Their bodies may be gone, but their user names, passwords, and online personae linger on.
As our PCs and our emails hold more and more of our most intimate musings, and as boomers face mortality, the question of how to treat our online lives in the afterlife is a big one. I hear more and more [...]

Watch kids play long enough and you learn that there’s nothing new under the sun. Only the packaging changes. The same play types—from pirates to mystery sleuths, from hula hoops to board game favorites—reappear.
This notion of favorite play patterns wasn’t lost on Ted Barnett, the CEO, co-founder, and dad behind the new virtual world, SuperSecret. [...]

If you want to see which way the high tech winds are blowing, you need to be at DEMO, a conference that identifies new entrepreneurial ventures. It’s held every year in March.
But, this year, it’s not just the products that are bellwethers–it’s the entire scene. This year, there are half as many products being DEMO’ed [...]

Parry Aftab is the Pied Piper (Piperess?) of kids’ Internet safety. Long before it was fashionable to invite kids to join in the conversation regarding best practices and safety on the Internet, Parry was not only listening to kids, but she was teaching them to become safe Internet leaders who would influence other kids.
Yesterday, in [...]

I joined Facebook in 2005. My friends were my son and my daughter. My son quickly removed me from his list. That left my daughter.
Fast forward to 2009 when I’ve got 647 friends. I get about five new friend requests a day. For the most part these are people I know—the sum total of 50+ [...]

“Living and Learning With New Media,” a three-year study by the MacArthur Foundation-funded Digital Youth Project, posted its findings in a report on social media and kids. The bottom line? There’s a lot to be learned by spending time on social network sites. Despite what parents and educators may think, online time for teens is [...]

This column appeared in HybridMom Magazine this month. Consider it a cautionary tale of a sleep deprived second-lifer.

My name is Hybrid Snoodle. I’m pretty hip-looking with my army chick/punk-er getup: camouflage t-shirt, black fishnet tights, short skirt, day-glo helmet, and one of those shapely 3D bodies. It’s 2 AM and in a few hours I’ll [...]

Kids are going to need to find some new cyber-hangout because the grownups are moving into the social networking neighborhood. And they mean business.

The other day I needed to get through to someone at a fairly high level at a major toy company to offer them a chance to participate in an event. I [...]

Everyone who’s spent hours asking people they don’t even like to be their friends, writing on walls, or reaffirming the complications of their relationships will get a kick out of this YouTube video that parodies real life. It’s making the rounds of the viral videos, but there’s more to it than a [...]

Many of you have asked me to post a recent copy of my presentation for parents. Here you go. The first part of the presentation sets the stage for why the Internet is causing such a rift between parents and kids. The next part looks at the economics of the Internet, which explains [...]