Bunchland

Slate’s Katie Roiphe talks to the controversial danah boyd about kids online

We all know there’s a lot of wild and crazy stuff on the internet, stuff that we don’t want our kids to see, but that’s no reason to hover over our kids’ shoulders as they go about their business online, says Microsoft researcher danah boyd. (Yes, it’s danah boyd, not Danah Boyd, and it looks awfully foreign, especially at the start of a sentence.)

Slate’s Katie Roiphe met with boyd and afterwards, decided she didn’t need to worry about what her 9-year-old was doing online. (When she snuck a peek anyway, her daughter was simply looking up Harry Potter characters.)

Roiphe writes:  Read more...

What we’re reading today:

1. Do hours and hours of internet usage impact a kid’s development?

2. Are Nir Hod’s paintings of little boys smoking creepy or provocative?

3. We’re not terribly surprised based on the response to Meri Perra’s blogs posts on frozen placenta, but home births are on the rise.

4. A sperm donor in Australia has gone through thousands of dollars and years of legal work to get access to the kid he fathered for a lesbian couple. In addition to supplying genes, he’s paid for a couple years of the girl’s tuition, contributed child support and paid for the fertility treatments that got the girl’s mother pregnant. And now the mom wants his name removed from the girl’s birth certificate.

5. OMG Muppet trailer. Muppets!

Image via Flavorwire