So, have you heard about Offline October? Today was the first I heard about it.
Knowing that teens spend an average of 9 hours a day on their phones, they check their phones 157 times a day, send out more than 208 Snapchats, spend nearly an hour on Instagram, a movement has started to unplug. I don’t know much about the movement other than hearing the news story and visiting the website, but it seems like a good idea.
According to the website, after a number of teen suicides in the Littleton, Colorado community, a group of 25 students got together to come up with a solution to state that enough was enough. The challenge is meant for people to realize the importance of human relationships and the happiness that can come from direct human interaction. The goal of the movement is this: Don’t Post A Story, Live One.
If you are a parent this would be a good conversation to have with your student. What would it be like to go offline for the month of October, or even a week in October, or even 24 hours? Perhaps you could ask your student what kind of influence social media has had on their peers or even him/her. It’s an interesting challenge to consider and talk about.
This week I’ve read a few interesting things about Gen Z.
Generation Z is made up of those who were born 1999 to 2015; they are today’s preteens and teenagers.
A lot has been written about Millenials (born 1984 to 1998) as they are the largest generation in the US workforce (35% of today’s labor force).
There were two different sources for the information and they give two different snapshots of this generation. The first is a podcast by Pro Church Tools, which focused on how Gen Z interacts with through social media. The second source is the Barna Group, which has done some research on the beliefs of Gen Z.
Pro Church Tools talked about how Gen Z uses social media differently than previous generations. The main distinction they made was that Gen Z uses social media for one to one interactions, where previous generations use social media for one to many interactions.
So, where previous generations will post something to Facebook for everyone to see (and to generate more friends), Gen Z will use Messaging Apps, including Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram DMs, along with others.
After I heard the podcast, I sent a message to over a dozen of the high school students in our student ministry. I asked which Messaging App they used most frequently. In the quick survey I took, Snapchat seemed to be the most used, along with Instagram and texting. How Gen Z communicates is a little different from other generations and it is helpful to know if we want to communicate effectively.
The Barna Group study focused on what Gen Z believes. While there were a number of stats shared, these two were highlighted:
24% of Gen Z strongly agrees that what is morally right and wrong changes over time based on society
21% of Gen Z strongly believes sex before marriage is wrong – though they are mostly on par with other generations, with Gen X being the most conservative (26%)
While there is much more in the Barna study, I think those stats give an interesting look into Gen Z. The fact that nearly one-quarter of the generation thinks that what is right and wrong changes based on society should create some interesting conversations. If right and wrong is a sliding scale, it could have some pretty unique implications.
While I think we need to be careful not to stereotype people based on their age and not everyone who was born in a certain generation reflects those characteristics, it is good to have a sense of where our students are.
Barna does note that they only included teens 13 to 18 in their study.
Click on the links above to read all the information that Pro Church Tools and Barna provide. If you work with students or are a parent of Gen Z, it is helpful information to have.
Last week I posted some information about a recent Common Sense Media report where teens shared how much time they spend on social media and their phones. A few days ago, the TODAY show did a special series sharing the same information.
TODAY interviewed a family with three teenagers and talked to them about their social media habits. They also talked to the mother and got her thoughts on how she managed her children’s time on their devices.
The students featured were then challenged to go 48 hours without their smartphones and without using social media. They took the challenge and then share about their experiences. They used words like “disconnected” and “distractions,” but also seemed grateful for time away from the devices.
Common Sense Media just released a report on teens and how they use social media. They asked more than 1,100 teenagers (13- to 17-year-olds) to find out their thoughts and how they use social media. Here are a few highlights:
89% of teens have a smartphone
Snapchat is their main social media site
57% of all teens agree that social media distracts them when they should be doing homework
29% of teen smartphone owners say they have been woken up by their phones during the night
70% teens use social media multiple times a day (up from 34% in 2012)
There is more interesting information about how teens not only use social media, but some of their perceptions as well. For example, 72% of teens think technology companies manipulate users to spend more time on their devices. And, many admit that social media can be a distraction.
Common Sense Media also hasa link for parents with some thoughts and suggestions on addressing the social media issue. Some pretty common sense stuff that many parents are already utilizing, but helpful nonetheless.
There is no doubt that smartphones, technology and social media have impacted our culture and how we communicate. This article provides some good talking points for parents and teens.
