communities

9Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

PARENTING

What Teens See In Closed Online Communities

Ever since the earliest days of the internet in the 1980s, getting online has meant getting involved in a community. Initially, there were dial-up chat servers, email lists and text-based discussion groups focused on specific interests. Since the early 2000s, mass-appeal social media platforms have collected these small spaces into bigger ones, letting people find their own little corners of the internet, but only with interconnections to others. This allows social media sites to suggest new spaces users might join, whether it’s a local neighborhood discussion or a group with the same hobby, and sell specifically targeted advertising. But the small-group niche community is making a comeback with adults, and with kids and teens. When Discord was initially released in 2015, many video game...

Online Communities Are Important Sources Of Support, But They Also Pose Risks For Young People

Aristotle called humans “the social animal,” and people have recognized for centuries that young people need to be in communities to develop into healthy adults. The ongoing pandemic has caused concern about the effects of isolation on children and teenagers’ social and psychological growth. But while young people today may not be able to gather in person as often as they’d like, they aren’t necessarily isolated. They have long used online communities to explore their identities and conduct their social lives. They’re involved in anonymous hip-hop discussion forums, ADHD support groups on Facebook, biology class group chats on Instagram and comments sections under popular YouTube videos. There are many of these online communities, and collectively they cover a wide range of subjects. The...

How Southern Communities Tackle Summertime Food Scarcity

Without free and reduced school lunch programs during the summer, many children go hungry. Local organizations and churches are stepping up to help to narrow the food gap. Jasmine Caston’s weekdays begin before the sun rises. A single mother of two daughters, Caston works full time and goes to school. Every day is a juggling act. To be sure it goes well, she and her children need to be out of the house no later than 6:20 a.m. Nine months of the year, this isn’t a big problem. The girls are in school. But summertime? That’s a different story. A mythology surrounding school’s summer vacation days is that they’re fun and restorative for children and their families. But this mythology has rarely applied to low-income families of color, especially across the American South, whe...