Login
The social network TikTok is chockfull of interesting, fun, laugh-out-loud videos shared by creators worldwide. Kids, as well as parents, can easily spend hours glued to the platform. But as with most popular platforms, the fun can eventually turn dark, even deadly, when viral challenges make their rounds.
The latest viral challenge, the “blackout challenge,” first became popular online in 2008 and made its unfortunate comeback in 2021. Before this second round, the CDC attributed nearly 80 deaths to the dangerous online game. In the past month, authorities are attributing the tragic, high-profile deaths of Archie Battersbee, 12, and Leon Brown, 14 to the challenge.
The blackout challenge is a choking game that involves intentionally trying to choke oneself or another to obtain a brief euphoric state or “high.” Death or serious injury can result if strangulation is prolonged. Those doing the challenge do it privately or broadcast their attempt to friends or followers. The CDC also found that most deaths occurred when a child engaged in the choking game alone and that most parents were unaware of the game before their child’s death.
It’s easy to look at a challenge like this and dismiss it thinking your child would never be involved in such a dangerous game. However, in a recent post from HealthyChildren.org on why kids participate in online dares, pediatricians point to the reality that the teen brain is still developing. The part of the brain that processes rational thought, the prefrontal cortex, is not fully developed until a person’s mid-20s. This physiological reality means teens are naturally impulsive and can do things without stopping to consider the consequences.
Another lure that entices teens is that social media’s fast-moving, impulsive environment rewards outrageous behavior—the more outrageous the content, the bigger the bragging rights. The fear of losing out (FOMO is natural for teens.
According to the CDC, signs that a child may be engaging in the blackout challenge include:
Viral challenges will continue to emerge and shock us. There’s no way to anticipate them or control them. However, staying informed about dangerous online trends and keeping the lines of communication with your child open and honest is a big step toward equipping them to live a safe, balanced digital life.
The post Deadly Digital Dares: The Blackout Challenge on TikTok appeared first on McAfee Blog.
It’s a question we get a lot from parents: “How can I keep my kids safe when they are constantly hopping between so many different apps?” We get it, there’s a lot to stay on top and all of it changes constantly. Unfortunately, that question doesn’t have a simple answer. But there are some baseline actions every parent can take to boost their child’s safety on popular apps like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram.
The safety equation is threefold, with every piece as important to your child’s overall safety as the next.
A report released in 2021 by Common Sense Media found that teenagers (ages 13-18) use an average of nine hours of entertainment media per day and that tweens (ages 8-12) use an average of six hours a day, not including time spent using media for school or homework. The report also found that boys spend more time on gaming devices while girls spend more time on social media and that mobile devices now account for 41% of all screen time among tweens and 46% among teens.
With those numbers increasing each year, it’s even more important to understand the different ways parents can help kids stay safe. Let’s break down a few safety basics on each app that are easy to access and use.
TikTok has some impressive safety guidelines broken down into topics parents could easily use as a springboard for some great family discussions. The guidelines and the Safety Center cover issues such as dangerous TikTok challenges and how to deal with other digital threats such as bullying, sexual content, fake news, and hateful behavior. You can increase safeguards using TikTok’s:
Every app functions differently and thus, offers different ways to boost security. Snapchat provides a helpful guide for parents and educators, including safety tips and conversation starters. You can increase safeguards using Snapchat’s:
Instagram offers parents and minor users a library of safety and mental health resources accessible via the app’s Community Tab at the bottom of its home page. You can increase safeguards using Instagram’s:
One of the most powerful safety features is you—a child’s mom, dad, or guardian. Your face-to-face, heart-to-heart connection will speak loudest in your child’s life. If you haven’t lately, ask your child what’s going on in their digital life, who their friends are, what they’ve created to share, and what’s new, hilarious, or trending. You may get some resistance now and then but don’t let that discourage you from pressing in and doing all the things that help keep them as safe as possible online.
The post Setting Up Parental Controls in TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat appeared first on McAfee Blog.
It’s popular. It’s uplifting. It’s creative. It’s entertaining. It can also be risky.