Several months ago, I shared an infographic talking about our selfie obsession. It shared some of the following statistics:
74 percent of all images shared on Snapchat are selfies.
1,000 selfies are posted to Instagram every 10 seconds.
There are 93 million selfies each day, which would represent 2,583,333 rolls of film.
19 out of 20 teens have taken selfies
I don’t think any of that is surprising to anyone who frequents social media. For whatever reason, I forgot this stat:
More people died from taking selfies in 2015 than from shark attacks.
Of course, I had to look it up. Here’s what USA Today reports about it: in 2015, 12 people died while attempting to take a selfie; 8 people died from a shark attack.
Here’s how some people died:
a man fell down a staircase at the Taj Mahal’s Royal Gate
a couple fell of a cliff trying to capture a picture
a man shot himself while posing for a selfie
Another website tells us that 49 people have died from selfies since 2014. How crazy is that?
I started looking at this as I was preparing for our small groups this week. We are talking about how excited we are to share the good news with others. As followers of Jesus, we should be energized when it comes to sharing what we know about Him with others. We love to share selfies and social media posts with others. We get excited when our favorite team wins. We rave about the latest movie we watched. But do we (or better yet, do I) look for opportunities to share about news that is both really good and that really matters?
I receive a regular email from a youth ministry organization called YouthSpecialties. They offer training, resources and events for those in youth ministry. This week’s email contained a helpful video of an interview with Jakob Eckeberger, a volunteer youth worker and an employee of YouthSpecialties who is involved in the social media side of things.
Eckeberger offers some tips and insights to parents about social media. He makes some good observations, especially regarding the growth of technology and the fact that we live in a word with no technological boundaries. He makes a comment that phones used to be stuck to the wall and TV’s were huge boxes that sat in our living rooms. Now, it is everywhere.
I thought this was a beneficial resource for parents and wanted to pass it along. You can see all the original content on the YouthSpecialties Blog.
Here’s the actual interview and below the video is the breakdown that YS provided.
3 THINGS THAT INFLUENCE HOW KIDS USE SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY:
1. We live in a world with no technological boundaries.
In my generation, we grew up with some really firm boundaries on our technology. Phones had cords that plugged into walls. The internet was only available through dial-up. Big box televisions were the only way to watch TV shows. Those literal boundaries around our technology helped us come to understand who we were outside of it. Today, there are zero boundaries to our technology. This constant, 24/7 access to technology leaves a huge impact on our kids, inviting things like social media to become an important part of their personal, mental, and sociological development.
2. Social media becomes a window through which we see and experience the world around us.
This means that apps like Instagram aren’t merely used to post pictures. Instagram becomes a window through which we answer important questions like: Who am I? Where do I fit in? Does my life matter?
We aren’t just consuming answers to those questions through the images we see on Instagram, we’re actually creating our responses. We create images to tell stories of our daily life and then compare it to what everyone else is creating. This is a significant thing for kids who are just starting to figure out who there are and where/if they fit in.
3. The fallacy that everything on line is temporary.
Darrel Girardier shared a GREAT POST that touched on this. Apps like Snapchat tap into this idea that content on the internet can be easily deleted. But we know from experience (SNAPCHAT LEAKS 100,000 PHOTOS) that it’s not always the case. Once we post something, we have very little control over what happens to it.
3 THINGS THAT PARENTS CAN DO:
1. Recognize that the issue isn’t the technology, but how that technology is used.
Most of the technology available to our kids today, and specifically things like social media, aren’t necessarily evil. It’s all in how the technology is used. When we give our kids a smart phone, we’re giving them technology that comes with a ton of responsibility. We can’t protect our kids from all the bad ways that this technology can be used, but we can help them live into the incredible amount of responsibility that they’ve been given. To borrow from Walt Mueller, it’s all apart of helping students think critically and Christianly about what they post before they post it.
2. Create boundaries around technology.
Sit down as a family to create blackout times and locations in your house where every screen is turned off, and the phones and tablets are put away. Have family game nights, or dinner times when you intentionally connect with one another. Buy an old-fashioned alarm clock to have in your room so that you don’t need your phone at night.
