social media

The new year is a good time to reflect, recharge, regain your momentum and renew your commitment to achieving goals.  It’s the time when many are thinking about changing careers or simply finding a new job. It’s a great time to jump-start the new you!

Can millennials take a joke? Perhaps an SNL skit or an online parody passes muster, but sometimes a topic can hit too close to home, igniting a flame war on social media. That’s what happened to Los Angeles Times humor columnist Chris Erskine when he in effect told millennials to grow up.

As a college professor, I made a radical decision about a year ago: I banned smartphones and laptops during class. Honestly, I can’t compete with Facebook or an Internet flash sale or texts from friends. My students now take their notes the old-fashioned way with pen on paper. And it turns out that students who take notes by hand learn better.

In accepting the Oscar for best supporting actor last week, J.K. Simmons didn't dwell on thanking the Academy and the Whiplash crew. Instead,  he exhorted, “Call your mom, dad everybody. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive, call them! Don’t text, don’t email. Call them. Listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you."

A selfie can’t change the world — or can it, just a little?

A couple of years ago at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, I met a guy in a superhero costume promoting his start-up, which he cheekily called Dead Social. His company’s mission statement: “Prepare for a Digital Death and Build Your Digital Legacy.”

The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan famously noted. And in a touch screen world, our relationships with our adult children improve with the more communications media we use. While millennials enjoy chatting on the phone or Skype, they also want parents to “lurk” on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media so we can follow (not intrusively, though) their lives.

Updated 11/18/14

News, discoveries and ... fun

Over the years, Kimberly-Clark has used rugged NFL players and glamorous  actresses to promote its Depend brand of leak-proof underwear as not just embarrassment-preventing but as stylish, too. But now the company is really pushing the envelope, so to speak, with a provocative "Drop Your Pants for Underwareness" campaign.