Jesse and Justin chat about violent games and their impact on kids, adults and families. For background on this subject, tune into a previous Bench Banter episode with Dr Patrick Markey, author of Moral Combat: Why the war on violent video games is wrong.

We cover recent privacy focused subjects including Facebook vs Apple, how Google's going to track us less in Chrome and decentralized social media platforms.

Jesse Miller from Mediated Reality returns in joining me for our month in review chats.

TeLeni Koochin, Publisher and founder of BAZOOF! joined us to share how she got started with BAZOOF!, a brand that creates children’s content dedicated to encourage reading and learning, deepen understanding of good health in the growing years, help readers think beyond the page in developing the building blocks of a strong character, and spark the endless creativity youth naturally have giving them opportunities to be published.

As a bonus, TeLeni is also an active Boomerang Parental Control user so she shares her experience on why she chose us over all of the other options available. 

Visit www.bazoof.com to learn more.

A big trending topic from the past 30 days is how social media platforms have started to improve their content policies with the goal of educating their users about misinformation, old posts that may not be relevant today and flagging or remove content related to hate speech. We also discuss what is being a "Karen" and how teens with lots of time on their hands, have been mimicking the behavior. 

TikTok and several other apps were exposed by Apple's upcoming iOS14 scrapping the iOS clipboard – this resulted in these apps being able to know what you copied and were about to paste to other apps. 

The articles we referenced in the episode:

https://www.insider.com/claudia-conway-posting-anti-trump-tiktoks-2020-6

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/china-apps-banned-in-india-6482079/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/teens-in-quarantine-are-roleplaying-as-karens-on-instagram-making-fake-personas-dedicated-to-loving-wine-and-supporting-trump/ar-BB15Yjso

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tulsa-rally-trump-us-tiktok-k-pop-ticket-sales-a9577741.html

Dr Patrick M. Markey, PhD, is a professor of psychology, the director of the Interpersonal Research Laboratory at Villanova University, and a former president of the Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research. Markey received his doctorate from the University of California. Dr Markey is the author of the science based books Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong and, coming soon, "F*ck Divorce.

We discuss how violent games are used as an excuse for school shootings even when Dr Markey’s research for his book doesn’t support this direct influence that impacts a school shooters behaviour. There’s so much more to this conversation than blaming video games: mental health, racial differences, access to guns and overall wellbeing of the individual.

We also discuss how recent research continues to compare social media to the addictive nature of heroin. Mention the word addiction when comparing games such as Fortnite or Social Media, the word addiction is not being used in the sense of true addiction.

Dr Patrick Market can be found on Twitter @patmarkey

Get Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong

Lucky #7 month in review with Jesse Miller. Almost halfway through 2020 - why does it feel like such a long year. So much stuff to chat about... Are we one screenshot away from losing our jobs (or NHL career)? Social media as a megaphone! We review May which had so much going on with social media posts, moderations, riots, pandemics, fake news and more. We live in truly crazy times.

Is the future of social media paid? How the fitness app, Strava, made more freemium features available only for premium and pledging no ads and not sharing users' data.

A brief discussion about violent games and an upcoming episode of Bench Banter with Dr Patrick Markey, co-author of the book Moral Combat. 

Do you feel your voice in reflective in your community?

This is an example of looking at timestamps on articles to make sure it is not something from the past that was reposted with the goal to incent reactions (both negative and positive). The Verge re-releases the same article from December 2019 in June 2020 to on How to fight lies, tricks, and chaos online.

We need more ❤️ in the world.

James Achilles is the Vice President of Vancouver-based Kidzworld Media, charged with all aspects of the company’s internal and external growth and management. The content-rich, cloud-based mobile website fosters 2 million+ monthly visitors, who view 18.5 million page views per month from 200+ countries. The online vehicle is designed to offer safe & secure information for 9-16 year-olds, alongside numerous Fortune 500 advertisers. It is also present on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Learn more about Kidzworld https://www.kidzworld.com/

Fired up for another month stuck at home under COVID-19 isolation and cabin fever is setting in. Jesse Miller joins me in our 6th monthly review to discuss how shared content via social media platforms is too easily believed at face value. From photoshopped images to private conversations in group chats. Diversification in our opinions and views is important as a lot of content we view online can be curated based on our likes (think Netflix history, YouTube viewed history, News viewed, etc) thus reenforcing one point of view on various subjects. 

We miss our NHL hockey but there was a bit of drama with a recent contract waiving of Washington Capitals' forward Brandon Leipsic following shared inappropriate messages in a private chat. As a verified account on social media, it does bring additional accountability in your online communications. Would having a more influential pro athlete get caught have the same outcome?

Our privacy needs to be questioned in our day to day communications from text messages, group messages and social media platforms. Lead with trust when your communicate but consider your environment and potential outcome if something negative is shared. 

We also chat about having empathy and not assuming everything we see as we slowly return to some form of normalcy. As physical distancing is relaxed, there will still be a percentage of our population that will feel anxious about returning too fast. Mobile technology is already being used to document other people's behaviors so we refresh you on the areas where having someone's consent is important. 

Thanks for tuning in! 

-Justin Payeur, Digital Wellbeing app cofounderFollow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JP_Payeur

Andy Robertson took his love for writing and gaming to build Family Gamer TV, he’s also a freelance writer for Forbes, The Guardian, BBC and MirrorTech. Andy also presented a TEDx Talks on Sustainable Perspectives on Video Games.

We discuss various subjects about games, too much time spent gaming, game ratings (ESRB and PEGI), how they can be an escape for the day stresses and distractions - not all games can do this so Andy has also built a database for games that provides additional insights into the experience and shares a few game recommendations you've probably never heard of but should consider to play as a family. 

Andy is launching is book later in 2020, Taming Gaming: Guide Your Child to Video Game Health - aimed at parents that do not play games, to try and help them build confidence, close the literacy gap on the misconceptions about gaming. The book also includes a list of “recipes” for games on how to play and how other families have enjoyed these games, typically games we haven’t heard of.

Follow AndyTwitter: https://twitter.com/GeekDadGamerYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/familygamertv