3. Be the example.
Ideally, parents would be modeling healthy uses of technology for their kids. So set boundaries that your entire family can agree on. That way, as a parent, you can be the first one to step away from your phone or tablet. By being the example, you can show what a healthy relationship with technology looks like.
The YS Idea Labs are filmed on location at the National Youth Workers Convention. Check out more YS Idea Labs HEREand register early for NYWC to save BIG: NYWC.COM.
There have been different voices talking about what social media outlets teens are using. For the last year or so many people have been saying that teens are moving away from Facebook. With the growth of Instagram, SnapChat and other outlets, the fairly common opinion was that students were abandoning Facebook.
As someone who works with students, I’m always looking for ways to communicate with students and I go back and forth between social media outlets. Most times, I use both Facebook and Instagram along with a group texting service.
A recent article from the Pew Research Center shows that teens chose Facebook most often out of the social media options. From a survey of teens ages 13-17, it shows that 41% of teens use Facebook most often. While they are using other social media utilities, it’s interesting to me that Facebook leads the way.
Social media continues to change. I wonder what will be popular when my almost 2 year old reaches the teen years. Right now, Facebook seems to be on top for teens.
I saw a link on Facebook that pointed to the Instagram blog where it was shared that the social media utility has grown to 300 million users. 300 Million! That makes my follower count seem even smaller.
Instagram passed Twitter in number of users a several months ago. I checked today and the number of Twitter users is 288 million with 500 million tweets sent each day. That’s not too shabby.
Pretty remarkable is the fact that Facebook is still quite popular. In December, 2014, the number of daily active users was 890 million.
Those numbers make it pretty clear that people are engaging in a number of different ways through social media. Some folks were saying that Facebook was dying, but it seems they are still going strong. While different age groups might be using different outlets (SnapChat, Instagram, etc), social media is a powerful tool to connect people. It will be interesting to see how it continues to grow and what new trends develop in the future.
This week on Facebook, some one shared a link from one of our local school districts. It was a message to parents and the community about some misuse of social media and also some of the dangers of some of those outlets. The article references a couple of social media outlets that allow users to remain anonymous as they post and communicate with others. It’s another example of how both parents and students need to be aware of how social media is used and to be wise in what is posted.
This week there has been widespread misuse of social media in our schools and community. The content of related messages has been nothing short of disappointing. For this reason we want to bring your attention to a couple of concerning apps called “Yik Yak” and “Ask.fm.”
Part of Yik Yak and Ask.fm’s allure besides the fact that it lets kids communicate with one another; users are anonymous. Users do not have to establish a profile or password. Yik Yak uses GPS location data to bring comments to a user’s feed from other users nearby. In other words, it enables and encourages communities to share information within a geographical boundary. Unfortunately the anonymity of these posts allows individuals who may have malicious intent to write comments about others that may be hurtful, harassing and possibly disturbing. This week this advent in technology created a social media phenomenon we have never seen in Waynesville; for this reason the school district has worked to block Yik Yak from being accessed via our internet network. Additionally we made contact with the company and requested a “geo fence” be placed around our schools; which restricts access to the app or site when a device is in locations identified as schools. This however does not address the issue of misuse outside of predefined geographic boundaries. The founders of Yik Yak have stated, “It’s disheartening to see our app being used in an unintended way.”
Awareness of one’s digital footprint and digital citizenship, for that matter extends across all actions online and off. For example, nearly every social network requires users to confirm their real age before downloading. In the case of Yik Yak, a push notification appears asking users to confirm they’re older than 17 before using the app. Yet many kids under 17 have downloaded and may continue to download this app and others. Remind kids that lying is as damaging to their digital reputation as it is to their offline one.
Parents and students need to be aware that anonymity is an illusion in the digital world. Hiding behind an app like Yik Yak will not prevent criminal charges or school discipline when students make anonymous comments or threats.
We will continue our efforts to educate our students regarding appropriate behavior and the treatment of others, both in the traditional sense and in the context of existing and new technologies. We urge parents to partner with us in addressing this important issue. Here are some suggested steps:
• Check your child’s phones for apps such as Yik Yak, Ask.fm, Snapchat, Kik, Whisper and Tinder, among others.
