As part of a campaign with the Norwegian Red Cross, Ikea has built a model of a Syrian home in a store in Norway to show shoppers what life inside a war zone is like
7-year-old Syrian girl live-tweeting her life in Aleppo
Bana is just 7 years old but she knows how to tweet. A video posted on her Twitter account @alabedbana shows her back as she stands in front of a window, long hair flowing on a green jumper and fingers in her ears. Loud bombs can be heard in the distance, in the Aleppo night.
“Hello world, can you hear that?” she asks.
“I am very afraid I will die tonight. This bombs will kill me now. – Bana,” she signs off.
Over the past few weeks, Bana Al-Abed and her mum Fatemah have offered a new, damning perspective on the daily life of those living under the bombs in Syria’s second city. Besieged Eastern Aleppo, controlled by rebel forces, has witnessed an unrelenting shower of bombs by Russian and Syrian military jets.
As the bombs fall, Bana and Fatemah send tweets.
One of the very first tweets depicted Bana at her desk with a book and her doll in the background. “Good afternoon from Aleppo,” the caption read. “I’m reading to forget the war.”
Another photo showed the rubble of a bombed building and the caption: “This is my friend house bombed, she’s killed. I miss her so much.”
8 Reasons to Rethink Teens & Sexting
Megan Maas has written a blog on 8 Reasons to Rethink Teens & Sexting for the Huffington Post. Here’s a few snippets from the blog which are essential reading for any youth worker:
… In order for us to address sexting in a realistic way with teens, we must first understand the sexual culture they live in that normalizes sexting.
1. Teens think everyone is sexting and it’s no big deal.
2. Boys and girls engage in sexting for different reasons. Girls feel pressure to send sexts and are more likely to do so than boys. Boys feel more pressure to collect sexts and are more likely to receive sexts and share them with friends or post them online than girls. This poses an issue because it sets up a type of marketplace, where the boys are the consumers and the girls are the products to be consumed …
3. The sexual double standard is alive and well in sexting. We think nothing of a boy requesting a nude image or video, but when a girl participates, we think something is wrong with her …
4. Sexting can be a sign of self-objectification.
5. We have a victim blaming culture, even when it comes to sexting. When I do educational seminars about sex and technology with parents and teachers, I overwhelmingly hear stories of “sexting scandals”. Usually followed by a, “Why would she send a nude photo of herself in the first place? Something must be wrong with her.”
6. We need to redefine female sexual liberation.
7. We need to support girls to foster their own talents and abilities in multiple areas of life, and encourage boys to support them too. You don’t want your teen to sext? Try telling them not to do it. That didn’t work you say? Shocking. It’s important for parents of boys to acknowledge the pressure girls feel to prove they are sexy and to encourage them to recognize girls’ interests, talents and knowledge above their looks whenever possible. For parents of girls, it’s important to focus on their abilities and not just their looks or dress from a young age. It’s not that it is bad for teen girls to express sexuality, it’s just that we don’t want their only dose of daily self-esteem boost to come from a sexy selfie because her sexual worth is her only worth.
8. We need to hold boys and men accountable for their actions, they are capable of not acting on sexual impulses.
An Infographic on Anonymous Apps and Teenagers
One of the most frequent questions I receive from parents is about apps that teenagers are using and what a caring parents perspective should be on them.
The team from Rawhide.org have released a helpful infographic which gives a quick and concise overview of these anonymous apps – something you can share with parents.
15 Twitter statistics you need to know
These 15 statistics by Social Marketing Writing can help you get your message seen by more people – more retweets, followers and traffic.
Social Media Image Sizes 2016 Infographic
Social media is a key communication channel for youth workers. One of the challenges is that all the different social media networks constantly change the goal posts in terms of how best to share your story.
