Family Tech Blog

Tag: live video

  • Instagram’s Comment Controls Can Help Parents Breathe a Little Easier

    Instagram’s Comment Controls Can Help Parents Breathe a Little Easier

    Cyberbullying and suicide are two of the most dangerous symptoms of our digital culture. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among teens and half of all teens admit to having been bullied online. One of the major ways these bullies find their foothold is through comments on social media. My advice to parents is always to keep their kids away from online comments as much as possible. Instagram’s new comment control feature will help moms and dads be more effective. Their new live video reporting feature could even save lives.

    Comment Controls

    Instagram wants you to have control over who sees what you post. They’re also giving you control over what people say about your selfies and food pics. Well, not as much what they say but who is saying it. If you are concerned about random strangers contacting your kids on Instagram through their comments section you can have them set their post comments to private. There are actually four settings, Everyone, Your Followers, People You Follow, or People You Follow and Your Followers. These settings allow you to set a smaller group of folks who can comment on your kids’ posts. This can be very helpful but only if your kid agrees with your motives. These settings aren’t password protected so they can be reset at any time. The best way to ensure they’re keeping their settings as you’d want them is to check in on who’s commenting on them. If you don’t recognize them from your child’s account then you should ask about it.

    Live Video Reporting

    Instagram has also added a reporting feature to highlight when someone may be considering self-harm or harming others while filming a live video. If the video is reported they’ll be shown a message that encourages them to reach out for help. Instagram has trained staff available 24/7 to accept messages from people who reach out via the Instagram Live reporting feature. Their hope is to give friends a way to help friends stay safe and maybe even choose to stay alive. What a great way to be encouraged that people care about you. This feature is also available on Facebook Live.

    What Parents Should Know

    Some social media sites are leaning towards the most public and open atmosphere possible (here’s looking at you Snapchat) which can be dangerous for our kids. Instagram and Facebook seem to be taking notice of our desire to keep some things private or in our chosen circle of friends. Understanding and using these features is very important for parents as we work to keep our kids safe online. Be sure to keep yourself informed.

    If you’re looking for even more info about how to protect your children online, you can contact me (Michael) about hosting a workshop to train you and your friends on family internet safety. Home workshops are free and are available all over the country through Skype. Email me at BecauseFamily@gmail.com to learn more.

  • Social Media Live Video Causes Public Mental Health Concerns

    Social Media Live Video Causes Public Mental Health Concerns

    Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to make Social Media safer for our minds. No, he isn’t trying to protect us from adult images, he’s more concerned with fake news and potential damaging live video. Over the past several weeks there have been some live Facebook videos that have garnered much attention because of the graphic and horrific nature of the content. Videos of murder or suicide have been passed around social media and showed up on many of our Facebook feeds. Once these videos are filmed live, they are uploaded to the account of the person who filmed it and spread across the timelines of their followers. This often leads to more shares and potentially a viral spread of the video. The sudden popularity of these gruesome videos will then lead to thousands or even millions of people seeing them before Facebook can have them taken down. This is where the concern for public mental health comes in.

    Facebook’s response to this issue is the hiring of 3,000 new employees who’s job it is to screen these live videos for any content they may deem a danger to the mental health of Facebook’s users. This team of editors is an addition to a team of nearly 4,500 people who have been screening content. The issue is that live video adds to the challenge of keeping content on Facebook free from graphic images and videos. Just responding to reports that a post may be harmful isn’t enough anymore. Facebook is trying to screen some videos and images before they’re posted. Hopefully, this will make for fewer viral videos that give us nightmares. This will also set a precedent for other social media. Including the platforms that your kids use.

    What Parents Should Know

    If you haven’t had a reason to talk to your kids about what they see online yet, this one should do it for you. With consistant opinions and world-views being tossed around social media, we have to have an active, ongoing conversation with our kids about what they’re seeing on their timelines. Videos are posted and shared long before any of us can see them and remove them and long before we can step in and keep our kids from seeing them. News articles are taken as fact even if they are in the “opinion” category on the news site. This is why my advice is to be a safe place for your kids to come when they see something troubling or have questions about what they’ve seen. 

