Family Tech Blog

Tag: instagram

  • PODCAST: Is My Kid Safe on Tumblr?

    PODCAST: Is My Kid Safe on Tumblr?

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    FAMILY TECH WEEKLY: Tumblr “safe mode” is a joke, Musical.ly is bringing original show content, and you can now hide images in Instagram.

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  • Can Your Kids Now Hide Photos from You Right in Instagram?

    Can Your Kids Now Hide Photos from You Right in Instagram?

    Kids hide images on their phones in several ways and for many reasons. Some just don’t want all of their embarrassing goofy pictures with their friends to be shared. Sometimes there’s a more sinister reason. Something involving sexting or cyberbullying. Kids can use different kinds of apps to lock away photos. There are some that look like calculators or phone utilities apps and still some that don’t hide what they do. Now, Instagram is allowing posts to be saved within the app without being made public. It’s called Archive.

    Instagram’s new archive feature allows users to remove posts from their feed without deleting them. It allows you to put the photos in an archive to be looked at in the future and even reposted. If you do repost it falls back in its original chronological order so it kind of just magically reappears where it was originally. A little arrow clock icon in the upper right corner of your profile page in the Instagram app will give you access to your archived posts. You can fill the archives by tapping on the “…” in the upper right of a post. Then just tap “Archive.”

    Why would you want to archive photos? Well, some may decide later that their post wasn’t something they’d want everyone to see. Maybe the pictures from the party you attended last month wouldn’t look good to that employer you just applied for a job with. No problem, just archive those things and you can still see them without them being public. Maybe you broke up with that guy or girl and don’t want everyone to see you together all over your Instagram page. Well, just archive them and they become a private photo stash for you to weep over on your own. Your kids will even use the feature to hide posts that didn’t get as many likes as they want.

    What Parents Should Know

    I recommend you understand the Archive feature on Instagram and learn how to find it on your kids’ profile. If you often take your kids’ phone and look at their social media behavior this is a way for them to share a photo for a brief time and then save it to an archive, knowing you’ll be looking at their feed later. If you don’t know how to access the Archived photos it’s possible you can miss some of what they’ve been posting. “Finstagram” or Spam accounts are popular with teens because it’s a way to have a more private collection of photos that they don’t share with many people. I recommend you find out if your kid has a spam account and follow it. I now, recommend you check to see what photos they’ve archived as well.

  • PODCAST: What’s the Deal With Let’s Play Videos?

    PODCAST: What’s the Deal With Let’s Play Videos?

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    Apple and Android are each getting a new OS, teaching healthy tech habits, and the eSports debate.

    FAMILY TECH WEEKLY EPISODE 8

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  • This Social Media Parody App May Cause You to Re-Think Everything

    This Social Media Parody App May Cause You to Re-Think Everything

    There are more articles on this site about social media than any other topic. I truly believe that social media is not a part of the internet, it is the reality of what the world wide web is now all about. Every site you visit has a social aspect, even if it’s just a way to connect to your favorite social media platform. Our businesses are run through social media and advertising is more prevalent and successful on our newsfeeds than nearly anywhere else. Social media isn’t a fad or a trend. It’s the world we live in and for some, it’s an addiction.  A new app, Binky, is providing a bit of a caricature of the social media lifestyle and it may just be something you should check out.

    Binky is a social media simulator (more like a parody) app that started as a joke. It simulates the features of most status and photo sharing social media platforms by giving you a seemingly endless stream of fake posts to scroll through. As you scroll you’ll see absolutely random and unrelated images with captions that may or may not make sense. You have the option to “Bink,” (read: Like) comment or “Re-Bink” (read: Share) the images that you’re scrolling through. When you click the Bink button you get an explosion of stars from under your tapping finger and a delightful bloop bloop sound. Commenting is my favorite feature of this app because it doesn’t actually let you say anything. Every letter you type after tapping the comment icon automatically puts in a word to form a randomly generated comment of text and emoji complete with meaningless hashtags. Finally, when you share the app you’ll receive a notice that asks if you are sure you want to “Re-Bink” this post. You’re reminded that the Re-Bink doesn’t actually do anything but it actually does. You get an explosion of thumbs up icons. That’s it though, there is not really anyone to  share with in Binky.

    What is the point?

