January 19, 2011 • 18 mins
What do you look for when you browse online? Do you think that you might approach the web differently if you had a different gender? Listen in as Cristen and Molly explore the differences between men and women web-surfers in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom? Never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello book the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. I'm sure that
(00:21):
regular listeners in the podcast now that we end every
episode talking about our email address, our Facebook page, our Twitter, Twitter,
our blog. We work for an internet site, House to
Parks dot com. We work for the interweb. We are
we are wired. Dare I say we are on the
information highway? Such when my old laptop won't connect to
(00:41):
the Internet, That's true, you do have a lot of
laptop problem having some connectivity issues. But I think that
makes us pretty well suited to talk about differences between
men and women in using the Internet. Is there is
there a more no brainer topic for us Internet women
to to cover and the intersection of gender in the Web.
(01:05):
I think not. I'm sure. Actually there are topics to cover,
but that's what we're going to cover today. And uh,
We've got to start with a pretty comprehensive look at
men and women on the Internet that came to us
from PU the Pe Research Center in two thousand five. Yes,
this is coming from the Pew Internet in American Life
survey that took place between March two thousand and September
(01:29):
two thousand five, and while there has been a little
bit of a change since then, it found overall that
men and women were pretty much on par for their
Internet use in terms of time that they spent online,
but in terms of what they do once they get
on the web, it's a little bit different. And actually
(01:50):
that was sort of one of the news where they
things is that prior to two thousand, there was an
Internet gender gap, so called by some experts, that men
used it far more than women did. And so when
they actually caught up and we're spending equal amounts of
time online, the Pew few people want to find out
what exactly are they doing, because, like Kristen said, they
(02:11):
are doing different things different things, And one thing that
women love, according to the survey results is email. They
use emails far more than men do to communicate with friends, strangers, uh,
family members. We just love sending out emails, according to
the survey results. And this communication theme is going to
(02:32):
come come up a lot throughout this podcast because there
is a divergence in terms of you know, women are
really using the internet largely yeah, as a communication and
connection and networking tool, whereas men like to do things
such as online transactions, yes, learning about the function of tools.
(02:54):
Transaction is the key word. Transactional is how men are
described by this survey, because they want to do all
their thanking on the internet. They want to use sites
like LinkedIn and move up in their careers. They're very
goal oriented when it comes to the Internet, whereas women
kind of fall back into this touchy feely stereotype of
wanting to post pictures of their babies and find out
(03:14):
the best way to make an apple pie. And well,
then they might want to do networking with with coworkers
and other people in their fields as well, but it's
more it's more of an enhancement overall enhancement of their life,
whereas men are seem to be more more rigid and
specific about what they want to get out of their
time on the internet. And it makes sense, although when
you do read just page after page of how women
(03:36):
just want to build relationships on the Internet, it can
be a little, i don't know, it feels a little
offensive to your gender to think that we're all just
you know, touchy feeling. I just want to email you,
like Internet hubs, just want to email you things I
like about you. I just want to show you all
these pictures I found that are so funny. Although I
really do love funny pictures on the Internet. Really, I
(03:56):
think why the Internet was developed was for funny cat pictures.
But while you like funny pictures, though, men are gonna
like probably funny videos even more, as we'll find out true.
They do like sites like YouTube. And what was interesting
to me as someone who does a lot of research
on the Internet, is that men use the Internet to
find news and information from a really wide variety of sources,
(04:20):
whereas women are more likely to fill the burden of
an information glut and use only a selected number of
sites to get their news and views. And they are
more likely to seek out information on health and religion
and these really narrow topics that they feel have application
to their life. And this next point that's brought up
in the Pew survey brings to mind our podcasting buddies
(04:43):
John and Chris over at tech Stuff, because the survey
also found that men are more interested in the more
techy aspects of the online realm than women. Might be
like they might have a smartphone that access is the
Internet before woman does. They're more interested in the the
bells and whistles. Like you talked about how you have
connectivity issues man might have according to these survey results,
(05:05):
gotten that fixed by now. But Molly, a lot has
changed since two thousand five. Remember this study came out
in two thousand five. We're now in two thousand eleven.
