Latest publications
Read my latest stories for The Wall Street Journal, Passcode, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and more.
Popplet brings mind mapping to the iPad
"It's only for content consumers, not content creators." That charge was leveled at the iPad even before it hit the stores. Now that it's in all our grubby little hands, there seems to be some truth to the argument. My husband has gotten great mileage out of his iPad...
5 questions that will change how your grown (or little) kid thinks about technology
If you want to affect your kids’ relationship to technology, you need to do it through conversation, and not by handing down edicts or advice. Here are five questions you can ask your kids to start a meaningful conversation about technology, whatever their age.
How to use your RSS reader to enhance community
How to use your RSS reader so that it strengthens your connection to community, and helps build the kind of society you want to live in.
Your social media friends are your real friends
Diana Adams is one of a growing number of social media junkies who have experimented with taking some time off from the web. She describes "hitting a wall" with her social media use and online relationships, and taking 8 days off from the net so that she could put...
Techsperiment day 1: the difficulty of unplugging with kids
24 hours into our vow to unplug -- for just 3 hours a day! -- and I am the weakest link. We've sworn to give up computers, iPhones and iPads between 6-9 every night ("family time") but it's day one and I'm already struggling. And that's after our daughter did a good...
How to unplug as a parent: a techsperiment
The best site for reviews of kids’ games & movies now has apps too!
A few friends have recently asked me for iPhone app recommendations for kids. My friend Annemarie took suggestions from me and others, and wrote up a fantastic list of iPhone apps for kids and parents on yoyomama. I shared my own list of 12 iPhone apps for toddlers...
Online activities reinforce offline social connections
How did I miss this one? In 2008, StatsCan published a very useful paper on How Canadians' Use of the Internet Affects Social Life and Civic Participation. It speaks directly to the questions about the Internet's impact on social capital that have been a big part of...
Your therapist’s Facebook page could be harming your mental health
I've been part of many recent conversations about whether Facebook is harmful to our mental health -- and perhaps a new source of business for psychotherapists. Now I've discovered the other side of the coin: a debate about whether therapists' use of social media is...
Strategies for managing online distraction from Steven Pinker
Psychologist Steven Pinker has a terrific op-ed in the New York Times this morning, responding to the recent flurry of press about how the Internet is destroying the quality of our attention and thinking. Here's my favorite part of his article: Yes, the constant...