MediaSmarts Blog (10/01/2010 - 10/31/2010)

MediaSmarts Blogger

Matthew Johnson, Director of Education

See all of Matthew's posts.

MediaSmarts Blogger

Thierry Plante, Media Education Specialist

See all of Thierry's posts.

 

MediaSmarts Blogger

Andrea Tomkins, MediaSmarts Mom

See all of Andrea's posts.

 

  • Ever since Cronus the Titan tried to swallow his son Zeus, parents have feared being supplanted by their children. (It didn't take.) But it's only in the last few generations, as the rate of technological progress has accelerated, that children have grown up in a world significantly different from the one their parents knew, and it's only very recently that parents have seen their surpass them while they were still in the single digits. Thanks to digital media, the world is changing so rapidly today – consider that five years ago there was no Twitter, ten years ago no Facebook and fifteen years ago no Google – that even those of us who spent our childhoods programming our parents' VCRs can feel left behind.
  • Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker article “Small Change” has set the blogosphere buzzing with its strongly stated argument that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter will not usher in a new age of social activism, as some digital evangelists have proposed, but that they and the relationships they foster are actually detrimental to real social change. As Gladwell puts it, "The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo."

Sign up for MediaSmarts news

 

How to Support Us

Interested in supporting MediaSmarts?

Charitable Registration No. 89018 1092 RR0001

Find out how you can get involved.

Learn more

 

Follow Us