Latest news with #SteffiCao
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Your Teen's Post Went Viral. Now What?
With the rise of TikTok and ever changing algorithms, the odds of going viral online are higher than ever before. Whether it's a strategic play for views or a throwaway post that catches fire, going viral can be both exciting and terrifying. As a parent in the 21st century, it can be difficult to know exactly how to handle this very niche phenomenon. 'Nowadays, [anyone can go] viral, whether from a post of their own or a post of someone else's,' Gen Z culture writer and critic Steffi Cao explains. When a post goes viral, it spreads very quickly, often within hours, with high levels of engagement. This can happen to anyone at any time and, if your teen's profiles aren't on private, it means their videos can be viewed by millions of people around the world. Sans a parenting guidebook on all things social media, it can be difficult to know how to handle your teen going viral. It's something that many people aren't mentally or emotionally equipped to deal with, especially young people. Below, we spoke to experts on how to cope if your teen goes viral. While excitement and pride might be the first emotions teens feel when they go viral, Dr. Tamara Soles, child psychologist and director of The Secure Child based in Montreal, Canada, says that anxiety, embarrassment, and overwhelm can also be triggered as a response to sudden fame. 'Going viral can be thrilling, but it also puts them under an intense spotlight that even adults are not always emotionally prepared for,' Dr. Soles explains. While the validation of likes and comments can be exciting at first, some might find it difficult to deal with, especially if there's harmful comments involved. 'Sudden internet fame can trigger anxiety, sleep issues, obsessive screen checking, and even depression—especially if the attention turns negative,' Dr. Soles says. 'Teens may also struggle with identity confusion or feel pressure to replicate the success of a viral post and continue to grow their account.' In addition to emotional distress, Cao says that going viral has several other risks, including harassment, doxxing, and hate campaigns. She also notes that there's 'the general stripping of privacy and a larger digital footprint that we know now is likely being used for surveillance and data mining, now including for generative AI.' Another concern can be a phone addiction or dependency, with your teen constantly checking and refreshing their apps to stay up-to-date with the latest comments. With apps designed specifically to target the human reward system, going viral can increase the desire for quick dopamine hits. While some kids might want to continue to engage and capitalize on the attention to grow their accounts, Dr. Soles recommends parents help their teens find ways to break out of that instant gratification mindset. In collaboration with your teen, she recommends creating a social safety plan that can involve strategies such as: Avoid reading comments Have someone else delete harmful comments Turn off commenting Switch the account to private Limit access to the phone in general 'It's important to reassure [your child] that it's okay to step back. Keep routines consistent and provide space to process their feelings,' Dr. Soles adds. There are some opportunities where going viral can be used positively. These include using this temporary fame to raise money or awareness for specific causes, a boost in confidence, the opening of creative or career opportunities, and even connecting with supportive communities. Cao notes that many people are often looking for opportunities for virality to help launch their careers as influencers, receive free merchandise from PR companies, or even age-old bragging rights among their friends. There are several protective measures you can take if your child is being harassed online. First and foremost, Dr. Soles recommends documenting the harassment, reporting it to the platform, and blocking offenders. You can even contact school officials or law enforcement if the case is serious enough. Cao adds that deleting your teen's account or switching them to private helps guarantee their information will not be used as public data and helps avoid random accounts from messaging or harassing your teen. Logging off is one of the simplest ways to help avoid unwanted situations. 'The internet, even if it is more of a parallel reality that travels with us in our pockets—no longer this tethered place—is still something we can choose to opt out of,' Cao help keep young people safe online, Cao suggests the following important strategies:Don't post "live" from specific locations If creating content in a recognizable area, wait until you've left that location to post Refrain from sharing personal information or location on social media"General social media safety rules like this are important to teach young people who are navigating the internet," Cao adds. "I highly recommend alt accounts that are primarily used for content-viewing rather than personal posting for anyone who wants to maintain some semblance of privacy."While everyone reacts to going viral differently, Dr. Soles says parents should watch their teens' behavior for signs of distress, which can include changes in sleep, appetite, mood, or talks about not wanting to go online or school. If you notice any of these changes in your teen, Dr. Soles recommends reaching out to a mental health professional immediately. 'Don't wait for things to get 'bad enough',' she stresses. Read the original article on Parents
NZ Herald
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
How one viral trend created the internet as we know it
Engineered to go viral If you were online in 2014, you couldn't avoid the Ice Bucket Challenge starting that summer. Videos of the ice water dousings took off on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Vine, the now dead short-video app. But the challenge really went big on Facebook's news feed. That wasn't entirely an out-of-the-blue happenstance. The company now called Meta helped engineer the Ice Bucket Challenge to go viral to fuel Facebook's makeover – from a place where you mostly shared text posts and photos with your personal connections into a hot spot for general video entertainment and discussing hot topics. Months before the Ice Bucket Challenge took off, Facebook had started to automatically play videos as you scrolled through the news feed. (That doesn't seem unusual now because every app and website does it.) The auto-play feature helped make videos hard to ignore as you scrolled Facebook, as part of the company's campaign to get big in online video. That strategy helped Ice Bucket Challenge videos explode in popularity. The company had also recently debuted hashtags and 'trending' topic lists to nudge you to use Facebook to share news, gab about celebrities and TV shows and generally get a sense of what was happening in the moment. That was all a strategy in Facebook's then-fierce rivalry with Twitter. The virality of the Ice Bucket Challenge proved that you would post, watch and share videos on Facebook by the billions. It showed that Facebook could be a destination to see what people around you were chatting about, even if you had no personal connection to them. And that's what Facebook is today: another online gathering place where you don't need friends at all. In the legal case to decide whether Meta is an illegal monopoly, the company said this month that only 17% of time we spend on Facebook, and 7% of time on Instagram, is with friends' posts. (It's not clear how Meta measures these statistics, which support the company's legal defence.) The role of the Ice Bucket Challenge in the makeover of Facebook and Instagram is a perfect example of how the online world as it exists today didn't just happen because it's what you like. It's also the result of deliberate decisions to suit the business prerogatives of a handful of powerful people like Zuckerberg. 'To this day, many people my age and younger have no idea that this was at all pushed by Facebook,' said Steffi Cao, a 26-year-old internet culture writer who has assessed the lasting influence of online events from 2014, including the Ice Bucket Challenge. Viral moments come at you so fast now Online influencers and viral moments didn't originate with the Ice Bucket Challenge. But Debra Aho Williamson, who was a veteran social media analyst at the time, said the popular videos with big names proved the power of online virality to companies with products to sell and to the rest of us. Williamson, who now runs the consumer AI and marketing advisory firm Sonata Insights, said it also seems quaint by 2025 standards that the Ice Bucket Challenge was so widely popular for many months online. Now there are viral online moments constantly – like those AI-generated action figurines or last summer's ' very demure, very mindful ' TikTok trend – while 'there are probably hundreds of other mini-trends that never take off' or are quickly forgotten, she said. So the next time you watch a stranger's video on Instagram, know that the Ice Bucket Challenge is one factor that helped remake social media into algorithmically programmed TV. When you watch your favourite travel channel on YouTube or buy a product you saw on TikTok, know that those icy videos from 2014 helped shape your experiences.