Well that's crazy, I know. And and the pace of
women on the Internet has certainly picked up. And I
want to talk about one study that was by Brian Solice,
(05:27):
and it's called Influences Bliss, the Gender Divide of Influence
on Twitter, And what he does is he considers specifically
social media on the Internet and finds that women rule
the roost. He looks at every single social media social
networking site, including some I have not heard of, and
by and large, women are the majority of users on
(05:49):
all of them. Sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, d V and art.
They are equal between the genders. But your Facebook's, your Twitter's,
your classmates, dot Com, your mice pace for anyone who
still has one floating around out there. I wonder if
stuff Mover told you we'll ever have on MySpace probably
not anyway, all of those have majority women users. The
(06:12):
only site that men dominate is dig dig do figure folks,
the dig is the the one guy networking site out
there that that men uh dominate. And so what Brian
Selice makes the argument with is if we are the
majority of users, do we then use this this majority
(06:32):
to create some sort of sphere of influence? Does what
we post make anyone care anymore or less about us?
And he finds that yeah, I mean women rank among
some of the most influential Twitter twitterers um, and that
you know, people do pay attention to our tweets, our
Facebook posts, that we really do have a pretty good
(06:52):
tool to bring about social change if we want to. Yeah,
especially we have the power in Nune first, because on
the other side of that coin, he also found that
when it breaks down to the individuals who are tweeting
the most influential individuals on Twitter, it does sque a
little bit more towards the men. But then once our
(07:14):
collective power is taken into account, the women beat out
the guys. But you know who's trying to harness that
collective power? Who advertisers? Yes, that's the reason that a
lot of people want this information is because if you've
ever noticed, uh, you know, a Facebook, for example, serving
up a very gender specific ad, you can thank you know,
(07:35):
this kind of research for that. And really, when it
comes to social networking, those advertisers are really going to
be seeking out women because we spend a lot more
time on social networking sites in general than men do.
This is from a two thousand to end Calm Score
survey that found that women spend an average of five
and a half hours per month on social networks compared
(07:58):
to men, who's bend three point nine hours per month.
And while we described men is more transactional gender on
the web, the one transaction. This is at again a
little stereotypical that women do drive online shopping. So you
know there's a reason why you know, your Facebook might
be open in one of your tabs and there's this
(08:21):
ad for you know, c D or a band or something,
and then you just go over to like an Amazon.
You know, it could be years and minutes and No'm
only just said Facebook, and we've been talking a lot
about Twitter, but if we go over to Facebook, it
is it is ladyland. There are of the four hundred
(08:42):
million plus members or female. It's a solid majority. And
we also have eight percent more friends and participate in
six of the sharing yas. To go back to that
we want to share our lives, yes that net or
we want to build a tribe. If we can't, for example,
potty train a child, we can reach out to our
(09:04):
other friends online where mother's and say does this work?
Does that work? Or in my case, potty train a cat.
I'm not really trying to potty train anything in my
life right now, but I know where i'd go if
I did to Facebook. To Facebook, although you know, you
have to wonder if women are saying so much time
on Facebook, what are the are the men getting more
done than us? No, they're just busy trying to to
(09:26):
get their articles on page one, did true and writing
really snarky comments. And speaking of snarky comments, there are
some who would say that men are not subject to
the same type of online abuse as women are, and
that a female online is uh perhaps more at risk
of of harassment if they've done one study that if
(09:48):
you have a female user name was it, you more
likely to receive abuse, five times more likely to experience harassment,
and this study is coming from the University of Maryland,
and it also found that a female user names average
a hundred and sixty three threatening and or sexually explicit
messages a day. And that info comes thanks to Jessica Valenti,
(10:10):
who runs feministing dot com, in an article that she
wrote for The Guardian right after she had been the
target of some extreme online harassment, and of course that
she runs feminist ng she's in sort of the face
of young feminists today, one of the faces. She is
very well versed in online harassment. And so I think
we have to wonder if social networking and using the
(10:33):
Internet for information has become this really popular thing for
women to do, if they've closed the Internet gender gap,
what does this mean? Is it a positive thing? Is
it a negative thing because you're more likely to get
harassment And that's something we can't answer definitively. We'd love
to hear your opinions on it. But one piece that
really struck that really stood out to me. We were
doing this research was about young girls and Facebook, and
(10:56):
it was work that was done in conjunction with the
Girl Scout Research Institute, and uh, you know, these girls
in the survey were very much online. They had my Space,
they had Twitter, they had Facebook. And what they did
was they asked the girls how they viewed themselves offline,
you know, how they would describe themselves to their friends,
how they came off in person. And the girls described
(11:20):
of the girls describe themselves as smart, The girls describe
themselves as fun and funny, describe themselves as kind, said
they were good influence, said they were outgoing. But then
when they asked the girls how they came across to
others online, all they said was fun, funny and social.
