Monday, October 12, 2015

How many selfies could you take in one day?

When my son was born, my Mom asked me to take a picture of him every day. So I did. (Thanks, Mom!) Obviously, I took more than one picture of him most days, but I can say that I have a record of my son every day of the first year of his life - that's 365 photos of his daily changes from being a day old to being a year old.

And that number pales in comparison to the number of selfies teens take in a week.

I've been reading the results of the #Being13 study by CNN, which explores the amount of dependence that today's first-time teen has on social media: Some check their feeds more than 100 times a day, and others can take up to 150 selfies a day. The division between the online world and reality is so blurred for the 13-year-olds involved in the study, that it is hard to keep up.

One of the more disturbing items in the data was around what information is being shared: All those horror stories of nude photos and personal information being shared across a broad audience that came out a few years ago among high school students has unfortunately hit the early teen world. All of that additional pressure at an early age has side effects that can't even be quantified yet.

But there is hope: Parent involvement. Parents who monitor their tween's social feeds can basically erase the negative effects of living an exposed life online and can prevent issues from escalating.

Read the revelations from the study at CNN's Website and let me know in the comments what your life was like at 13.

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