All these words equally describe TikTok, the wildly popular social network that allows teens to create and share videos and find critical connections during isolating times. So what makes TikTok both amazing and potentially risky at the same time? It isn’t the app itself but, rather, the way some kids choose to use it.
Several of those risky behaviors making headlines lately include the all-too-familiar topic of viral challenges. The secondary risk? Underage users’ common practice of bypassing TikTok’s age restrictions, which can put them in harm’s way. In 2020, TikTok classified more than a third of its 49 million daily users in the U.S. as being 14 years old or younger.
A recent webinar hosted by Cyberwise featuring Rick Andreoli, Editor-in-Chief at Parentology, and Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, highlighted the risks of some of the latest challenges. (Listen to the full discussion here). Here are just a few of the many challenges parents should know about.
The blackout challenge. The draw to this challenge is somewhat new to TikTok but familiar in the online challenge realm. It involves users live-streaming themselves as they cut off their air supply to the point of losing consciousness. Sadly, this challenge recently had deadly consequences for a 10-year-old TikTok user, according to Newsweek reports. The incident prompted an outcry for the platform to ban users with unconfirmed ages.
Skullbreaker/trip jump challenge. TikTok users carry out this challenge in various ways, but one of the most common includes three friends side-by-side. As the video begins, everyone jumps or dances as pre-planned, only one kid is targeted to go down as the other two swipe the legs out from under them, causing either a face plant or a backward fall. This popular challenge has resulted in several medical emergencies.
The outlet or penny challenge. Fire officials have issued public cautions around this challenge, which involves sliding a penny into a partially plugged-in phone charger or cord. The goal? See who can record and post the biggest sparks or, yes, flames.
Coronavirus challenge. Here’s a challenge that thankfully didn’t gain too much traction before TikTok banned it. It was created by several “influencers” and encouraged TikTok users to post videos of themselves defying the Coronavirus by licking public objects — such as toilets and grocery store items.
A final reminder for parents is this: Challenge yourself to let go of the assumption that your child won’t try foolish things online. Smart kids also make unwise choices — a possibility that’s easily provoked in an environment where influencers, likes, and peer comments can disguise danger. It’s easy to forget that during the teen years, reason and evolving identity are at constant odds, which means emotion can suddenly commandeer logic. For parents, this means that by getting involved in your child’s digital world, you have the chance influence and guide them when they need it most.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, subscribe to our email, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post TikTok Update: Dangerous Viral Challenges & Age Restrictions appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Only 57% of women in the U.S. are working or looking for work right now—the lowest rate since 1988.
That telling data point is just one of several that illustrate a stark contrast in these stark times: of the millions who’ve seen their employment affected by the pandemic, women have been hardest hit.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), some 2.3 million women left the workforce between the start of the pandemic and January 2021. Meanwhile, the BLS statistic for the number of men who left the U.S. workforce in that same period was 1.8 million. With International Women’s Day here, it’s time we ask ourselves how we can stem this inordinately sized tide of hard-working and talented women from leaving the workforce.
A broader BLS statistic provides a further perspective: a total of 4,637,000 payroll jobs for women have been lost in total since the pandemic began in the U.S. alone. That ranges from executive roles, jobs in retail, and educators, to work in public service and more. Of those jobs lost, about one third of women aged 25-44 cited that childcare was the reason for that unemployment.
Combine that with the fact that globally women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men, and a global gender pay gap of 23%, it’s easy to see why millions of women have simply dropped out of the workforce to manage children and home schooling—even in the instances where employment is available.
Not that this should surprise us. For example, just a few years before the pandemic, research showed that few Americans wanted to revert to the traditional roles of women at home and men in the workplace. However, when push came to shove, the Pew Research showed that women most often made compromises when needs at home conflicted with work. And now we’ve seen that sentiment come home to roost. On a massive scale.
Put plainly, when the pandemic pushed, women’s working lives predominantly went over the edge.
Within these facts and figures, I’d like to focus on the women who are working remotely while caring for their families, whether that’s their children, elders in their lives, or even a mix of both. What can we do, as employers, leaders, and co-workers in our businesses to better support them?
