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HCII Seminar Series: Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck

Speaker
Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck
Assistant Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan

When
-

Where
NSH 1305

Video
Video link

Description
"Supporting Parents Online" Almost 30 years after Howard Rheingold’s 1986 account of parenting support he received on the WELL, parents have now become one of the most active demographics of social media users. Though there has been extensive interest in digital youth, little research has focused on their parents. Social media sites provide tremendous opportunities for parents, but also fail them in critical ways. In this talk, I will describe how new mothers decide what to share about their children on Facebook, how mothers discuss their family anonymously online, and how parents of children with special needs overcome judgment online. If we expect parents to raise their children effectively in a complex and evolving digital world, we need to develop new tools and theories to help them do so. This talk will conclude with new directions for social media design, including managing audiences, connecting families across the lifespan, and guarding family privacy.

Speaker's Bio

Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan where she directs the Living Online Lab and is a member of the Michigan Interactive & Social Computing group. Her research focuses on how families—particularly parents and children—use technology in their everyday contexts. She publishes at CHI, CSCW, ICWSM, and in other HCI and Social Media venues. Her research has also recently been covered by NPR, Michigan Radio, The Atlantic, Forbes, Time, and elsewhere, and is supported by the NSF and Facebook. Sarita received her PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech, her MS from UC Berkeley’s School of Information, and her BA in Computer Engineering from Dartmouth College.

Host
Jeff Bigham