Tumblr: That Other Teen Addiction

Feb 06, 2013

Life is Tumblr

A recent survey showed Tumblr is slightly more popular now than Facebook among the 13 to 25-year-old crowd. Yes, 59 percent say they use it regularly, while only 54 percent say they use Facebook regularly.

All of the sites in the survey, which included Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, were used more regularly by the 13 to 18-year-olds compared to the 19 to 25-year-olds. Seems younger kids have more online time than college-aged young adults.

Facebook gets a lot of press, but a fair amount of "older" folks haven’t even heard of Tumblr. Tumblr was first conceived as a blog site, but it’s mainly used by teenagers now for re-posting cool photos. Some teens don't even know that you can post text on Tumblr.

With the popularity of Snapchat and Instagram, the current teen trend seems to include sharing photos they’ve taken of themselves, known as “selfies,” rather than writing angsty blog posts or even Facebook status updates to express their feelings.

Twitter, which has a 140-character limit per tweet, is only half as popular as Facebook and Tumblr, and about as popular as Instagram. Perhaps writing is deemed too time-consuming.

Most parents focus on Facebook but forget about Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, or any other number of popular web sites where teens live online.

But, all of these web sites contain offensive content and/or expose your child to strangers, stalkers, and pedophiles. What should a parent do?

Parents should consider regularly monitoring children online. That is done with conversation and dialogue, plus becoming a "friend" in your child's online social network.
Parents need to constantly remind kids that posting pictures or personal information isn’t the best way to share on the Internet. All information has a very long shelf-life on the Web.
If a parent is very concerned, there are a few parental control softwares available today that feature social media monitoring tools . Check out the list on Top Ten Reviews.