You know, none of that smartness came out, none of
(11:41):
the kinds, none of the kindness, are good influence. So
I do think that it can be You've got to
worry a little bit about if girls are using uh
Facebook to build this persona themselves, that isn't who they
really are. If they're downplaying things like their intelligence or
their kindness to their neighbors. Well, and I would say
that probably everyone with a Facebook count might be a
little bit guilty of that, because you can craft your
(12:03):
own profile. But I thought that this was a little
more telling in the Girl Scouts research. And this is
also um based on responses from girls who are fourteen
to seventeen years old, and the Girls Scout study found
that girls who measured low and self esteem were more
likely to describe themselves online as crazy and sexy and
(12:24):
put forth more uh provocative profile images and things like that.
So you know it's it's I think you can look
at it from both sides, because the same research did
say that these girls were making really strong connections online,
keeping intention with friends and family, and that tons of
them were using the internet for good, finding opportunities for leadership,
participating in their communities by starting things online, you know,
(12:47):
using the internet to perhaps promote a social service project
they were doing, to raise money for you know, run
walk they're participating in. So you know, it's it can
still be a tool for social awareness and sibit partice
a patient. You just got to balance the good and
evil that the internet can do well in. Speaking of
social awareness, there have also been some more controversial um
(13:10):
social networking campaigns that women have started, such as the
Twitter hashtag I had an abortion that's right. A few
months ago, there was this campaign to bring reproductive health
out of out of the closet, especially a controversial issue
like abortion, and they equated it a little bit to
(13:31):
the gay rights movement and said that, you know, there
were people who believed that gay rights really caught hold
when more people came out and when more people realized
how many gay people they actually knew, and they were saying,
we need to come out of the abortion come out
of the abortion closet. I suppose, for for lack of
better words, to to let people realize just how many
people had relied on the ability to make a choice
(13:52):
about their own reproductive health. So they urged Twitter users
to use that hashtag if they had an abortion and
to explain why. And they're saying that this really, you know,
did a lot of women good to know that they
were not alone, to be able to talk about things
like abortion miscarriage in a very public form and to
find support for that. But if you look at the
media surrounding this hashtag, it was very negative that this
(14:15):
is not something that should be tweeted about. This is
still something we should be quiet about. And it was
very mixed response that this hashtag received well, and I
think that's the the word of caution that should go
with any kind of social networking activity or any kind
of awareness campaign that you want to start through social networking.
