Social Media

Verification – those blue check marks that appear on certain profiles mainly belonging to celebrities - may soon be an option for any Twitter user, CEO Jack Dorsey announced recently. The company's goal is to widen verification "in a way that's scalable, where ... people can verify more facts about themselves and we don't have to be the judge or imply any bias on our part," Dorsey says.

Technology and social media are contributing to self-doubt, isolation and vulnerability among female students, according to The Girls' Index, a survey of 10,000 5th- to 12th-grade girls conducted by the nonprofit Ruling Our Experiences. The report found 46% of girls entering high school say they don't believe they are smart enough for their dream careers, while students' confidence rate drops between fifth and ninth grades. Other takeaways from the survey include:

• 30% of the respondents reported having been bullied or made fun of on social media. 19% said they have made fun of someone else on those forums.
• Many of the girls who were the heaviest social media users struggle in making connections with peers, and they tend to have fewer outside interests
• Girls who spent the most time using technology are 5 times more likely to say they are sad or depressed nearly every day. Girls who engaged with technology the most were also the least likely to be involved in activities such as clubs, sports, band, music, and theater.
• Girls who spent the most time on technology are the least likely to say they have supportive friends and supportive adults to talk to about serious issues.
• 75% of the 12th grade girls who took the survey said  “most students their age send sexually explicit photos.” And more than half of 8th grade girls surveyed had been asked to send a sexually explicit photo.

About 77% of students between ages 9 and 11 said they have witnessed bullying, and 1 in 5 admits to being a bully, according to a survey commissioned by the Cartoon Network, and reported on by National Public Radio. Students overwhelmingly reported that the adults in their families model good behavior, while only 14 percent strongly agreed that our nation's leaders model how to treat people with kindness. While this survey’s findings are much in line with others on similar topics, it does stand out for drawing attention to the small positive acts that can make a powerful difference in a child's life. More than 8 out of 10 kids surveyed said it would help kids to be kinder if they all had a person in their lives who really cared and listened.

The latest online attacks against the teen survivors of the Parkland shooting is a good case study on how this happens and how quickly it occurs. An article in The Washington Post entitled We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack – and found a conspiracy in the making outlines the part that anonymous social media forums play in the process. It’s a primer on how misinformation is created on purpose, endures endlessly, and the havoc that it plays in lives of those who are targeted.

The Federal Election Commission has drawn up a proposed framework that would require political digital and social media ads to adopt the same sponsorship disclaimer rules as those appearing on TV, read on radio and in print. Political audio and video ads on both social and digital platforms would require candidates paying for the ads to say their names and include the statement, "And I approve of this message," and graphic and text ads would have to display the sponsor's name "in letters of sufficient size to be clearly readable," the proposal says. In addition, Facebook has announced that it will mail postcards to political ad buyers to verify that they live in the US. A code from the postcard will be needed to buy a political ad on the platform, and November's midterm elections will be the first time the process is used.

In a recent interview on CNBC, Ana Homayoun, the author of Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World explains that social media companies “create this system where you always want to be online. And it can create this fear of missing out (FOMO) if we're not online.” But Homayoun argues there are some ways parents can curb addictive behavior including introducing access to mobile communication incrementally by starting kids off with a flip phone instead of just giving them a hand me down smartphone and establishing times and days when the phone is off-limits (especially at night). She also recommends not letting kids use the phone as an alarm clock because that only leads to it being in their room at night unsupervised and using apps like Circle or OurPact to monitor their usage.

So the experts have been saying for years that it would be better if we all put our phones away long before bedtime, but now researchers have found some data that may prove that true. The findings in Acta Paediatrica involved a study of 5,242 Canadian youths ages 11 to 20 and showed that those who used social media apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook for just one hour a day had their sleep affected. 63.6% of those in the study who said they used social media for an hour or less every day received less than the 10 to 11 hours of recommended amount of sleep for their age, while 73.4% of whom said they used social media for an hour or more daily showed even worse sleeping habits.

Twitter sometimes gets a bad rap. Early on, education critics bemoaned the idea of kids communicating in 140 characters and warned they would never learn to write properly. But Twitter, like all sorts of social media apps, has now made peace with many educators who have learned to harness its appeal to help them teach, as well as discuss with students the power and the possibilities of social media in an effort to drive digital literacy. A recent article entitled Teach Students To Use Social Media (The Right Way) And The Possibilities Are Endless on the National Public Radio education site (nprED) outlines many of the positive ways educators are using Twitter. This is a good read for parents who may be skeptical or just want to know more about how teachers are incorporating social media into the classroom.

Researchers at Stanford University's Center for Education Policy Analysis Labs are sending to parents and caregivers text messages containing educational games and tips on how to engage young children. These "nudge" techniques are designed to prepare children for school and to support their literacy, numeracy and social and emotional skills. The texts seem to be appreciated by parents who find, that since they arrive on their phones, they can scroll back to them and try the ideas on another day if they are too busy when the text first arrives or the resources to do the activity are not at hand. Texts are short and to the point usually suggesting things that can easily be done by parents, but truly enhance a preschooler’s literacy and numeracy.

Facebook is trying very hard to fix itself by dealing with the proliferation of fake news on site and doing what it can to keep the trolls at bay. But what if Facebook just needs to be more like Instagram? That’s the premise of a recent article in The New York Times entitled What if a Healthier Facebook Is Just … Instagram?.

It is an interesting idea. Instagram, while having some issues, has not been overrun by misinformation, hasn’t been as exploited to the same degree and, (this is a good reminder to the older generation) is vastly preferred to Facebook by younger users. It is a simpler cleaner interface with no external links and no ways to “reshare” others posts. Is this the wave of the future? Less is more?