Even the Drug Companies are Monitoring Your Social Media

Switched drugs because they were too expensive or you didn’t like the side effects and told a friend or family member about it, or your doctor, on some kind of social media medium? Well, the big pharmaceutical companies are listening. They want to monitor perceptions about a product, shape ad campaigns, and gauge community receptivity. They are also using real-time healthcare databases using “de-identified” (meaning your name is not included) records to analyze diagnoses and switches in using drugs.

And Texting Wins!

A recent survey of high-school students finds that they text more often than they use other forms of social media, such as Facebook and YouTube. Data from 7,000 graduating high-school seniors show that 87% report texting daily, while 61% say they use Facebook daily. Results show that LinkedIn is getting the fewest visits by teens.

Facebook Rolls Out Slingshot

Facebook, in response to the Snapchat app craze that allows users to send self-destructing photos to friends, has rolled out Slingshot, it’s own service to do the same thing. The new app aims to create a sense of community by encouraging users to send a photo or video to a group of friends. Its unique twist is that the recipients are required to share a visual moment of their own before they can see what was sent to them. As with Snapchat, savvy recipients can use their phones’ screenshot features to save the file, which opens up the possibility of cyberbullying, because images that are supposed to self-destruct don’t necessarily do that.

Using Social Media to Advance Yourself

Rosabeth Moss Kanter brings up an excellent question in her blog post on how to use social media to advance yourself, your cause, and your career. She says that instead of asking how to use social media to advance each of those instead you should be thinking about how to advance the cause, the company, or the profession. As she points out, social media is already very self-serving. Instead, you want to be seen for something bigger than just promoting yourself. She says that instead of inflating what you have done, your insights, and accomplishments you should report your actions in a straightforward, non-hyped manner, and in turn, your virtues will speak for themselves. Then, when you ask your social media contacts for help - finding a job, attracting funding for a cause of new business venture, getting attention for an event—people will be more willing to help because they’ve experienced something positive. Social media helps you reach strangers, but strangers don’t have to engage with you unless they want to.

That seems like common sense, but as Kanter points out, so is keeping personal information personal. It should be widely known that indiscreet photos or inflammatory remarks can come back to bite you, but it also seems to be widely forgotten.

Why What You Do in the Real World Matters on Facebook

A pair of studies by researchers at the University of Colorado-Denver explored the ways in which people break connections with one another on Facebook. They found that high-school friends, acquaintances, and co-workers are particularly vulnerable to being "unfriended," and not always for the content posted. "We found that people often unfriend co-workers for their actions in the real world rather than anything they post on Facebook," one researcher said.

Social Media Not Influencing TV Watching As Much as Hyped

The Nielsen-backed Council for Research Excellence has found that the vast majority of people watching prime-time TV are NOT using social media at the same time, even though that is what the folks at Twitter and Facebook would like us all to believe. Only 16.1% of viewers said they took part in "second screening" through mobile devices and laptops, with 11.4% posting to Facebook and 3.3% to Twitter. Also, social media prompted just 6.8% of respondents to check out a new show.

When ‘Liking” Means You Have Voided Your Right To Sue

Many little ones love Cheerios, but might downloading a coupon for the product void your legal rights? General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.

Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.

Is this a new trend? Other companies besides General Mills are going in this direction. Big food companies are concerned about the growing number of consumers filing class-action lawsuits against them over labeling, ingredients, and claims of health threats. Almost every major gathering of industry executives has at least one session on fighting litigation. Of course, you have to wonder if this will spill over into individual cases. Will it be that you can’t claim cyberbullying if someone you have friended on Facebook starts harassing you?

Being Popular Doesn’t Protect Teens From Bullying

New research from The University of California, Davis and Pennsylvania State University indicates that becoming more popular can actually increase a teen's risk of getting bullied rather than making them immune to attack. Researchers found, using 4200 high school students in North Carolina as subjects, that as kids climb the social rungs, they are more likely to bully and be bullied – or at least until they reach the top. The top 4 percent of the social elite were above the fray, the study found. These students weren't likely to be bullied, nor were they likely to bully others. "They have less incentive to be aggressive because they have nowhere else to climb," Professor Bob Faris wrote. "They have the luxury of being nice to everyone."

Faris also indicated that the important takeaway for parents is that they can’t assume that teenagers who seem relatively well adjusted and have a lot of friends are in the clear.This study is a reminder that it's worth checking in on them even though everything appears to be going along just fine.  Another insight is that the best way to combat bullying, may be to teach kids that social rank doesn't matter, and fighting your way to the top while putting down others isn't worth it, Faris says.

Yik Yak App Digitally Excluded From Schools

When we last covered the Yik Yak social app in this blog , it was creating havoc on high school campuses as an anonymous weapon of chaos and bullying. The app, which uses GPS location data to bring comments to a user's feed from other users nearby, was envisioned as a "virtual bulletin board," or a messaging system that would serve as a blank slate for random thoughts or postings. Unfortunately though, high schoolers did not seem to be able to handle that kind of anonymous power so the creators took some bold steps to intervene.

First, they got an expedited review on the Apple site that allowed them to quickly change the app's age rating to 17+ (parents take note: you can place restrictions on under-17-year-old children's phones that block them from downloading apps based on this rating). Second, they found a company that helped them apply "geo-fences" -- or virtual geographic perimeters – that allowed them to block students from being able to use the app when on or near a school. As of now, 85% of the high schools in the US have been blocked. (If your school hasn’t, you can contact Yik Yak directly and one of its owners will manually input the school's location.) It is an interesting fix – and it will be fascinating to see what it does to Yik Yak, it’s popularity, and what requests schools may make to have other apps similarly disrupted.

Teachers and The Battle Over Social Media

Parents, students, and teachers seem to be in a constant battle about what to do about social media these days. Jim Dillion, Director the Center for Leadership and Bullying Preventation, though, offers an alternative view to consider for those who see the rise of social media as a negative force that replaces human-to-human connection with a virtual one.Instead of viewing social media and technology as a problem that needs fixing in order to re-establish the status quo, he proposes that teachers embrace it as a way to learn something about students, their needs, and how they might be better educated. Parents may also find they have a different view of social media and kids after reading the reflection points he includes in the article. It’s well worth the time.