Digital Smarts - Young People Changing To More Private Social Interactions

The Pew Research Center has released the results from a new study on Mobile Messaging and Social Media showing that young people are moving away from cell phone based texting to apps like WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage, and using apps that automatically delete sent messages such as Snapchat or Wickr. These apps are free, and when connected to Wi-Fi, they do not use up SMS (Short Messaging Service) or other data. They also offer a more private kind of social interaction than traditional social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. It will be interesting to see if this change to more private messaging has any influence on how cyberbullying is conducted, as these apps make it harder to document text conversations, and can make it more difficult to prove cyberbullying activities.