    There really isn’t a point, except for satire and parody. You may be able to say that using this app is a bit eye opening, however. I think it was for me. As I mindlessly scrolled through Binky and clicked on the meaningless buttons and commented the automatically generated sentences on each post I couldn’t help but think about how not far from actual social media this was. What difference does what I do on Instagram or Facebook actually have? Is it any more that my activity on Binky today? I don’t know for sure but I think thinking this way is a good thing. We tend to be so concerned about how we look online that many of us, especially your teen and young adult children, may actually put on a false persona on our social media pages. Binky was a way for me to see the ridiculousness of working so hard to get more likes, comments, and shares.

    What Parents Should Know

    As I said before this app isn’t a real social media app. There is no social aspect to it at all. It’s more like a simulation of social media. Something to give us another perspective on what our behavior online truly looks like. I recommend spending some time messing with this app and encouraging your young teens and teens to install it and play around on it. It’s not only humorous but could lead to some conversations on the futility of living your life and finding your worth on social media. Maybe, just maybe, you can use an app like Binky to start a conversation that could help you make some good decisions with your kids on what healthy social media use looks like in your family.

  • Instagram Rolls Out Major Updates to Direct Messaging

    Instagram Rolls Out Major Updates to Direct Messaging

    Instagram has launched their seemingly weekly major update today with a focus on their direct messaging feature. Now it’s possible to see previews of links and to send full size images. (Not just squares.) While most of Instagram’s updates have focused on it’s Stories feature, the DM gets quite a bit of attention every now and then too. There seems to be a race between Instagram and Snapchat to develop the best private messaging option out there. Features like link previews and removing the image dimension limits will go a long way to make Instagram a serious contender for direct messages.

    Link previews look a lot like in FB Messenger.

    What Parents Should Know

    Obviously it’s important to know who your kids are talking to online. Private messages open up the possibility for kids to contact people they don’t really know very well. This can lead to full, private conversations with videos and images that are difficult for parents to monitor. There is no way to disable direct messaging in the Instagram app so if your kids are using the service they have the ability to contact people in private. These messages won’t show up on their image timeline and images won’t be stored on their phones unless they manually save them. This can result in private messaging that may cross your line of what’s appropriate.

    Links that show up in Instagram will open in the Instagram browser when clicked. This means some accountability software and filters won’t take affect. You should keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to allow them to use Instagram.

    My advice, as always, is to take whatever measures you’re most comfortable with to monitor your kids Instagram activity. The only way to monitor their private messaging is to have their login information. I show you how to log in as them on your own device in a video here. Prevention, monitoring, and conversation are the most important things you can do to keep your kids from unwanted material online.

  • PODCAST: How Does a Tech Safety Expert Protect His Kids Online?

    PODCAST: How Does a Tech Safety Expert Protect His Kids Online?

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    How does a tech safety expert keep his own kids safe online? Is Instagram accessible without the app? What was in the big Snapchat update? What’s with fidget spinners in the app store?

    book info at: http://becausefamily.org/book

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    FAMILY TECH WEEKLY 7

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    Facebook: http://facebook.com/4pointfamilies
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    Ministry Site:: http://becausefamily.org
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    Michael’s Speaking Info:: http://kmichaelprince.org

    Donate and Affiliate Links

    http://BecauseFamily.org/partnership

    Music by Kevin MacLeod at http://Incompetech.com

  • Location and Hashtag Search Makes Instagram Stories Unending

    Location and Hashtag Search Makes Instagram Stories Unending

    Instagram has added the ability to search Stories by hashtag and location. This means that your explore tab will now give you access to basically unlimited Instagram story content. Instagram is going to feature location tagged stories by people you follow and also from people you don’t. If you search for your town, or any town for that matter, you’ll see a small map, the posts featured from that town, and if it’s been tagged in a story you’ll see that above the map as well. This will give more access to more stories and may lead to following more people on Instagram. Hashtag results will work in much the same way. You’ll be able to search stories by topic with the hashtag. It will also highlight the posts you and your friend’s made by featuring them first in the results.

    What Parents Should Know

    There’s always a bit of a red flag for me when there’s more potential to be connected with strangers on Social Media. Location and Hashtag filters allow you to find people you’ve never met and see what they’ve posted. Granted, the explore feature already makes that pretty easy. Instagram’s algorithm will gather these people and posts and present them to you from a simple search. These explore and search results aren’t going to be monitored by any accountability software since they’re not technically in a browser. You should take steps to monitor what your kids do in Instagram yourself. You should also lead the conversation with them about Instagram as these new updates come out.

