Science, Nature and Tech

Facebook For Kids – Good or Bad?

Do you use Facebook? While it is officially banned for under 13 years, a survey last year showed that almost half of Britain’s pre-teens have a Facebook account. Joanna Bradey tells us what she likes about Facebook.

 

Facebook: What’s it all about?

 

Facebook is a website created in 2004 by a US college student Mark Zuckerberg. It started off as a way of college students to network with each other, which quickly spread throughout the world, and now has millions of members. Facebook works by people registering and creating a profile for themselves, and then becoming ‘friends’ with other people. A user can update their status to let their friends know what they’re up to, upload photos to share, send private messages to each other, and play games.  You need to be at least 13 years old to be a member, and Facebook is banned in some countries altogether, like Syria and Iran.

The thing that I like about Facebook is that it is a quick and easy way to keep in touch with all those people I have met in real-life but don’t have time to write to or call them, like old workmates or family that have moved away. I can upload a photo and anyone I am friends with can see it, and comment on it. In the days before Facebook, if I wanted to share a photo with everyone, I would have to print out lots of copies and send them in the post, which is very expensive and time-consuming. Since I joined Facebook, I am better at communicating with people and I enjoy seeing what all my friends and family are doing. I think that I know them better and it’s easy to keep-in-touch.

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Home, Health & Style

Life in an English Village

life in an english village

When we think of a country, we often think of a stereotype – an oversimplified image or idea. These are some country stereotypes – can you guess which countries we are meaning here?

Stereotype 2

Stereotype 1

Sometimes a stereotype is used in a negative way, but often we use them because they are the only things we know about the country we are talking about. They are often based on a truth about the country and can be a part of life in that country.
An English Village is today’s topic. When you search for an image of ‘English Village’ you might find something like this

English Village

You might think that living in an English village is all thatched cottages, red telephone boxes, and Sunday afternoon cricket. That is certainly the stereotype!
If you live in a city, you might also think that living in a village like this would be boring, that there might not be much to do, but you would be surprised how busy life in a small community can be.
We asked our contributor Liz to tell us what it is really like to live in a small English village not far from the capital city, London.

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Sports

An Aspiring Champion for Team GB

Meet Lilly Williams-Howell, a talented young skater from Prestatyn, in North Wales.
Lilly, who is now 11 years old, has been skating since age 7, and is now very close to realising her dream of representing her country. After a lot of training and practice, she now has the chance to skate at an international competition for Team GB. We talked to Lilly a little bit about her skating, and her hopes for the future.

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Home, Health & Style, Popular

Good Relationships – Healthy Relationships – Tips for Kids

Relationships are hard at any age. Remember that we don’t just talk about relationships when we mean a boyfriend or a girlfriend – it’s about how you get on with your parents, your friends and other people important to you.
There are certain basic ideas that are important to developing good relationships; you master these and life suddenly becomes a lot less stressful! Alice Hoyle has some ideas that may help you have better relationships with the people in your life.

 

Communication

Image by Robert Collins on Unsplash

Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship. Sharing things with people in your life is important. We do this mostly by speaking and listening. It is important to share how you feel about things and to listen and try to understand how others feel about things (this is called empathy).

How good are you at both talking AND listening? If you favour doing only one of them in a relationship then this isn’t as balanced as it could be- you probably need to work on doing both and so should the other person.

Also sometimes people might say something but their body language (how someone uses their body or their facial expression) maybe saying something different. Take some time to consider what is your body language saying when you talk? What is their body language saying? Do you make eye contact when you talk?

A key to successful communication is to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements- eg. “I feel sad when you call me silly” is better than “You calling me silly makes me sad” because the second one can put the person on the defensive straight away and the conversation can go badly after that.

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Home, Health & Style

Tomboys and Girly Girls

The mother of eight year old Isabella wrote about buying toys without glitter, and searching for ‘girl’ clothes in colours other than pink, which got us thinking about the term ‘tomboy’.
What do you call a girl who isn’t a girly-girl? Some people would say, ‘a tomboy’, but does that imply that the girl isn’t a real girl, and do we need a label for this anyway?
Perhaps we should let toys be toys, as this campaign demands, and sell clothes without ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ labels. What do you think?

 

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