social media Tag

Posts tagged 'social media'

Resilient Teens: Bend or Break!

“Teens today have an easy life” is a very common phrase. I tend to think that grownups say it because they have forgotten what it means to be a teenager. They say that teens need more discipline, more structure, more rules, more determination and more motivation. I say they need to be more resilient, because teens today have it tough and need to be able to bounce back quickly and very often. They need to bend, so they do not break.

It is easy to look at your own teenage years in retrospect, with the “creative dementia” that comes with age, and say that they were fun. People forget. We are programmed to forget the tough things in order to survive, but expecting our kids to perform where we have failed ourselves is a double standard. The reason I have not forgotten my teenage experiences was that I have been working with so many teens since then. Even if I would have forgotten naturally, they have reminded me that this period brings with it many challenges. The physical-hormonal part of adolescence is a myth that grownups have created to help them forget that the social-emotional side is where they failed.

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The 10,000-hour Rule and Becoming a Facebook Expert

When my son had some friends over for lunch one day, we had a talk about what they did in their spare time. This question always interested me, because my son, Tsoof, never had any spare time in high school. In the last year of high school, he started at 7am and finished around 5pm most days of the week. Since he was in bed by 8:30-9:00pm, there was not much time left for other things.

I was very surprised when some of them told me they spent 3-4 hours during weekdays on Facebook, and on the weekend, they even got to 6-8 hours.

I was shocked!

It made me realize why Tsoof was in a different state to them. Back then, he had no Facebook account, he was a student leader, he was taking a university course, he had 8 before-school and after-school activities every week and he was an excellent student.

I told them that if they understood the 10,000-hour rule, they would see that they were gearing up to be experts in … Facebook.

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How Many Friends Can We Really Have?

In today’s world, when you can have 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, it is hard to determine the true definition of friendship. Knowing 4,000 people (and even only 1,000) does not mean you are friends. It means you know of, or maybe even have been acquainted with, that many people. Sometimes, you share nothing in common other than you happen to have a mutual contact. You might not have even met!

Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at the University of London, tried to find the answer to the question “How Many Friends Can We Really Have?” He found that there is a limit to how many friends we can have with whom we can maintain meaningful relationships. Dunbar claimed that we can only have relationships with an average of 150 people for them to be considered stable, effective social relationships. This is called Dunbar’s Number.

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Moving House Made Easy: Changing Address

Many people who are moving to a new house are stressed about changing their address. No matter how many times you move, you still worry about missing letters, statements, services and people. But there are ways to make this change easier.

The easiest way to manage this is to have the post office divert your mail to your new address for the first 3-6 month, until you can notify all the services that have your previous address. The fee is reasonable and if you keep getting letters over time, you can see who you need to contact to change your address.

Another way to make sure your mail gets to you is to talk to the new tenants in your old house and give them stickers that say, “Moved to a new address, 54 Smith Street, Valley Creek”. The post will either forward the mail to you, or reply to sender with your new address now stuck on the front. All at no charge to you.

Christmas, birthdays, holidays and special events are a good opportunity to send people information about a new address. Make a sticker or a business card with your new address and attach it to your cards.

This post is part 9 of 13 in the series Moving House Made Easy

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Social Media Reality: Look Up! What Are You Missing?

Technology and social media have become a significant part of our life. Recently, I learned some valuable lessons about just how they affect us and the opportunities they make us miss.

My 13-year-old daughter, Noff, is the youngest in our family. Lately, she has been struggling with not having a mobile phone to take to school. To her, mobile phones are very cool. Some kids need them to coordinate pick-up times or for safety on the bus.

Unfortunately for her, she does not need it for any of those things. She so much wants to be part of the mobile phone in-crowd that she uses our old phones to play games. She struggles with not being like everyone else and I struggle with my parenting.

I have some beliefs and rules about social media and I know I need to adjust them to suit the times. I have three kids and I cannot apply the same parenting rules regarding media with Noff that I did with my first two.

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