As a parent raising a kid in The Time of the Screens, I am often trying to strike that balance between allowing him to explore age-appropriate technology while also determining how much is too much.

The ACCC has released a preliminary report into the market power being exerted by major digital platforms such as Google and Facebook. And while the commission's inquiry continues, it's clear it is looking at ways to curb the influence digital platforms have given they are privately run and have operated outside the traditional regulatory regimes.

Its focus has been on search engines, social media platforms and digital content aggregators with the spotlight brightly directed at Facebook and Google given their powerful influence.

One of my favourite Facebook features is the “Save Post” button. I use it at least five or six times a day to save all sorts of things.

Now you don't have an excuse for spending too much time on Facebook. A week after rolling out the usage-limiting "Your Activity" feature on Instagram, Facebook started rolling out its "Your Time on Facebook" feature to the social network this week.

When my son approached his teenage years, I braced myself for the inevitable behaviours teens often display. I waited for the eye rolling and the mouthing off. I prepared for door slamming and grunting. I steeled myself for years of silence with a moody teen. I’d often heard parents of teens joke that “you get your kid back” when they head off to college.

The Tumblr app recently disappeared from the iOS App Store, seemingly without explanation. But it's been revealed that the platform's content filters were failing at detecting and blocking child exploitation images, according to statements by the social media company.

Earlier this year I finally fell down the rabbit hole that is Instagram Stories, and now I spend way too much time on Instagram. This week, the app started rolling out a new feature to combat Insta-addiction, a “Your Activity” tracker that shows you how much time you spend in the app, and lets you set limits to help reduce the number of hours you pour into scrolling you feed each day.

No one taking a selfie with a tiger is actually cool. In fact they are just funding more cruelty of these animals.

Not all of us have an easy time getting to know the people who live above, below, or next to us. When you've only exchanged brief hellos, it can be tough to ask your neighbours for help or advice. Just like Facebook facilitates connecting with far flung friends and family, social network Nextdoor, which launched in Australia a few weeks ago, makes it easy to be connected to your community.

With Facebook basically dominating the local social networking scene, it's going to take something special to break Zuckerberg's stranglehold on local buy/sway/sell groups, community event notifications and other suburban information-sharing. But Nextdoor, is trying to do just that. With a presence in the US and several European countries, Nextdoor has quietly launched in Australia.

Breaking up is hard to do, especially when there are numerous public profiles where we can check in on everything our ex does. Looking at how the person you dated is filling all their days without you is a bad idea, but often impossible to resist.

Fortunately, there's a way to surreptitiously keep tabs on them without bumming yourself out in the process. Here's how.

I talk too much crap on the internet. I go to social media, the place we all go to scream now, and I see something bad. I quote the bad thing to mock it, thus spreading the bad thing, and inviting bad replies. I do this despite already having a job pointing to bad things and inviting bad replies for money, otherwise known as blogging.

So lately I'm using this mantra, not something I tell myself, but something I ask myself, before saying anything — especially a reply or reaction — on the internet. I ask myself, "Is this strategic, or just cathartic?"

Ding! This needs your attention right now, notifications seem to say. Boing! It might be an emergency. Or, just as often: Boop! Somebody you love might want to talk to you. We get hundreds of notifications every day, and they are almost all lies.

They don't really want to debate you, those randoms who crawl into the comments of your Facebook posts and your tweets and your blog posts (hi!) asking to "debate" you over crap we should all agree on by now. You can't debate them in any meaningful way, because they are mouths without ears. You can block them or take your account private, but maybe that leaves you feeling frustrated and powerless. How do you leave this situation feeling any type of satisfaction?

Last month Facebook revealed that its engineering team had discovered an issue where hackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in the site’s “View As” feature. The feature allows users to see what their profile looks like to someone else, but hackers were able to use it to steal Facebook access tokens and take over people’s accounts.

My wife and I have about the same number of Twitter followers — 16k and 14k respectively — but her tweets consistently outperform mine. In fact, according to the SparkScore tool from the Twitter marketing service SparkToro, an average tweet from her gets three times as many retweets and 10 times as many faves.

Google's attempt to take over the world of social networking, Google+ never really gained the traction the company hoped. And any hope of it catching up to Facebook were scotched last week when a massive hack was revealed resulting in the search giant announcing they would be shutting the service down next year. But in order to protect yourself now, here's how to delete your Google+ profile.

Google has announced the closure of its ailing social media network Google+ in response to a data leak that exposed up to 500,000 users. If you were one of the few people still using the platform - or created an account and forgot about it - here's what you need to know.

I saw it for the first time late last week: an acquaintance from college posted something about how she had received a message about a friend receiving a friend request from her from a bogus account that the friend in question supposedly ignored, but she should “check her account.” It also recommends forwarding the message to everyone you know and provides instructions on how to do so.