• Review the settings on your children’s phones and consider blocking apps not rated as age appropriate. For instance, Yik Yak is rated for ages 17+ so if you choose to restrict based on your child’s age; most will not be able to access this app. If they have an iOS device: Go to “settings,” select “general” and tap “enable restrictions.” You can set restrictions for “installing apps” and “in-app purchases.”
• Some kids are really good at getting around device settings. So set rules and get familiar or cyber-wise about what they’re up to online so you can see if your rules are being followed. Software such as SpectorSoft records and replays all of your child’s internet activity and provides a detailed report.
• Have a discussion with your child regarding the respectful treatment of others and to expect respectful treatment in return. The mistreatment and disrespect of others, whether in person or through anonymous means, is never acceptable.
A number of students I know use the app SnapChat. For those who may not be familiar with it, it is a photo sharing app that allows you to share photos with people who follow you, but is supposed to allow you to control how long the photo is available. You can send a photo to someone and set how many seconds they can view it. A recent addition is the SnapChat “story” where an image or video is available to all followers, but for a limited amount of time.
SnapChat claimed that once the time expired, the image was gone forever. As the article below states, this is not true. Adam McLane has been writing about the dangers of SnapChat for a while and posted the article below on his blog about images that have been stolen from SnapChat.
If you are a parent, you should be aware not only of SnapChat, but all the apps our students use. What we think is anonymous and safe, may not be.
If you use SnapChat, you should be aware of what is happening.
If you use social media at all, you should always be cautious of what you post. There seems to be an unending stream of stories of people who have posted something they later regret, whether it was words or images. Be cautious and be wise.
This article has some very good information to read and consider.
Since news of this broke on Friday I’ve received at least 50 texts, emails, and other messages about it.
I’m a little torn. I don’t want to say “I told you so.” More like– “NO!!! I tried to warn people.”
More than 4 million people have read my post, “Why you should delete Snapchat.” The PDF of that post has been downloaded 45,000 times. It’s been taught as an example of a persuasive argument in just about every state in the United States.
But here we are. My efforts weren’t enough.
Somewhere, in the ether of the internet, are 200,000 images posted online without permission. That’s on top of the countless number of Tumblr blogs and other websites dedicated to sharing captured Snaps.
The facts of what I wrote about Snapchat in August 2013 haven’t changed
Snapchat is built on a lie that digital images disappear. They don’t. Once you take a picture with your device and send it to another person you’ve given up control of that image. Itmight get deleted. Once you send it via text, email, or upload it to an app… you lose control.
You think you’re anonymous online, but you aren’t. Whether it’s Snapchat or Yik Yak or an online forum, everything you post online points directly back to you. Everything. That happens at the device level with metadata. It happens with your ISP or mobile provider. And it happens with app developers at the server level. The only one who doesn’t know who everyone is on an anonymous app are the actual users. And, as we’re about to learn with the Snapchat leak, facial recognition is a double-edged sword.
Snapchat was created as a safe way to sext. In the past year since the January 2013 uproar, Snapchat has done a very good job navigating further and further away from it’s genesis story of a safe sexting app. I’ve acknowledged that publicly. They introduced some new features, they’ve said all the right things in the press, they’ve educated users, and– even for me– they truly have done a good job trying to pivot Snapchat from the salacious history, which indeed fueled the initial popularity, to something better and more mature. But they can’t get away from their history or the subset of users who use the app as a safe way to sext. As Mitt Romney learned in 2012… you can’t “Shake the Etch-a-Sketch” and just tell a new story sometimes. If they were serious about getting rid of the subset of users who sext with the app they would invest a few million dollars to develop a feature that detected nudity and blocked it. (ala facial recognition in Facebook or iPhoto.)
The Snapchat leaders seem more interested in blaming others than blaming their app. When they settled with the FCC, it was a misunderstanding and they didn’t own responsibility. When user names and passwords were leaked, it wasn’t their incompetence as developers– it was unscrupulous people wanting access to an unlimited treasure trove of private data. And in this latest leak, it’s not the fact that Snapchat has an open unofficial API that even an untrained developer can crack into within a few minutes then build and release iOS and/or Android apps on the official marketplace— it’s these 3rd parties who are to blame. We all know people like this. Whether it’s entitlement or immaturity or arrogance, they can’t simply admit that their leadership failed, that Snapchat is bigger than they are capable of leading, or that their skills as a developer are not up to snuff. Instead they play the “Hey, I’m just a kid, I make mistakes” card. Snapchat is valued at anywhere from $2 billion to $10 billion. (Though with existing and pending litigation I can’t see it.) Isn’t it time for the leadership at Snapchat to be held responsible? Shouldn’t the board, likely full of VC investors, make a decision to remove the founders and put in place someone capable of finishing the job? Surely, if the eventual goal of Snapchat is to sell it to Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever wants it– the maximum value of Snapchat will never be achieved with a bumbling leadership team who can’t publicly own failure. Duh.