A successful social networking campaign is going to go viral,
(14:37):
and when that happens, you're going to get the attention
of everybody who's out there, both positive and negative. So
of course, something like hashtag I had an abortion and
I had an abortion is going to certainly attract the
criticism of anti abortion groups. Just like when you, you know,
put put yourself out there on Facebook, you know, maybe
(14:59):
put pictures that you think are pretty some might find provocative,
you know what I mean. That's also just kind of
the very nature of the Internet. So I think that
that there is there should always be a little bit
of a of a word of caution with all of it,
right and I think even moms who have been, you know,
trying to tep back to the high training thing. I
know that in my own Facebook friends there was a
(15:21):
little bit of a debate about a friend who might
have been sharing a little too much potty training. So,
you know, it's like we can find these communities, but
there's there's over sharing and it can affect your friendships
when you know your friends no way too much about
what's coming out of your child, right say, And that
might be something that's especially important for women to keep
on mind and keep in mind simply because based on
(15:43):
all these surveys that are coming out, especially now, especially
now that women are actually using the internet more, particularly
using social networking more, we're the ones. We're putting the
most information out there, six of the sharing done by
the ladies, right, So, you know, like Kristen said, you
got to be cautious and let's just start an overview
of what's going on with women online. We'd love to
(16:05):
know our listeners thoughts about how you use the internet,
how you decide what's off limits, what's on limits? Um
and you know, join our Facebook and Twitter revolution, follow
us hashtag Molly and Christen, I don't know, make us
trend and yeah, so we want to know your thoughts.
Mom Stuff at has stuff dot com. Email you know,
(16:26):
you know we love emails because the ladies email is
fading out a little bit, but we'll still accept it.
I've got a quick one here from Peyton. And Peyton
was running a stronds to our podcast on eyebrows and
it reminded Peyton of is Peyton a girl or a boy?
(16:47):
Reminded Peyton Peyton's sister, all right, and it brought to
mine Peyton's sister. A few years ago. She was trying
to make them thinner, so she took out one of
those electric trimmers and shaved one off. Effort grew back.
She thought she would try it again, and it's bound
to work this time, she thought. Then she shaved off
the other one. She now wears her eyebrows thick. How
(17:10):
that happened? I know, I brown this ups. They're the worst.
So that's what we've got for this episode of Stuff
Mom Never Told You. And as always, we're gonna in
with some social media plugs because so many wants to
reach us. Now you know all about the internet from us,
So what we got only we got some email Mom
stuff at how stup works dot com. We got Facebook
all you lays out there where no you're on Facebook,
(17:31):
so follow us on Facebook and then for you Twitter,
wos add Mom's up podcast hop on it. And we
have a blog. It's called Stuff I've Never Told You
and it's at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
(17:51):
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The how Stuff works. iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Yeah. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom? Never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello book the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. I'm sure that
(00:21):
regular listeners in the podcast now that we end every
episode talking about our email address, our Facebook page, our Twitter, Twitter,
our blog. We work for an internet site, House to
Parks dot com. We work for the interweb. We are
we are wired. Dare I say we are on the
information highway? Such when my old laptop won't connect to
(00:41):
the Internet, That's true, you do have a lot of
laptop problem having some connectivity issues. But I think that
makes us pretty well suited to talk about differences between
men and women in using the Internet. Is there is
there a more no brainer topic for us Internet women
to to cover and the intersection of gender in the Web.
(01:05):
I think not. I'm sure. Actually there are topics to cover,
but that's what we're going to cover today. And uh,
We've got to start with a pretty comprehensive look at
men and women on the Internet that came to us
from PU the Pe Research Center in two thousand five. Yes,
this is coming from the Pew Internet in American Life
survey that took place between March two thousand and September
(01:29):
two thousand five, and while there has been a little
bit of a change since then, it found overall that
men and women were pretty much on par for their
Internet use in terms of time that they spent online,
but in terms of what they do once they get
on the web, it's a little bit different. And actually
(01:50):
that was sort of one of the news where they
things is that prior to two thousand, there was an
Internet gender gap, so called by some experts, that men
used it far more than women did. And so when
they actually caught up and we're spending equal amounts of
time online, the Pew few people want to find out
what exactly are they doing, because, like Kristen said, they
(02:11):
are doing different things different things, And one thing that
women love, according to the survey results is email. They
use emails far more than men do to communicate with friends, strangers, uh,
family members. We just love sending out emails, according to
the survey results. And this communication theme is going to
(02:32):
come come up a lot throughout this podcast because there
is a divergence in terms of you know, women are
really using the internet largely yeah, as a communication and
connection and networking tool, whereas men like to do things
such as online transactions, yes, learning about the function of tools.
