NPR’s List of the Best Teen Literature

Posted on August 10, 2012 at 3:59 pm

NPR has a great list of the best books for teens, from a poll conducted by the publishing trade association. YA (young adult) readers are a bigger part of the book market than ever and books like the Twilight, Hunger Games, and Harry Potter series were first popular with teens and then became worldwide phenomenons — and box office-record-breaking franchise film series. The top 100 includes those books, of course, but also classics from the 1960’s and earlier: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hobbit, Catcher in the Rye, Call of the Wild, and Fahrenheit 451. More recent authors include Sherman Alexie, John Green, and Stephen Chbosky, whose listed book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is the basis for a film opening later this year.

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14-Year-Old Teaches 17 Magazine About Real Girls

Posted on July 9, 2012 at 8:00 am

I used to tell my daughter that she could read fashion magazines as long as she understood that everything in them, the articles and the ads, was intended to make her feel bad about her looks and buy a lot of stuff she did not need. Now a 14-year-old girl has persuaded one of the most successful and influential magazines for teenagers to show girls as they really are, with all of the photos in the magazine showing “real girls and models who are healthy,” and promising to “celebrate every kind of beauty.” I especially like their commitment to putting pictures from their photo shoots on Tumblr so girls can see the edits and their promise not to make changes to the models’ faces or bodies.

Julia Bluhm started an online petition after girls in her ballet class were complaining that they were fat. With 25,000 signatures in just a few days, she made a compelling case and Seventeen invited Bluhm and her mother to visit them. Bluhm says she will now work on Teen Vogue. This is a wonderfully empowering development, not just because it will show girls more realistic models but because it shows girls they can make a difference on issues that concern them. Hurray for Julia Bluhm!

Parental Alert: Pornography and Abuse on Teen Websites

Posted on June 15, 2012 at 12:53 pm

Habbo Hotel, a popular social media website for teenagers, is reopening after suspending its interactive functions following an investigative journalist’s reports of abuse.

Following Tuesday’s announcement that mobile app Skout temporarily closed its under-18 community amidst rape allegations, Finnish virtual world Habbo Hotel has shut down its chat functions after “reports of abusive behaviors.”

Marketed as “the world’s largest social game and online community for teenagers,” the game boasts 10 million visitors per month to the virtual hotel, where children as young as 13 years old create avatars, chat publicly or privately with other users, and buy credits to furnish animated hotel rooms.

But the service made headlines this week after Rachel Seifert, a producer with the U.K.’s Channel 4 News, said she encountered pornographic chat, avatars engaged in cyber sex, and more. Seifert spent two months investigating the goings-on of the seemingly innocent game. While posing as a young girl, Seifert was asked to strip fully naked, “and asked what would I do on a webcam,” she said.

Seifert had similar sexually charged and inappropriate experiences all 50 times she played the game.

I looked into this after receiving a spam email “accepting” a registration at Habbo I had never signed up for. The recent announcement that Facebook plans to expand to include middle schoolers adds to the concern about the combination of poor judgment, increased independence, and anonymity in social media. Parents should be on the alert and make sure they have meaningful conversations and oversight of their children’s online activities and relationships.

7.5 Million Underage Facebook Users — New Report

Posted on May 10, 2011 at 10:30 am

Of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million of them were younger than 13, according to projections from Consumer Reports’ latest State of the Net survey. Facebook’s terms of service require users to be at least 13 years old.

Also among this group of minors using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under. Consumer Reports survey found that their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies. It is not only the underage users who are at risk. Children’s unsafe use of Facebook can expose the data on their parents’ computers and smart phones to abuse via identity theft and other privacy violations.

The report on Internet security, which includes the full survey results and advice for parents of Facebook users, is featured in the June issue of Consumer Reports and on www.ConsumerReports.org.

Social media is just one of the many ways consumers expose themselves and make themselves vulnerable to becoming a victim of identity theft or having to replace their computer. Earlier this year, Consumer Reports surveyed 2,089 online households nationwide and found that one-third had experienced a malicious software infection in the previous year. Consumer Reports estimates that malware cost consumers $2.3 billion last year and forced them to replace 1.3 millions PCs.

Consumer Reports recommends:

Being Social but Safe

Monitor a child’s account. Parents should join their children’s circle of friends on Facebook. If that’s not feasible with an older teenager, keep tabs on them through their friends or siblings, as did 18 percent of parents surveyed who had 13- to 17-year olds on Facebook. Parents should delete a pre-teen’s account or ask Facebook to do so by using its “report an underage child” form.
Utilize privacy controls. Roughly one in five active adult Facebook users said they hadn’t utilized Facebook’s privacy controls, making them more vulnerable to threats. Facebook’s privacy controls may not prevent every breach but they help. Users should set everything they can to be accessible only to those on their friends list. Enabling a public search allows users’ profile picture, friends list, activities and more to be visible online outside of Facebook.
Turn off Instant Personalization. Facebook has been adding sites to its Instant Personalization feature, which automatically links accounts to user-review sites such as TripAdvisor (travel) and Yelp (local businesses). Users who don’t wish to share what cities they have visited with their Facebook friends via TripAdvisor should disable Instant Personalization, which is turned on by default.
Use apps with caution. Even though Facebook says in its privacy policy that it doesn’t share identifiable information with advertisers without permission, connecting with an app or website allows access to general information. Users should check the list of apps they are using and define the settings for each one listed. Decide what information the app can access, when possible, or perhaps eliminate the app altogether. Also, users should limit access to their information that is available to apps that friends use.

Protecting a Mobile Phone

Use a password or PIN. The easiest way to protect data against loss is with a personal identification number (PIN) or password on a phone. Most cell and smart phones have an option to do so under settings or security options. Consumer Reports’ survey found that only about 20 percent of mobile phone owners using their phones in potentially risky ways such as storing sensitive data had taken this precaution.
Take advantage of security services. Many smart-phone makers offer free security services such as over-the-air backup, remote phone locating, remote phone locking, and erasing of data and account information. There’s software available that allows users to lock the phone or erase data remotely. Users who don’t need the phone’s GPS feature should disable it.
Use caution when downloading apps. Only download apps from recognized sources. Make sure many others have already used it and read reviews before downloading it. Also, scrutinize the permissions an app requests. If any seem questionable, such as a request to track location when there’s no obvious need for the app to do so, don’t download the app.

Tough Teen Girls in the Movies of 2010

Posted on January 5, 2011 at 3:52 pm

The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday has a terrific year-end round-up about an unusual trend in 2010 movies, tough teen girls. From gritty dramas like “Fish Tank” and “Winter’s Bone” to ultra-violent fantasies like “Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In” (both starring Chloe Grace Moretz, who was a wise and confident middle schooler in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid“), from a fairy tale (“Tangled“) to a western (“True Grit“), to an armor-wearing, dragon-slaying Alice in Wonderland, teen girls were brave, strong, adventuresome, and bent on justice.

Why now? The success of “Twilight” helped show Hollywood that young women wield considerable force at the box office, so studios have understandably started to pay attention. Actresses like Angelina Jolie (“Salt,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) and Milla Jovovich (“Resident Evil”) have proven that action isn’t just the sole purview of Y chromosomes. And we may be seeing a generational shift whereby writers and directors raised with an expectation of gender equality bring that sensibility to their filmmaking.

This is a trend I hope to see more of in 2011.

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