Social Media

Instagram will start requiring users to provide their birth date to use the app and is developing artificial intelligence techniques to detect when young users may lie about their age, according to the Facebook-owned company. This follows an announcement that users under 16 years old will have their accounts default to private status.

Technology is redefining adolescence for members of iGen -- or Generation Z -- according to Debbie Silver, a former Louisiana Teacher of the Year. In a recent article written for Middle Web, she offers insight into today's middle-grade students and shares tips for parents to help kids find balance in the digital world, emphasizing that a dialogue is better than demands when it comes to digital devices and time spent online. She also reminds parents of a remark from author Dr. John Duffy: “When we say things like, “Well, I remember what it was like when I was a teenager,” here is Dr. Duffy’s response: “The truth is, you were never this teenager.”

Internet surveillance technology using artificial intelligence is in use across at least 200 Texas school districts, often without students knowing and without their consent. Authorities and tech companies say the services spot students considering harm to themselves or others, but privacy advocates point out that the algorithms can flag nonthreatening posts, that activity from Black people and women is disproportionately subject to misinterpretation, and that schools may use surveillance against protesters.

Following the social media trend of posting photos of food, school nutrition professionals in Texas' Flour Bluff Independent School District are using social media, including TikTok and Snapchat, to demonstrate how they serve healthy meals for students. Brittany Garcia, the district's school nutrition coordinator and a registered dietitian, said the social media posts help spread the word that students are being served nutritious foods, including fruits and vegetables, and remove the stigma of school meals.

In a recent blog post, TikTok announced plans to make its platform safer and less addictive for teenagers. The changes, expected to be released in the coming months, expand on earlier efforts to improve privacy settings and defaults for children under 18 and include options such as choosing who can view videos and limits on when younger users get notifications. One of the featured updates is a prompt that appears when younger users are about to share a video, asking whom they want to allow to view it as well as whether they want other people to download their post.

This should be good news for parents since TikTok ranked first in July in nongaming app downloads, with more than 63 million installs, -- a title it has held for all but two of the past 18 months, analytics platform Sensor Tower reports. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp rounded out the top five in overall download rankings in July.

YouTube and Interesting Development have rolled out YouTube’s first worldwide campaign to show how easily creators can make Shorts. Advertisements use music from the world's top artists, such as The Weeknd, Camila Cabello, BTS and Doja Cat, and are running on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat as well as YouTube properties. This is YouTube’s push to attract tweens and teens away from TikTok, which has had more than 63 million installs and ranking first in nongaming app downloads almost consistently for the past 18 months, according to reports from analytics platform Sensor Tower. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp rounded out the top five in overall download rankings in July.

Teachers and parents may want to evaluate how they view social media when it comes to youth, says Rick Hess, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the director of the think tank’s Education Policy Studies. In this commentary, Hess asserts that social media can be valuable, but that kids need to be better equipped and trained to navigate its complexities and reminds adults that “Social media tends to reward outrage and certainty. It has little use for empathy or nuance.” The same way you would never toss your child the keys and expect them to drive well their first time, parents should guide their children in navigating the world of social media.

Unlike most social media platforms, Twitter has never had a delete or edit feature for pubished tweets, but for years users have called on the platform to add an 'Edit' option so that they can correct those annoying grammatical errors. Twitter has repeatedly said that it's not going to happen, but now it looks like Twitter may offer a short window of time after pressing 'Tweet' to recall your missive. Besides correcting grammar or spelling, this may also let users heed misinformation labels that Twitter places on questionable Tweets or decide that those nasty or bullying comments really aren’t the best thing to send.

There are four key US Supreme Court cases that govern students' speech in a school environment, according to Scott Johnson, law professor at Concord Law School. In a recent commentary, Johnson reflects on the current law, students’ privacy rights, and on the court's potential to expand the scope of the law when it hears the case of a high-schooler who was penalized for profanity-laced Snapchat posts about the school. As the law currently stands, speech that may be protected for adults outside of the school environment – like offensive or vulgar language – can be restricted for students inside of the school environment. This commentary is a must read for all parents ,because on some occasion your children may speak their mind online, and what is protected and what is not runs a very fine line.

Researchers tracked 500 teens over 10 years and found that an increase in the amount of time spent on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram was linked to an increase in long-term suicide risk among teenage girls, but not boys. The findings were published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Most of the risk pertained to girls who as young adolescents were already spending a lot of time using social media, TV and/or video games. As their screen time increased over the years, so did their risk for suicide by the time they hit their early- to mid-20s, the findings showed.

"Parents and teens should be open about their amount and type of media they're using, so that they can look out for warning signs, talk about worsening mood or suicidality, and reach out for help," researchers suggest. In the article researchers also stressed common-sense limits around electronic media use. For example, limiting use to less than two hours per day, and not using electronic media after a certain time at night since it can worsen sleep. They also urged parents to have open discussions about online bullying and online safety.