(02:54):
Transaction is the key word. Transactional is how men are
described by this survey, because they want to do all
their thanking on the internet. They want to use sites
like LinkedIn and move up in their careers. They're very
goal oriented when it comes to the Internet, whereas women
kind of fall back into this touchy feely stereotype of
wanting to post pictures of their babies and find out
(03:14):
the best way to make an apple pie. And well,
then they might want to do networking with with coworkers
and other people in their fields as well, but it's
more it's more of an enhancement overall enhancement of their life,
whereas men are seem to be more more rigid and
specific about what they want to get out of their
time on the internet. And it makes sense, although when
you do read just page after page of how women
(03:36):
just want to build relationships on the Internet, it can
be a little, i don't know, it feels a little
offensive to your gender to think that we're all just
you know, touchy feeling. I just want to email you,
like Internet hubs, just want to email you things I
like about you. I just want to show you all
these pictures I found that are so funny. Although I
really do love funny pictures on the Internet. Really, I
(03:56):
think why the Internet was developed was for funny cat pictures.
But while you like funny pictures, though, men are gonna
like probably funny videos even more, as we'll find out true.
They do like sites like YouTube. And what was interesting
to me as someone who does a lot of research
on the Internet, is that men use the Internet to
find news and information from a really wide variety of sources,
(04:20):
whereas women are more likely to fill the burden of
an information glut and use only a selected number of
sites to get their news and views. And they are
more likely to seek out information on health and religion
and these really narrow topics that they feel have application
to their life. And this next point that's brought up
in the Pew survey brings to mind our podcasting buddies
(04:43):
John and Chris over at tech Stuff, because the survey
also found that men are more interested in the more
techy aspects of the online realm than women. Might be
like they might have a smartphone that access is the
Internet before woman does. They're more interested in the the
bells and whistles. Like you talked about how you have
connectivity issues man might have according to these survey results,
(05:05):
gotten that fixed by now. But Molly, a lot has
changed since two thousand five. Remember this study came out
in two thousand five. We're now in two thousand eleven.
Well that's crazy, I know. And and the pace of
women on the Internet has certainly picked up. And I
want to talk about one study that was by Brian Solice,
(05:27):
and it's called Influences Bliss, the Gender Divide of Influence
on Twitter, And what he does is he considers specifically
social media on the Internet and finds that women rule
the roost. He looks at every single social media social
networking site, including some I have not heard of, and
by and large, women are the majority of users on
(05:49):
all of them. Sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, d V and art.
They are equal between the genders. But your Facebook's, your Twitter's,
your classmates, dot Com, your mice pace for anyone who
still has one floating around out there. I wonder if
stuff Mover told you we'll ever have on MySpace probably
not anyway, all of those have majority women users. The
(06:12):
only site that men dominate is dig dig do figure folks,
the dig is the the one guy networking site out
there that that men uh dominate. And so what Brian
Selice makes the argument with is if we are the
majority of users, do we then use this this majority
(06:32):
to create some sort of sphere of influence? Does what
we post make anyone care anymore or less about us?
And he finds that yeah, I mean women rank among
some of the most influential Twitter twitterers um, and that
you know, people do pay attention to our tweets, our
Facebook posts, that we really do have a pretty good
(06:52):
tool to bring about social change if we want to. Yeah,
especially we have the power in Nune first, because on
the other side of that coin, he also found that
when it breaks down to the individuals who are tweeting
the most influential individuals on Twitter, it does sque a
little bit more towards the men. But then once our
(07:14):
collective power is taken into account, the women beat out
the guys. But you know who's trying to harness that
collective power? Who advertisers? Yes, that's the reason that a
lot of people want this information is because if you've
ever noticed, uh, you know, a Facebook, for example, serving
up a very gender specific ad, you can thank you know,
(07:35):
this kind of research for that. And really, when it
comes to social networking, those advertisers are really going to
be seeking out women because we spend a lot more
time on social networking sites in general than men do.
This is from a two thousand to end Calm Score
survey that found that women spend an average of five
and a half hours per month on social networks compared
(07:58):
to men, who's bend three point nine hours per month.