If anything, what I wrote in August 2013 has been validated time and again. Which only leads me to the same conclusion: Delete the app.
Do not trust an app built like this. And do not trust people like this.
There are white hats and black hats in this world, Snapchat wears a black hat.
Beyond “I Told You So”
Right now, nearly every hour, a story is coming out blaming Snapchat for this leak. And they are 100% to blame. No doubt many will join me in calling the Snapchat board to remove Snapchat’s founders for their incompetence.
But, emotionally, I’m just not interested in “I told you so” any more than I truly care about who is the CEO of an app people should just delete.
Just like there wasn’t anything in it for me when I wrote the original post in August 2013, I am not somehow filled with pride that this has happened and I was right all along. (If you didn’t know, I wrote the post in response to requests from a group of moms at a seminar. I couldn’t answer their question about Snapchat sufficiently on the fly, I told them to watch my blog and I’d write some reasons you should delete it.)
So here’s what I’m feeling about the Snapchat leak:
I feel terrible for the people who will now pay a penalty for their lack of understanding on how the internet works. Yes, we should hold Snapchat responsible. And I believe that the FBI will hold those who have leaked images of minors will be arrested for distribution of child pornography.
For those who have had images leaked, I hope they seek and get justice. What was done to them was wrong, it’s against the law, and the perpetrators may have had a good reason (to expose Snapchat’s vulnerability) but that’s not reason enough to violate the law.
I hope the public learns from this leak. For those who will have images posted, I hope they’ve learned that no matter what is promised, anything shared online is ultimately public. Take solace in knowing you aren’t alone. But make a correction in your behavior, as well, so that it never happens to you again.
As a Christian, I believe all humans are ultimately fallible. This isn’t about Snapchat– it’s about us. (Ourselves and the people we thought we trusted.) We make mistakes, people we trust betray us, and we all live in a space between blaming ourselves and blaming others for a lot of stuff. (Not just this leak) This is what we do as humans. While we all have good in us, as we’re made in the image of God, we also have evil in us. Last week I wrote about a new research study about teenagers and sexting. In talking about this with some friends I came to this conclusion: 100% of us are susceptible to sexting. The reason many haven’t is that the opportunity hasn’t arisen in our lives. The hormones of sex and the dopamine rewards of our inborn reward system are simply stronger than us. We all need Jesus. We need his strength to resist. We need forgiveness when we mess up. And we need His hope (and the actions of His people) for freeing the world of sexual exploitation. But I don’t see myself any better than those who have leaked images or had images leaked. And neither should you.
Let’s not forget that the leak is about sexual exploitation and the power of shame in our society. In the coming days it’ll be easy to throw people under the bus and blame them for taking these images. But there’s a big difference between exchanging these images with someone you trust (or are flirting with) and having them published, perhaps with their usernames or real names. Trust me, those affected will feel terrible enough as it is. Let’s not forget that the release of these images is illegal. (Do I even need to say it… DON’T LOOK AT THEM!)
These aren’t 200,000 images. These are 200,000 people. That’s a lot of hurting people out there. Ugh, my heart hurts.
I’ve got more work to do. One thing that’s become clear over the past year is that there aren’t a lot of people actually trying to educate teenagers about social media in a useful way.Scaring them doesn’t work. Instead, I’ve found that helping them understand how basic principles of social media play out in the real world as well as creating some common language with the adults in their lives really, really helps. In so many ways– I’m sick of talking about social media. But I also don’t feel like I can stop because the need is so great.
Why Have You Deleted Snapchat?
I’d love to hear from people who have had enough and deleted Snapchat. Now that you aren’t using it, what are you using instead?
Last week I posted some information about a recent 
Thoughts from a Hoosier Fan in the Buckeye Land 