Family Tech Blog

Tag: ministry

  • Partner with BecauseFamily on #GivingTuesday

    Partner with BecauseFamily on #GivingTuesday

     

     

    BecauseFamily exists to inspire and equip parents to be the first influence in the lives of their children. We do that by hosting workshops, seminars, and events. We also do that with this blog. The goal of Family Tech Blog is to help parents be informed about the digital world their kids are growing up in. The blog is free, Living Room Workshops are free, the podcast is free, our YouTube videos are free! All free! We keep them free with the goal of removing any barrier to parents learning the things they need to know to raise digital natives. We can’t keep producing your free content without financial partnership.

    BecauseFamily is a non-profit ministry and can only do what we do because of the generosity of those who give monthly and those who donate at our fundraiser events. Offline, BecauseFamily does even more than what you see on this blog. We are in area schools, educating teachers on how to keep their classroom internet safe. We work with families to set up restrictions and parental controls on their devices. We speak in our area churches and organizations and share the tools and resources we’ve found that can help keep kids S.A.F.E. online. BecauseFamily is working every single day to keep parents informed, teens secure, and kids safe. Your gift to BecauseFamily can help us keep our work going.

    Visit BecauseFamily.org/partnership to sign up to give. Thank you for reading the Family Tech Blog and for sharing this post. We have big plans for our work for families and we can only accomplish these plans with your help.

     

     

  • Musical.ly Updates Adds “Watch Next” Recommendations

    Musical.ly Updates Adds “Watch Next” Recommendations

    Musical.ly announced earlier this summer that they are going to be featuring original shows from networks like NBC, Seventeen Magazine, and Viacom. We’ve written before about how we don’t like their lack of age verification even though the CEO seems to think it’s no big deal. The lip-syncing video app’s newest update will put more previously unseen and original content in front of your kids. The updates include a “Watch Next” feature that will use what’s called “computer vision” to see what they are watching and make a decision about what other videos (original content or user generated) to recommend they view next.

    The No. 1 goal of the new app design is to make “a wide range of content more accessible,” Hofmann said. – Variety.com

    This update also includes a new look and feel to the app and some new ways to personalize your profile page. The most interesting addition, from a parental control standpoint, is the idea that an algorithm is going to be recommending more videos for your kids to watch.

    What Parents Should Know

    This feature isn’t entirely new to streaming apps. You’ve seen Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube feature videos or shows that they think you might enjoy. Their recommendations are based on what you’ve been watching, just like those in the Musical.ly app. The concern, here, is some of what may be available on Musical.ly and the fact that most parents don’t keep an eye on what their kids do on the app. 

    I still don’t recommend parents allow this app on their kids’ and young teenager’s phones because of the lack of age verification. It’s still on our uninstall list and will remain there until they take the risk of predators contacting kids on this app more seriously.