And while we described men is more transactional gender on
the web, the one transaction. This is at again a
little stereotypical that women do drive online shopping. So you
know there's a reason why you know, your Facebook might
be open in one of your tabs and there's this
(08:21):
ad for you know, c D or a band or something,
and then you just go over to like an Amazon.
You know, it could be years and minutes and No'm
only just said Facebook, and we've been talking a lot
about Twitter, but if we go over to Facebook, it
is it is ladyland. There are of the four hundred
(08:42):
million plus members or female. It's a solid majority. And
we also have eight percent more friends and participate in
six of the sharing yas. To go back to that
we want to share our lives, yes that net or
we want to build a tribe. If we can't, for example,
potty train a child, we can reach out to our
(09:04):
other friends online where mother's and say does this work?
Does that work? Or in my case, potty train a cat.
I'm not really trying to potty train anything in my
life right now, but I know where i'd go if
I did to Facebook. To Facebook, although you know, you
have to wonder if women are saying so much time
on Facebook, what are the are the men getting more
done than us? No, they're just busy trying to to
(09:26):
get their articles on page one, did true and writing
really snarky comments. And speaking of snarky comments, there are
some who would say that men are not subject to
the same type of online abuse as women are, and
that a female online is uh perhaps more at risk
of of harassment if they've done one study that if
(09:48):
you have a female user name was it, you more
likely to receive abuse, five times more likely to experience harassment,
and this study is coming from the University of Maryland,
and it also found that a female user names average
a hundred and sixty three threatening and or sexually explicit
messages a day. And that info comes thanks to Jessica Valenti,
(10:10):
who runs feministing dot com, in an article that she
wrote for The Guardian right after she had been the
target of some extreme online harassment, and of course that
she runs feminist ng she's in sort of the face
of young feminists today, one of the faces. She is
very well versed in online harassment. And so I think
we have to wonder if social networking and using the
(10:33):
Internet for information has become this really popular thing for
women to do, if they've closed the Internet gender gap,
what does this mean? Is it a positive thing? Is
it a negative thing because you're more likely to get
harassment And that's something we can't answer definitively. We'd love
to hear your opinions on it. But one piece that
really struck that really stood out to me. We were
doing this research was about young girls and Facebook, and
(10:56):
it was work that was done in conjunction with the
Girl Scout Research Institute, and uh, you know, these girls
in the survey were very much online. They had my Space,
they had Twitter, they had Facebook. And what they did
was they asked the girls how they viewed themselves offline,
you know, how they would describe themselves to their friends,
how they came off in person. And the girls described
(11:20):
of the girls describe themselves as smart, The girls describe
themselves as fun and funny, describe themselves as kind, said
they were good influence, said they were outgoing. But then
when they asked the girls how they came across to
others online, all they said was fun, funny and social.
You know, none of that smartness came out, none of
(11:41):
the kinds, none of the kindness, are good influence. So
I do think that it can be You've got to
worry a little bit about if girls are using uh
Facebook to build this persona themselves, that isn't who they
really are. If they're downplaying things like their intelligence or
their kindness to their neighbors. Well, and I would say
that probably everyone with a Facebook count might be a
little bit guilty of that, because you can craft your
(12:03):
own profile. But I thought that this was a little
more telling in the Girl Scouts research. And this is
also um based on responses from girls who are fourteen
to seventeen years old, and the Girls Scout study found
that girls who measured low and self esteem were more
likely to describe themselves online as crazy and sexy and
(12:24):
put forth more uh provocative profile images and things like that.
