thirtysomething meets the Internet

When I was sixteen I hated Jane Austen. I read Pride and Prejudice, but couldn’t get beyond the anachronism. Every plot point rested on the impossibility of speaking directly and honestly: Mr. Darcy, if you could simply explain yourself to Miss Bennet, I’m...

The upside to teen life online

Frankasaurus has a great blog post about her experiences growing up online, comparing the impact of chat rooms on a socially awkward teenagers with the experience of using social media today. As she writes about her early years in online chat: It wasn’t long before I...

How to stop waiting by the inbox

I recently sent one of those e-mails that leaves you feeling like a shmuck. Not because of anything I wrote, but because I knew I would be obsessively checking my inbox every five minutes until I got a response. There are all kinds of reasons you might find yourself...

A balanced look at the mental impact of social media

“The Internet is distracting and isolating and diminishes our capacity for focused work.” “The Internet is transformative and connecting and is making us steadily smarter.” The conversation about the Internet’s mental and social impact...

Discovering family through a social media crisis

My latest blog post for Harvard Business Review tackles the challenge of surviving a social media emergency. It was inspired by what turned out to be a minor emergency: the earthquake that rattled most of central Canada yesterday. As it happened, I was in Ottawa at...

Patrolling the boundaries in social networking

Rob Jewitt, a lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Sunderland, writes about the university’s recently introduced social networking site for students. Embedded in his description of the site’s features are some interesting reflections on the kinds...

What online music fans learn about online community

Anastasia Goodstein says this about how social networks have changed the relationship among music fans and between fans and artists: While the future of MySpace may be questionable, I have to credit the service with transforming the relationship between artists and...

A techsperiment that puts family tech use in a new light

Last week we conducted a techsperiment on eliminating gadgets from our family time: we swore off using iPhones, iPads and computers from the time we got home (5 or 6) until the time the kids were asleep (8 or 9). We did pretty well during the week, and discovered that...

4 ways online communication can build relationships

Dear Alex: The Internet can be good for relationships. No, it’s not an affirmation. It’s the argument I’d like to make to Alex Lickerman, who recently wrote a post about the Effect of Technology on Relationships for his blog on Psychology Today....