Providing information and resources for parents, youth workers and educators to help kids navigate their digital world.
More than ever before, young people on smartphones immerse themselves in a digital atmosphere of high drama where a subculture of depressed and suicidal teenagers thrives, out of sight of most adults. Read the article here.
As teens go through everyday life, they deal with the normal pressures of school, friends, and family. One escape from this stress can be social media, but there can be unintended consequences for their mental health, according to researchers. Read the full article here.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, has become the social media app of choice for many teens. Read the article here.
One TikTok user demonstrated how swapping AirPods and using Google Translate is an effective way to communicate secretly. Read the article here.
While Instagram and the like are key to keeping up with friends, some high-schoolers admit that they often need a break. Read the article here.
The #outletchallenge on the TikTok app presents significant electrical hazards. Read the article here.
Adults’ digital habits could be hazardous to children’s speech and language development. Read the article here.
Stay on top of the popular titles teens are already using. Read the post from Common Sense Media here.
eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver and vice president of research Jennifer Pearson discuss children’s behavior online, the screen time stigma and YouTube child policy changes. Listen to the podcast by clicking here.
Taking away screens and reading to our children during the formative years of birth to age 5 boosts brain development. Read the article here.
Teenagers are skipping meals, sleep and doing their homework to spend more time online, according to a new report which asked young people themselves how their time on the internet affected their lives. Read the article here.
Porn can actually warp consumers’ perceptions of realistic sexual situations, especially as they relate to strangers. Read the article here.
Here are TEN things to look out for this year as you raise kids in a hypersexualized porn culture AND what you can do about it! Read the article from Protect Young Minds here.
Nielsen’s look back at the video games of 2019. See the research here.
The wild variations of how to raise tiny people into adults become more obvious as our children become more aware of their peers — adding yet another challenge to the already weighty task of parenting. Read the article here.
Social media allows young people to explore how they express themselves, says one teenager. Read the article here.
Email is not the default for most teenagers, but it remains the primary avenue for colleges to communicate with prospective and current students. Read the article here.
Many families draft a personal contract that lays out the rules of cellphone usage for their children. Read the article here.
Are teens decompressing through video games? Read the article here.
Decades of research document myriad harms of pornography, hardly justifying a laissez faire attitude toward adolescent exposure to sexually explicit material. Read the article here.
The rise of short video-app TikTok in 2019 is a sure sign that what defines a social network will be very different in 2020. Read the article here.
When it comes down to who is looking for love on Tinder, Gen Z took over the swipe-focused dating app. Read the article here.
Loot boxes are mystery items embedded within games that can be purchased for randomised rewards, including “skins” which change the appearance of a character. The skins can then be used to trade on third-party websites for real money. Read the article here.
Common Sense Media provides tips for helping prevent kids from seeing inappropriate content with these easy Netflix settings. Read the article here.
This the first in a series that looks at how social media has changed the way teens learn about, and engage in, sex. Read the article here.
Google will impose some new restrictions on ads surrounding child-oriented videos that appear on the main YouTube.com site, but will continue to allow influencer marketing and product placement on the site, the company recently told a lawmaker. Read the article here.
The role of loneliness and attachment style in teen porn use. Read the article here.
Popular game draws images from players’ camera rolls at random, causing embarrassment, raising privacy concerns. Read the article here.
10 parents give their unique perspective on helping a child overcome the addictive pull of pornography. Read the article here.
No 11-year-old should have to deal with, or even know, about things like this. Read the article here.
Disney+ was the most searched term for the entire year. Read the article here.
Sticking to a new routine can stop your children from becoming screen zombies. Read the article here.
The December 2019 Game On! Newsletter from Nielsen. Read the newsletter here.
Why it feels like everything is going haywire. Read the article here.
Google recently announced it will bring its Smart Compose feature from Gmail over to Google Docs. What will that mean for language? Read the article here.
Despite their young ages, preteen (kids 7-12) gamers in the U.S. collectively spend what some might view as an unfathomable amount of money on video games. Read the article and view the video from Nielsen here.
The look back reveals some of the top news events, people and entertainment searches, and it includes the year’s most asked questions and vacation destinations. Read the article here.
Users on Instagram will soon be required to enter their birth date in order to use the social networking app. Read the article here.
A majority of parents — 70 percent — are concerned about their children developing hearing damage from listening to music players, tablets and smartphones, according to a new national poll released this week. Read the article here.
In this post for Parents ‘Teen Talk’ column—articles written by teens to help parents understand what’s really happening in their world—a teenager shares what she learned from a personal experience with bullying in high school and how parents can support teens through their own situations. Read the article here.
TikTok, a social network video app with more than 1 billion downloads globally, admitted Tuesday to a set of policies that had suppressed the reach of content created by users assumed to be “vulnerable to cyberbullying.” Read the article here.
The more often young teens turn to social media, the more prone they are to eating disorders, new research suggests. Read the article here.
Match Group, which owns most major online dating services, screens for sexual predators on Match — but not on Tinder, OkCupid or PlentyofFish. Read the article here.
Sadfishing is when someone exaggerates their emotional state in order to get sympathy or attention from an audience. Read the article here.
While teens are using social networking platforms, they are exposed to marketing from food brands. Read the article here.
Study suggests that struggling students can considerably improve their grades by spending less time on social media. Read the article here.
Preteens spend a lot on video games, but how? Read the article here.
Gen Z can’t get enough of TikTok. But if you’re worried about what exactly your kids are getting, you’re not alone. Read the article here.
