the danger of #selfies
#SELFIE, by The Chainsmokers. It’s currently #1 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. Have you heard this song? If you haven’t, we’ll get to it in a minute. It makes sense that a song with that title would be popular, right? Selfies are all the rage. (They’re also the bane of my existence, but that’s neither here nor there.) In case you’re already lost, let me define via Wikipedia: “A selfie is a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone.” Teens love selfies. A lot. As in, when I searched Instagram for the hashtag #selfie just now, this is what I saw. 89,816,587 photos…
The scoop on the Instagram Direct feature
A few days ago, Instagram released an update with something called “Instagram Direct”, a way for users to send pictures privately to one person. Or a group of people. Either way, the “direct” feature gives you the option of sending photos only to specified recipients . You choose your option at the top of the screen after a photo has been uploaded and filtered. Receiving a photo looks like this: 1. Get a standard push notification from Instagram saying, “so-and-so sent you a photo.” 2. Once opened, you can like and comment on the photo as normal, difference being that it is just a conversation between you and the sender,…
The Positives of Social Media: Spread of Information
Show of hands for those of us ever jolted awake at midnight by the Amber alert feature you didn’t know you had on your iPhone. Do you remember how missing children used to be advertised? Milk cartons. Printouts at a police station or local businesses. Now it comes directly to our smartphones as a push notification. I saw a Facebook post a few weeks ago about a high school girl, Jessica, who went missing after school. She went missing at, maybe, 4pm. By 10pm, the post about her disappearance had been shared 7,459 times. That number isn’t individuals who saw the post, but networks of individuals. I’ve seen a wide…
The Positives of Social Media: Niche Groups
It’s destroying communication. It’s a kidnapper’s playground. It’s ruining our eyes and thumbs. Touche, salesman. But social media is not always terrible. It’s not always ruining lives. Sometimes it can be good. So, over the next several weeks, let’s cover a few things we should be excited about, compliments of social media. We’ll start with one of my favorites: Niche groups. (image from Paints & Pistols, the Andrews’ fabulous blog) Meet the Andrews family. Christie and I were in college together. We had some mutual friends, but it wasn’t until a few short years later that we really became friends after being pregnant bridesmaids together…8 and 7 months pregnant, respectively.…
A Word to my Friends about Ask.fm
{For my junior high and high school peeps. Do people still say peeps? I’m pretty sure they don’t. My apologies.} Hey, friends. I know you aren’t big blog readers, but I’ve been wanting to chat with you about something for a while now. If you’ll indulge me, let’s chat real quick about: You know…the thing where you love to ask each other (mostly) anonymous questions. I know you know about it because this is all I ever see in my Instagram newsfeed. And I totally get it. Don’t panic. I’m not here to get you in trouble – I even have one (…even though no one has ever asked me…
Parents: A Follow up Word on Instagram
This is an update to my previous post, Parents: A Word about Instagram. I originally shared this post with my friends over yonder at Patheos. They have a pretty cool site that you should check out. But, now that you’re here, feel free to stick around and see what parents and teens had to say about identity and Instagram. Um. Wow. I had NO idea the last post would hit such a nerve, but I’m so thankful some very important conversations have stemmed from it! Thank you for all of your feedback, comments, suggestions, and shares. It’s humbling, to say the least. A few things: One resounding comment I heard…