    Whether it’s violence, bullying, or sexual content, what we see can’t be unseen. In a world where technology is changing faster than we can keep up it’s critical to be the one your kids come to when they’ve seen something that will stick with them. If the companies who develop these social media platforms are concerned enough to hire more employees to help solve the problem then those of us whose family use the service should be on top of setting up safeguards, learning more about these tech topics, and keeping the lines of communication open.

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  • Should Parents Worry about the Video Messaging/Live Video Craze?

    Should Parents Worry about the Video Messaging/Live Video Craze?

    Periscope, Facebook Live, Twitter, Houseparty, Squad, Instagram, and now here comes Ping Pong. These are all ways to record or live broadcast your life or segments of your life for the entire internet to see. Our teens and young teens are eating up this new live and sometimes raw form of communication. I’ve mentioned Musical.ly a few times in the past and warned parents about some of the risks associated with the app. This week, Musical.ly has announced the release of a their newest application, Ping Pong. This app allows users to record and send video messages much like Snapchat or Instagram Stories.

    Musical.ly launched Live.ly, a live broadcasts app last fall and have seen major success in adoption of the service. In fact, there are many users who are now just live streaming almost every moment of their lives. Users can create their own channel for people to follow and be live online at any given moment. The issue here is that some of Musical.ly and Live.ly’s most popular users are young people who aren’t even old enough to have their own social media page. Apparently that doesn’t bother the CEO of Musical.ly at all.

    While Ping Pong hasn’t fully launched yet (it’s available but you can’t create an account) it is being rolled out soon and will be another app that parents must understand.

    What a Parent Should Know

    Live video and video messaging are now mainstays of the social media your teens and young teens are using every day. It’s important to remember that they are able to broadcast and watch broadcast of everything that happens in their and their friend’s daily lives. For most young people this is going to be trips to the coffee shops, dumb stunts in the gym at school, and evening’s at friend’s houses goofing off. Unfortunately it can mean other, less savory, content as well. These apps are rated for ages 17 and up because the content is provided by the users of the services. This means that parents are expected to be monitoring what their kids are doing on these applications. Allow me to second that expectation. Use monitoring software like TeenSafe and filters like NetNanny to guard your teen from unwanted content. This will protect them while giving them full use of the social media they want to have access too. They will just be using it under your boundaries.

  • Instagram Adds Live Video to their Stories Section

    Instagram Adds Live Video to their Stories Section

     

    It’s no surprise that we are covering more news from Instagram, they’ve been busy keeping up with the likes of Snapchat. Adding Stories and disappearing private messages were just a couple of their latest moves. Today they’ve released the first change that will allow them to pass up Snapchat in the Social Media “engagement” game. Today, they added Live Video!

    Live video has been available on Facebook for a while now so it’s a bit of a no brainer that it’s been added to their other assets. There are a few major differences between Facebook and Instagram’s live video. First, it’s the fact that Instagram’s videos disappear. Unlike making a live video on Facebook, where it will upload to your timeline and allow you to share it, Instagram’s version will end and never be seen again when you hit finish.

    Another major difference is the inability to share while you’re broadcasting. These features may change but for now they set it apart quite a bit from Facebook’s live option. The ability to go live at all is super trendy and sets Instagram apart from Snapchat which is a major win for them. It doesn’t change our view on Instagram but it can teach us a couple of things.

    What Parents Should Know.

    Snapchat is in every Social Media conversation right now, even when we’re talking about a different app. When apps like Instagram work so hard to keep up with what’s popular it’s a major sign for us as parents. We can see that live video is becoming popular on all Social Media platforms. The transparency and realism of Live Video is en vogue these days. Your kids want something real, raw, and in their face.

    As parents we have to keep this in mind while we raise our kids and keep them safe online. They are looking for something real. We have to be real with them when we are teaching them how to make good decisions. Whether it’s decisions online or offline they have to be taught in a way that your kids know is real. Your transparency and openness are critical because they can see through any facade.

    Usually I try to give you tech advice on Safe.BecauseFamily.org, but this post is all about using the trends in technology to help us learn more about our kids.