As early as June, Forbes reported that women were reducing their working hours at a rate four to five times greater than men, ostensibly to manage a household where everything from daycare, school, elder care, and work all take place under the same roof. The article went on to cite ripple-effect concerns in the wake of such reductions like the tendency to pursue less-demanding work, greater vulnerability to layoffs, and reduced likelihood for promotion. In fact, one study conducted in the U.S. last summer found that 34% of men with children at home say they’ve received a promotion while working remotely, while only 9% of women with children at home say the same.
In an interview with the BBC, Melinda Gates, the Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, stated her views on the situation succinctly: “I hope Covid-19 forces us to confront how unsustainable the current arrangement is—and how much we all miss out on when women’s responsibilities at home limit their ability to contribute beyond it. The solutions lie with governments, employers, and families committed to doing things more equitably.” I agree. This is a problem for us to solve together.
As for the role of employers and leaders in the solution, some thinking presented in The Harvard Business Review caught my eye. The article, “3 Ways Companies Can Retain Working Moms Right Now” focuses on what employers can do to better support the women in their workforce. The three ingredients the authors propose are:
If we think about the stressors we all face, this simple recipe actually reveals some depth. It takes knowing, and engaging with, employees perhaps more greatly than before. One sentence in the conclusion struck me in particular:
“It is no longer an option for managers to pretend that their employees do not have lives outside of their jobs, as these evaporated boundaries between home and work are not going away anytime soon.”
I see this every practically every day when I meet with my team. I’m sure you’ve seen it as well. With our laptop cameras on for sometimes hours a day, we’ve all caught glimpses into our coworker’s lives outside the office, seen that 7am meeting rescheduled for 8am to accommodate a busy breakfast rush with the family, or even kiddos pop into the frame during a call to say “hi.” What we may not see is just how much of a struggle that could be for some in the long haul.
Enter again those notions of providing certainty and clarity, rightsizing job expectations, and showing empathy. While not the end-all-be-all answers, they provide a starting point. As employers and leaders, if we can minimize the x-factors, adapt the workloads, and show compassion as we navigate the road to recovery, we can retain employees—and at least mitigate some of the stressors that are pushing women out of their jobs and careers during this pandemic. Exceptional employers and leaders have always done this. And now, in exceptional times, I believe it must become the norm.
Likewise, for co-workers, it’s absolutely okay to check in with people on your team, your vendors, your clients, and other people in your network and simply ask how they’re doing. I’ve had many meetings where we informally go around the horn and talk about what’s going on outside of work. The shared experience of working remotely has a way of creating new norms, and perhaps starting a meeting with an informal check-in way on occasion is one of them.
This is an opportunity to listen, simply so someone can feel better by being heard, and so that we can pinpoint places where we can come in and offer some support.
Some challenges women are facing are beyond our capacity to help firsthand, yet we can identify them when we see them. If you or someone you know is struggling, here are a few resources in the U.S. that can help:
The Office on Women’s Health, part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human services, offers a wealth of resources on its website, along with a help line that can provide further resources as well.
The National Institute of Mental Health has an extended list of articles, resources, and links to services that can provide immediate help for people who are struggling to cope or who are in crisis.
A Better Balance is a nonprofit legal advocacy group that “uses the power of the law to advance justice for workers, so they can care for themselves and their loved ones without jeopardizing their economic security.” They offer a confidential help line that can provide people with information about their workplace rights.
The National Women’s Law Center offers complementary legal consultations and with questions about accessing paid sick leave and paid leave to care for a child whose school or childcare provider is closed because of COVID-19.
As women leave the workforce worldwide, we’ve seen organizations lose precious talent, and we’ve seen women sacrifice their livelihoods and career paths. As such, the pandemic has exacted hard and human costs, ones that have fallen on women in outsized ways.
A problem of this scope is one for us to solve collectively. Apart from the bigger, broader solutions that may be forthcoming, as the employers and co-workers of women, there’s something we can do right now: reach out, listen, and act. These days call for more empathy and adaptation than ever before, particularly for the hard-working women who are doing it all—and then some.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, subscribe to our email, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Supporting the Women Most Affected by the Pandemic appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
FreshRSS 