Teenagers texting

What Parkland Tells us About Teens and Social Media

While America’s parents have been wringing their hands over online safety, kids have steadily taken to social media, smartphones, and other digitally-enabled technologies to seek and promote their physical safety.
Email friendship

How Facebook Revived the Epistolary Friendship

Would today's online, social media-based friendships look familiar to the letter-writing friends of earlier centuries, when epistolary friendships were also common?
Selfie in Paris

What to Do When Social Media Inspires Envy

In the case of envy, social media works in three closely related ways: by increasing proximity, by eliminating encapsulation and by rejecting concealment.
Dating algorithm

How to Build the Netflix of Love

There's no shortage of online dating sites and apps. But there’s one common problem with these services: they’re all looking at the wrong data. Dating apps should take a hint from Netflix's algorithm.
Woman using computer in the 1970s

Better Writing Begins with the Right Tools

Word processing software has not only changed the way we write; it's changed the way we read. It pays to think about what we want from our writing tools.
Online distress

The Internet Needs a “Handle With Care” Protocol

Emotion can be difficult to parse online. Why not adopt a common protocol that lets our fellow internet citizens know our emotional state?
technology gift

What Gift-Giving Research Tells Us About Giving Tech Gadgets

Whatever the gift, it’s worth stopping to think about how much we really want to entangle our gift-giving with the digital realm.
Charlie Rose Louis C.K. Kevin Spacey

#MeToo and the New Era of Internet Celebrity

We may want to support the #MeToo victims, but many of us also feel allegiance to our favorite celebrity. And the internet is at the heart of that dynamic.
Librarian computer lab

How Librarians Can Be Digital Mentors for Teens

The role of librarians, archivists, media trainers, and other information professionals in fostering a healthy digital world for the next generation.
speech bubbles me too

Finding the Words We Need to Talk About Sexual Assault and Harassment

"Me too." As the conversation around sexual assault has spread, it's become clear that not everybody is prepared to talk about such a difficult issue.