  • 5 Apps that are Tech Safety Expert Approved!

    5 Apps that are Tech Safety Expert Approved!

    When I do Digital Boundaries Workshops I begin by sharing all of the dangers of unsupervised internet and mobile device use. I then walk through the best practices for keeping your kids safe in the digital landscape they are navigating. I also, spend a lot of time answering questions. I received a question this week that I hadn’t been asked ever before. “What are some apps that you would recommend for my family.” Huh…I hadn’t thought of that as much. I spend so much time looking at the dangers that are so prevalent online that I often ignore some of the resources that can be fun for families. Here’s a list of five apps that I approve of.

    Social Media

    Instagram

    While I always recommend parents keep to the age restrictions recommended by the terms of agreements on a social media platform (usually 13 plus;) I also know how popular social media is and that your teen is going to want to open an account as soon as you’ll allow them. When you’re ready to give them permission, I recommend you start with Instagram. The first reason is pretty simple. Instagram is easy to monitor. You can easily put your kids’ account(s) on your installation of Instagram and keep close tabs on what they’re doing on it. You can even use that method to be notified when they get a direct message.

    Any social media opens you up for some problems. They say it isn’t great for self image and self esteem and there is always inappropriate content that can be accessed because of the fact the content is posted by users but if you’re going to give in and allow some form of Social Media then Instagram is a better starting point than Snapchat or Twitter. There a a lot of reasons and I’ve written about most of those already.

    Gaming

    Ballz

    This game is super fun and addictive. It’s a pretty basic concept. You swipe back and release to launch a ball to bounce around the game-board and break up blocks. The blocks have numbers on them that show how many times you need to hit the block to make it go away. You collect more “ballz” and launch them all at the same time. (I’ve launched as many as 110 at once.) This becomes extremely satisfying when you fire all of the balls towards the blocks and watch the numbers on them decrease as quickly as the block is hit by each ball. Like I said, while it’s satisfying, it’s also very very addicting.

    This game is approved because, while it has ads, the ones I’ve seen have all been for more games by the same developer. This has kept anything inappropriate from creeping up as a banner ad. I approve because it should be pretty safe and because it is just so darn fun to watch all those little balls bounce around and devastate the the game-board full of blocks.

    Research/Education

    Kiddle

    Kiddle isn’t an app. It’s a website. You can very easily save the site to be an icon on the home screen of your phone and then tell your kids to use it as their search engine. I’ve written quite a bit about Kiddle already, so go read about how the search engine works and let your kids research and learn without fear of coming up on anything nasty or scary.

    Entertaiment

    Amazon Prime and Freetime

    Amazon Prime’s kids profiles are some of the best because the shows are curated by human editors. That means that actual people have looked at the shows and determined that they are actually safe for kids. Freetime is a special way to subscribe to only kids content so that you can be sure that they’re not seeing and adult targeted shows. If you don’t have Freetime you won’t have access to kids profiles but you can still set parental controls so that content above a certain age range won’t be accessible without a pin number. Kids can’t see these shows and movies without the pin but they’ll still be able to see the thumbnail image in their “carousel.”

    YouTube Kids

    YouTube kids is a good option simply because of the popularity of YouTube for our children. Kids love watching all different kinds of content on YouTube and YouTube Kids makes it possible to allow them to watch their favorite channels without potentially finding videos that aren’t appropriate for their age. YouTube Kids separates their content by topics like music, education, and shows so kids can find what they want pretty easily. The only downside to YouTube Kids is that it’s monitored with an algorithm and depends on reports from parents to remove suspicious and inappropriate content. This has caused some concern for parents in the past but if you are going to allow you kids to watch YouTube then YouTube Kids is absolutely a better option.

    That Being Said

    I’m not used to thinking about what apps parents should install but I’m grateful for the question this week to give me the idea for this article. Please remember that all of these apps constantly add new content and features and sometimes that makes them less appropriate for kids. As for right now, though, I give these five apps a green light for your kids’ devices as long as you and they use the apps in the way they’re designed to be used.

  • You Can Now See What Advertising Data Twitter Has on You

    You Can Now See What Advertising Data Twitter Has on You

    A new update today from Twitter allows users to look at the information that’s been gathered about them by Twitter and by “partner” advertisers. Not only can you view this information but you can edit it as well. If you don’t like a category you’ve been placed in, you can simply uncheck that option and opt out of the advertising for that topic. I took it for a spin and was surprised at a few of the assumptions that were made.