So you know it's it's I think you can look
at it from both sides, because the same research did
say that these girls were making really strong connections online,
keeping intention with friends and family, and that tons of
them were using the internet for good, finding opportunities for leadership,
participating in their communities by starting things online, you know,
(12:47):
using the internet to perhaps promote a social service project
they were doing, to raise money for you know, run
walk they're participating in. So you know, it's it can
still be a tool for social awareness and sibit partice
a patient. You just got to balance the good and
evil that the internet can do well in. Speaking of
social awareness, there have also been some more controversial um
(13:10):
social networking campaigns that women have started, such as the
Twitter hashtag I had an abortion that's right. A few
months ago, there was this campaign to bring reproductive health
out of out of the closet, especially a controversial issue
like abortion, and they equated it a little bit to
(13:31):
the gay rights movement and said that, you know, there
were people who believed that gay rights really caught hold
when more people came out and when more people realized
how many gay people they actually knew, and they were saying,
we need to come out of the abortion come out
of the abortion closet. I suppose, for for lack of
better words, to to let people realize just how many
people had relied on the ability to make a choice
(13:52):
about their own reproductive health. So they urged Twitter users
to use that hashtag if they had an abortion and
to explain why. And they're saying that this really, you know,
did a lot of women good to know that they
were not alone, to be able to talk about things
like abortion miscarriage in a very public form and to
find support for that. But if you look at the
media surrounding this hashtag, it was very negative that this
(14:15):
is not something that should be tweeted about. This is
still something we should be quiet about. And it was
very mixed response that this hashtag received well, and I
think that's the the word of caution that should go
with any kind of social networking activity or any kind
of awareness campaign that you want to start through social networking.
A successful social networking campaign is going to go viral,
(14:37):
and when that happens, you're going to get the attention
of everybody who's out there, both positive and negative. So
of course, something like hashtag I had an abortion and
I had an abortion is going to certainly attract the
criticism of anti abortion groups. Just like when you, you know,
put put yourself out there on Facebook, you know, maybe
(14:59):
put pictures that you think are pretty some might find provocative,
you know what I mean. That's also just kind of
the very nature of the Internet. So I think that
that there is there should always be a little bit
of a of a word of caution with all of it,
right and I think even moms who have been, you know,
trying to tep back to the high training thing. I
know that in my own Facebook friends there was a
(15:21):
little bit of a debate about a friend who might
have been sharing a little too much potty training. So,
you know, it's like we can find these communities, but
there's there's over sharing and it can affect your friendships
when you know your friends no way too much about
what's coming out of your child, right say, And that
might be something that's especially important for women to keep
on mind and keep in mind simply because based on
(15:43):
all these surveys that are coming out, especially now, especially
now that women are actually using the internet more, particularly
using social networking more, we're the ones. We're putting the
most information out there, six of the sharing done by
the ladies, right, So, you know, like Kristen said, you
got to be cautious and let's just start an overview
of what's going on with women online. We'd love to
(16:05):
know our listeners thoughts about how you use the internet,
how you decide what's off limits, what's on limits? Um
and you know, join our Facebook and Twitter revolution, follow
us hashtag Molly and Christen, I don't know, make us
trend and yeah, so we want to know your thoughts.
Mom Stuff at has stuff dot com. Email you know,
(16:26):
you know we love emails because the ladies email is
fading out a little bit, but we'll still accept it.
I've got a quick one here from Peyton. And Peyton
was running a stronds to our podcast on eyebrows and
it reminded Peyton of is Peyton a girl or a boy?
(16:47):
Reminded Peyton Peyton's sister, all right, and it brought to
mine Peyton's sister. A few years ago. She was trying
to make them thinner, so she took out one of
those electric trimmers and shaved one off. Effort grew back.
She thought she would try it again, and it's bound
to work this time, she thought. Then she shaved off
the other one. She now wears her eyebrows thick. How
(17:10):
that happened? I know, I brown this ups. They're the worst.
So that's what we've got for this episode of Stuff
Mom Never Told You. And as always, we're gonna in
with some social media plugs because so many wants to
reach us. Now you know all about the internet from us,
So what we got only we got some email Mom
stuff at how stup works dot com. We got Facebook
all you lays out there where no you're on Facebook,
(17:31):
so follow us on Facebook and then for you Twitter,
wos add Mom's up podcast hop on it. And we
have a blog. It's called Stuff I've Never Told You
and it's at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
(17:51):
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The how Stuff works. iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Yeah. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready,
are you
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Samantha McVey
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