teens that promotes (& gets) positivity
Last spring I asked, “Will safety ever be baked in to social apps?” Well, it’s actually starting to be. Let is a perfect example. A social app (mostly on Apple’s iOS phones) with an overwhelmingly...
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