    First of all, I was on the list for pretty much every type of food. Packaged food, fresh food, deli meats, non-dairy milk, and the list goes on and on. Apparently I’m an eater. I was also labeled the mother of 3+ children. It’s half right. I’m the FATHER of four kids. Obviously I am being targeted for minivans and pick up trucks and family vacation packages. It was even pretty spot on with my annual income. Kind of crazy, really.

    Here’s how you can check out your Twitter ad data for yourself:

    What Parents Should Know

    It’s pretty safe to assume that if Twitter has this information about you then your other social media platforms have the same information or even more. This info can be helpful to us because it helps connect us with the products we want or need. It can be troublesome, though, to think about all of the data that’s been gathered about us and especially our kids. I recommend you use this new feature as a tool. If you have a Twitter account then use the steps above to go check out your ad data and learn about what you reveal about yourself with your online behavior. Then, talk to your kids about what you’ve found. If your kids have a Twitter account then you should have them go take a look at their information as well. Then have a conversation with them about how they represent themselves online and what this date means in real life. Here are a few talking points.

    1. Advertisers track information from all of your internet activity. Not just what you post on social media.
    2. When you click “I Accept” on any Terms and Agreements for a website or social service you’re agreeing to allow them to have this advertising information.
    3. Since this advertising info is being collected you should keep that in mind while you surf the internet. Remembering that info is being saved could help you think twice about unhealthy internet habits.

    Using a tool as vast as the internet has its tradeoffs. You’re going to have to give a little in order to get the benefits that the world wide web has to offer. In this case, twitter is allowing you to see a bit of what you’re paying. Thankfully, they’ve also given you a bit of control. Being able to turn off advertising options for different topics is a cool feature that I hope will show up on more social media services. In the mean time, remember to keep talking to your kids about how they use the internet and be sure to be a good example yourself.

  • Original TV Content in Snapchat is a Sign of the State of Social Media

    Original TV Content in Snapchat is a Sign of the State of Social Media

    Have we come full circle? Maybe, because live-TV is becoming the trend. Well, it is now that television companies are bringing programming to social networks. Snapchat is the latest platform to announce that they’re bringing content from traditional TV to their feed. The shows will take the form of short-form supplemental episodes to direct Snapchat users to the shows on their networks. Snap has announced that Turner, A&E, ABC, the NFL, Vice Media, Discovery, and Fox are already signed on to produce this original content. Many of these companies are larger networks that can promote content from a large group of TV channels.

    Apparently Snap isn’t interested in advertising disguised as a show. They are after “true original content.” While the hope of the networks is to move users from their short-form shows on Snapchat’s stories to their programming on Television or their streaming services, Snap is hoping to provide more income from these companies. Especially since their first report after taking the company public showed some major losses. (They say most of the losses were due to paying shareholders after going public.) There is already data to support that social media content by TV networks improves their viewership:

    Nielson reports that media companies that publish Snapchat content see “notable audience growth” on TV and other platforms, and that the app delivered a 16-percent boost to the average monthly reach. – Digital Trends

    This means they shouldn’t have any trouble filling the Snapchat stories and discovery section with more of these shows. These short episodes will have ads that play before, during, or after. That’s where the income for Snapchat will come from.

    What Parents Should Know

    I think there are two things parents need to take into account as our social media becomes more inundated with traditional media and advertising. First of all, some parents are concerned with overexposure to media and entertainment. Setting restrictions on what content your child can see is getting harder and harder to do. Adding this content to their social media apps just makes it even more difficult. Moms and dads need to keep an eye on what shows and ads are showing up in these apps and take action if they see something that they’re not comfortable with.

    The second issue is time. Many of us are learning how important it is to watch the amount of time our kids are spending online or consuming TV, games, and movies. With Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and now Snapchat moving towards more original TV style content we are seeing social media become more about the entertainment and less about communication and sharing with friends. It’s important for parents to understand that social media platforms now count as entertainment. If you have a time restriction set on Netflix, Youtube, or Hulu, you should have it on Snapchat and Instagram too. That’s just where we are now. Social Media isn’t a trend. It’s basically the state of the internet in this culture. We have to treat it as such.