Instagram announced it’s expanding its test of hidden likes to users around the world. Read the article here.
Instagram is a beauty pageant. TikTok is where kids are free to be mediocre. Read the article here.
College students went one week without their smartphones. Read the article here.
Are teens as much in thrall to digital as popular stereotypes suggest? Read the article here.
Now, more and more people want to look like themselves — a phone-edited version of themselves, that is. Read the article here.
Depending on where they live, millennial parents would consider a range of high-tech treatments for the health and wellness of their children. Read the article here.
Toddlers who spend loads of time looking at tablets, smartphones or TVs may be changing their brains, and not for the better. Read the article here.
For those growing up in 2019, however, anything with a screen can be a gaming platform. Read the article and view the video here.
The majority of high schoolers have embraced YouTube as their social media platform of choice, with recent studies showing that the majority of high schoolers spend exponentially more time on the video-sharing service than on the wealth of other social media options out there. Read the article here.
Online video usage is going through the roof and has more than doubled in four years. Read the article here.
Cyber Flashing is a different way for sexual predators to invade your privacy or that of your children or to transfer other unwanted material using a specific program that is featured on all Apple devices: AirDrop. Read the article here.
High-schoolers tell the WSJ why they love the video social network, but also acknowledge its dark side: ‘Don’t use it as a babysitter’. Read the article here.
Teens spend, on average, more than seven hours a day using screens and 60 percent of teens themselves say spending too much time online is a “major” problem. Read the article here.
Katie Couric wanted to know why one in four women are scared during sex. Her short answer: porn. Read the article here.
Instagram decided to remove the cosmetic surgery filter over concerns that they contribute to unrealistic beauty standards, linked to negative body image among users. Read the article here.
Being funny (52%), having an interesting topic (46%), and being short in length (43%) are important. Read the article here.
This large-scale study explores how kids age 8 to 18 in the U.S. use media across an array of activities and devices—including short-form, mobile-friendly platforms like YouTube—to see where they spend their time and what they enjoy most. Download the report from Common Sense Media here.
Heavier users of social media get to bed later and get poorer quality sleep. Read the article here.
Images posted to social media are often far from reality, but this research is among the first to analyze how all of these unrealistic pictures impact young women’s views on their own bodies Read the article here.
Treatments for children with anxiety and depression increasingly push them to navigate Instagram, Snapchat to build relationships with peers. Read the article here.
Alarming new research reveals that the average parent spends just 24 minutes more per day with their children than they do with their smartphone. Read the article here.
A new UK study shows that teenagers who spend 3 or more hours engaging in social media are much more likely to sleep late and to have night awakenings, among other poor sleep habits. Read the article here.
Smartphones are many people’s gateway to entertainment, knowledge and other people strewn across the globe, a means to an end – be it education, connection, self-development. In one part of the world, though, it has become an addiction. Read the article here.
The latest research suggests it’s not far-fetched at all — especially when you consider all the societal and cultural factors that make today’s games so attractive. Read the article here.
A 14-year-old shares about being sick and tired of social media. Read his account here.
Teen girls are making TikTok videos dancing to audio clips of their exes’ demoralizing voicemails and rants. Read the article here.
Their smartphones do everything, but can teenagers master old tech and life skills – from reading a map to setting an alarm clock? Read the article here.
Concerns over enforcement and data being misused lead government to cancel rollout. Read the article here.
Loneliness is Instagram’s hottest trend. Read the article here.
Teens keep discovering ways to get around Apple’s Screen Time parental control feature. Read the article here.
The October issue of Nielsen’s Game ON! Newsletter. Download the newsletter here.
Tim Elmore blogs about 5 common sources of stress in teens that often lead to anxiety and depression. Read the blog post here.
r/teenagers is a subreddit created by teenagers for teenagers as a place to share memes, vent about school, and share about the experience of being a teen. Read the article here.
A Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) survey of more than 2,000 adolescents shows that 25.3 percent are moderately or severely dependent on the Internet. Read the article here.
42 percent of teens think their parents overshare about them online. Read the article here.
83% of parents agreed with the statement “there should be robust age-verification controls in place to stop children (under 18s) seeing commercial pornography online.” Read the report here.
An Ohio lawmaker has drafted a new resolution that could declare pornography a public health hazard. House Resolution 180 also links viewing pornography to violence against women. Read the article here.
Teens’ icons and role models aren’t just actors and athletes anymore — now, they’re looking up to their favorite people to follow on Instagram and YouTube. Read the article here.
YouTube edged out Netflix as the preferred video streaming platform for teens, according to a new survey from investment banking firm Piper Jaffray. Read the article here.
As children and teens become more absorbed by the lure of posting and reading others’ posts on social media, it becomes critical for adults to step in, set limits and just clarify things, doctors urge. Read the article here.
Teens use dark humor on TikTok to cope with school shooting anxiety. Read the article here.
According to a new large scale study of more than 37,000 users, there is now a mobile device “typing gap” between today’s 10- to 19-year-olds and their parents’ generation. Read the article here.
Haley downloaded the app for fun. Now millions of people watch her videos. Read the article here.
But in all countries, “one thing we’ve found in common is the number of parents and teens who say they wake up in the middle of the night and check their phones.” Read the full article here.
Many grandparents want to know what they can do to protect their precious grandkids from today’s online dangers. Read some tips here.
Contrary to some common perceptions about advertising, a Deloitte study says younger TV viewers actually have a higher tolerance for advertising — especially for streaming services. Read the article here.
Six in 10 say they never switch off because they are constantly checking their mobile. Read the article here.