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…
Girls Gone Social: the struggle is real.
Friend: “Where’s your new house exactly?” Me: “It’s just right off of…uh…that one road….uh….{yells across the room} HEY TAYLOR – WHERE DO WE LIVE AGAIN?” This is the mental capacity I’m working with these days. Moment of silence for the moms of daughters I get to chat with tonight about social media. I fear it’s going to be rough for them. But since I do get to chat with them, I’ve been pondering what to share. I love talking to parents about social media, but I really love talking to parents of daughters. Girls have a unique set of struggles online. As of this moment on January 9th, 2014, here…
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.…
New site! Same awkward.
Yea, welcome to almost 2014, I finally stopped being lazy and moved my blog to a new platform. What the hack does that mean? Basically just that my blog has moved from taylorandsarahbrooks.blogspot.com to lifeasoflate.com and will be a little less terrible, functionality-wise. That’s nerd talk for don’t worry about it, just update your bookmarks. Seriously, you guys, this has been on my to-do list for about 4 years. And instead of just having someone do all the technical stuff for me (reason #1 why it has taken this long), I used my infinite very limited coding knowledge to do it myself. (Self-hosted, FTP, HTML, CSS, whatever other stupid phrases…
A Coffee Date Chat: Social Media Mindset Differences
I just thought you all should see my favorite 7th graders in the world. Completely irrelevant to this post. I’ve picked up on a few recurring trends when talking with parents (and youth workers and teachers) of pre-teens/teens about social media recently… I hear a lot of fear and uncertainty. I see a lot of deer-in-the-headlight, overwhelmed looks. And I understand. The world wide interwebs are big and scary and kidnappy. But if there’s one thing I think (or rather, hope) I might help you with, it is understanding your kids’ mindsets. They’re speaking a language you’re trying to understand and that’s scary. Or at the very least annoying. This is no…
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…
NOLA! (Alt Title: Beignets are made by angels.)
This past week, Taylor started a new job and had a birthday. I also had a birthday and made a quick trip to Louisiana that included a stop by Café Du Monde. So, basically, it was the best week ever. Several months ago, a lady named Jenny read my post to parents about Instagram and contacted me about speaking at her teen girl event just outside of New Orleans. This is important for a few reasons: a) I could have been the single most awkward person she’d ever met in her life. She’d only read my post, never met me; therefore b) God used her to get my attention in a “HELLO.…
On the past 3 months of crazy.
“Hey I saw you were speaking different places now…what is that about? Apparently I don’t even know what you do for a living.” Funny you should ask. I don’t either. For the past year or so, I’ve really been struggling with finding purpose. Being a mom (and a stay-at-home one, at that) is harder than I imagined in ways I didn’t anticipate. You go from people doting on your big ole baby belly, then on your newborn, then on your infant…aaaand then at some point that kinda wears off. Pretty soon you’re alone at Chick-fil-a with a screamy toddler who just spiked his water cup on the floor in protest,…