The image sizes that Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and YouTube all use are all completely different. Here’s a helpful infographic for these sites
Selfie Obsession: teenage social media narcissists
We live in a world full of selfie-obsessed photo-editing young people. Walt Mueller linked to this fantastic infographic by the team at Rawhide.org:
Teenagers abandoning Facebook and Twitter for more intimate social media apps
Fascinating to read this article on how teenagers are abandoning Facebook and Twitter for more intimate social media apps – it’s certainly something I’ve been seeing a lot more of over the last few months in our youth work:
When my digital media students are sitting, waiting for class to start, and staring at their phones, they are not checking Facebook. They’re not checking Instagram or Pinterest or Twitter. No, they’re catching up on the news of the day by checking out their friends’ Stories on Snapchat, chatting in Facebook Messenger or checking in with their friends in a group text. If the time drags, they might switch to Instagram to see what the brands they love are posting, or check in with Twitter for a laugh at some celebrity tweets. But, they tell me, most of the time they eschew the public square of social media for more intimate options.
For example, in a study published in August last year, the Pew Research Center reported that 49% of smartphone owners between 18 and 29 use messaging apps like Kik, Whatsapp, or iMessage, and 41% use apps that automatically delete sent messages, like Snapchat. For context, note that according to another Pew study, only 37% of people in that age range use Pinterest, only 22% use LinkedIn, and only 32% use Twitter. Messaging clearly trumps these more publicly accessible forms of social media.
Well worth having a read and reflecting on how you communicate with young people.
Millennials Selfies: young adults will take more than 25,000 selfies in their lifetime!
Millennials average 9 selfies per week, spending an average of seven minutes perfecting each one before posting. That’s adds up to about 54 hours per year spent on taking & posting selfies according to this report in the International Business Times:
A recent survey from Luster Premium White, a teeth whitening brand based in Boston, calculated that the average millennial could take up to about 25,700 selfies in his or her lifetime. Ninety-five percent of young adults admitted to having taken at least one such picture of themselves.
Millennials, usually defined as people between the ages of 18 and 34, have proven particularly drawn to selfies. More than half of young adults have posted a selfie to a social media website, compared to 24 percent of Generation X-ers and 9 percent of Baby Boomers, Pew Research Center discovered last March.
Respondents to the Luster survey said they took an average of nine selfies a week and put the average amount of time needed at seven minutes. That adds up to about 54 hours a year of taking selfies, according to the survey, which included responses from 1,000 young adults.
That may sound shocking, but high numbers like those aren’t unheard of. The average 16- to 25-year-old woman spent 16 minutes taking an average of three selfies per day, or five hours a week, according to Beauty site FeelUnique, which commissioned a study earlier this year, Refinery29 reported.
Despite these figures, only 10 percent of respondents told Luster they were addicted to taking selfies.
Teenagers and media – a infographic of the last 20 years
It’s amazing to see how much youth engagement with media has changed in just the last 20 years. Check out this infographic for more:
The Optimal Length for Social Media Updates [Infographic]
Many of us use social media, but these days if you want people to engage it is so important that you make sure your posts are the optimal length.
Check out this infographic from Buffer to help you know what is the optimal length for not just social media updates but also for hashtags, blog posts and titles, and even subject lines for emails.
The Dangers of Social Media for ‘Missing’ Children
Last week I read a brilliant blog post on the dangers of posting about missing children on social media, over at Barefoot Social Work, do check it out:
I’ve seen a couple of ‘Missing Child’ posts on Facebook this week and I wanted to explain why I won’t be sharing them. They are always heart wrenching pleas for help. Some of them, I have no doubt, are genuine. I know this as a quick search on Google and I find that the police are also concerned for their whereabouts and are actively searching for them with the support of authorised charities and agencies. However, there are some that are not what they seem*.
Some are simply a hoax and some of them are not ‘missing’ at all. The child may have been adopted due to the risk of significant harm; they may be in hiding with their other parent as a result of serious domestic violence within the home; or the whole family may be in police protection and the concerned ‘father’ is not who he claims to be. Furthermore, ‘missing adults’ may wish for their location to remain anonymous, and they do have that right which we must respect. As virtual strangers we do not know the circumstances of their ‘disappearance’ and we should trust in the expertise of professionals to get the full picture.
In my current role we will share posts from Hampshire Constabulary but we haven’t shared other posts until we can verify the information for exactly the reasons outlined above.