Social Media

  1. Meerkat and Meerkatroulette

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    I have been seeing Meerkat pop up a lot lately on the Techcrunch blog (http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/meerkatroullette-is-chatroulette-for-meerkat-because-meerkat/?ncid=rss) I follow. I try to keep current with the app world and how it might affect my clients or the children of my clients. When today's headline on the Techcrunch blog stated (Meerkat Roulette is ChatRoulette for Meerkat), I started clicking on things for more information. First some background. Meerkat is a new video streaming app for iOS systems that allows the user to livestream video. It is similar in function to Skype or …Read More

  2. Hiding from you: Teens love apps they can hide from parents

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    Where there is a will there is a way.  This is something often heard in our office.  When we are dealing with trying to limit a child’s access to sexual content in the digital world or trying to create barriers for accountability for someone with a sexual addiction, we must always remember this!  This is particularly true when dealing with parental controls and teens.  As soon as a parent installs some sort of parental control or filtering software, many a teen is online looking at YouTube to try to figure out how to uninstall the filter or get around it.  Trust me, within minutes, the …Read More

  3. Yik Yak: Anonymous Gossip or Cyberbullying Haven?

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    This spring, the app, Yik Yak began to receive a large amount of attention in the news, none of it positive.  School officials from Chicago to Georgia have worked to try to ban the app due to its use as a means to cyberbully students.  So what is Yik Yak?  It is a social media app that allows a user to post anonymous messages online. It is an app that utilizes geolocation as users can see comments by those within a five mile radius of them.   It was initially designed for use by college students to spread the word about what was happening on college campuses.  Technically, no one under t…Read More

  4. Tech Savvy Parenting: Whisper

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           There is a never ending barrage of new apps entering the digital universe every day.  It would be a full time job to keep up to date on all of the new offerings.  This blog is slowly progressing through those apps that can be used for sexual purposes as well as their official or intended purpose.  One of these apps is Whisper.  It is very akin to the Post Secrets art project that was started in 2005 by artist Frank Warren.  (This too had become an app but was subsequently shut down) The idea behind Post Secret was for people to send a postcard that represented a sec…Read More

  5. Tech Savvy Parenting: Kik

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      When I want to know what the latest trends are in technology, I end up asking an adolescent.  We adults inevitably are some of the last to know what is going on in the world of apps and social media.  As kids are moving away from social networking sites like Facebook, they are moving toward messenger apps.  Kik is one of the newer messenger apps that are gaining popularity with teens. Kik (www.kik.com) is a messenger app that is the first smartphone messenger to have a built in browser that allows users to talk, and browse while sharing with friends.  It is available for all smartph…Read More

  6. Tech Savvy Parenting: Facebook’s Friend Locator

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    Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) ran a small article about the new App coming to Facebook that uses geolocating technology to allow users to be notified when they are near friends.  This service will slowly be rolled out in the United States on Thursday. According to recent news articles about the app, it has to be selected by the Facebook user so it will not automatically be activated on Facebook.  The app will not display an exact location but will alert the user that a friend is within a half mile radius.  It does allow for a Facebook user to disclose an exact location but…Read More