One of my top three social media safety tips is “educate.” By educate I mean it is important you are educating yourselves about social media, because the more you know about the topic the better position you’ll be in to educate your children about it.
The same goes for me – I need to keep my knowledge up-to-date so I can continue to educate the parents who attend my seminars, as well as all you lovely folk reading my blog! To keep myself in the know I rely on a number of fantastic social media news sites, my favourite of which are listed below. I encourage those wishing to maintain or improve their social media knowledge to visit and/or join the mailing lists of these sites.
The best thing about these sites is… you don’t have to be a tech guru to enjoy (or understand) them!! They are also credible, relevant and often quite entertaining.
Mashable
“Mashable is a leading source for news, information & resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world.”
Mashable provides articles relating to a number of categories but the one I wish to draw your attention to is “Social Media.” In this section of their site, Mashable post regular articles about all things social media. This includes summaries of popular sites your child might be using (ie “The Beginner’s Guide to Whisper”), how-to instructions (ie “How to Compress Your iPhone Photos”), social media news (ie “The Facebook Decade: A Review of the Social Giant’s Disruptive History“) as well as quirky and fun articles (“Yes, Emoji Death Threats Are Admissible in Court”).
Mashable is my favourite social media news site at the moment. I love how interesting and relevant their articles are – here you can learn, be updated and entertained all in the one place.
Edudemic
“The goal of Edudemic is to connect teachers, administrators, students and just about everyone else with the best technology on the planet… The site features a regular flow of tools, tips, resources, visuals, and guest posts from dozens of authors around the world.”
Now I know most of you reading this are parents and may be thinking, why would I be interested in a site aimed at teachers? The fact is, as parents you also play a leading role as educator in your children’s lives. By understanding the impact of technology on education, you are able to encourage and inspire your children to use it in a beneficial way. I am such a strong believer in using social media to enhance learning, so much so that I’ve written a thesis about it and dedicated an entire seminar to the topic. So it is no surprise that Edudemic is one of my favourite go-to sites!
Some examples of articles posted on Edudemic include – “11 Signs That Technology Is a Key Part of Education,” “13 Ways Technology Can Improve Student Writing,” and “How Google Is Changing Your Memory.”
Huffington Post Tech
The Huffington Post is an American online news aggregator and blog that offers news, blogs, and original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women’s interests, and local news. Naturally, it is the “technology” category that we are interested in here.
This site is similar to Mashable and ABC Technology & Games in that it provides interesting and relevant articles relating to all-things social media/technology. The site is very news focused – this isn’t the place to go for how-to’s, but rather credible and relevant news stories such as “Details Emerge About Secret Government Requests for Data” and “Yahoo Says Hackers Tried To Get Into Email Accounts.”
ABC Technology & Games
Yes, the trusty ol’ ABC. As you may be aware, the ABC has a website which they use to keep us updated with news from Australia and around the world. On this website they have a number of categories, including “Technology & Games. ” The ABC “Technology & Games” site collates all ABC content, so not only can you access regular news articles, you can listen to podcasts (ie “Cyberspace threats” episode of PM), watch video clips (ie “Screen Addiction: Health Experts Say Excessive Amounts of Time Spent on Phones, Tablets Can Affect Childhood Development”) as well as blog posts (ie “Stuck in a parental video game quandary”).