ReadWriteWeb

If you're not scanning Facebook, declining invites to play Hidden Chronicles and other "magical" social games, you might find yourself messing around on Doodle.ly. This visual social network is organized around the simple act of doodling, helping users share at times childish, at other times quite serious, drawings. Like finger painting, doodles on Doodle.ly can take on any form. And if you'd rather not commit to drawing something and engaging in a social game with your Facebook friends, Doodle.ly is an interesting, less commitment-focused alternative. It is available online and as an app for the iPad.

The very nature of mobile-sharing apps has changed the types of imagery that people upload. There is also an added on-the-move life-streaming nature to the whole thing. Photos found on the flowing Instagram news feed don't look like the ones you might come across on Flickr.

Instagram is a community conducive to likes and comments, whereas Flickr focuses more on displaying collections of photographs in photostreams, sets and galleries, organized by tags and maps. Yet interestingly, the most-used camera on Flickr is the iPhone4. What's fundamentally different about the two sites? The privacy settings.

In the world of social media, "celebrity" is a combination of social status and social media presence. The more likes you receive, the more "popular" you appear to friends and followers.

Up until its acquisition by Facebook, Instagram was the current site of social media celebrity. As it becomes yet another Facebook app, the photography will most likely change from what was once street photography, landscapes and architecture of early users, to the social, people-oriented imagery that floods Facebook on a daily basis.

Like paper coloring books, iPhone and iPad apps cost money. It's always fun to have the newest, shiniest app in the App Store - but those come with a price. Oftentimes they cost something, and they may not always ring true with your kid. Buying too many apps can add up, making for an unhappy dent on a parent's credit card bill. So what's a parent to do?

Learning to draw with your finger isn't about fingerpaints anymore. It's not about hands, either. It's about the smartphone that you keep in your pocket, and give to your kid when they want to get creative. ReadWriteWeb surveyed three apps for children ages 5-6 that give them an opportunity to try and learn how to draw inside the lines, and to create visual effects that will impress peers and parents alike. Just choose your smart device.

DoinkExpress is an odd-sounding term for a mobile social network based entirely around short-form animations, but we'll go with it. Designed for users ages 12 and older, the Doink Express iPhone/iPad/iPod app adds a social component to the solitary practice of animating short clips for the Web, otherwise known as "doinks."

Calling the mini animations "doinks" actually makes sense. They are not quite video animations or GIFs. Doinks only take a few moments to make, and they can express a moment that you may not be able to say or even write. Because why should images stand still when they can move, ever so slightly?

Not every teenager sits around, texting endlessly and at all the wrong times, causing their parents to worry about a possible addiction to technology. Some of them give TED talks in their spare time.

How will we talk about feminism? What does it mean to "fail," and why shouldn't we fail better? What is love? Why isn't America investing in young black men? And are the people who create change the silent supporters rather than the vocal leaders? In this curated selection of TEDxTeen Talks, the adolescent version of the adult TED Talks, five teens discuss these ideas and how they collide with their own stories.

Teenagers aren't the only ones on the Internet. Preteens, which we are classifying as kids ages 9-12, are growing up with easy access to smartphones, tablets and, most importantly, the Internet. Preteens can loosely be categorized as Generation *C*, which means they're using the Internet and apps to create, collaborate and communicate.

"I'm seeing kids skipping more traditional and print-based applications and going right to the Internet, and I'm seeing that as young as two years old." says Jennifer Jolly, digital lifestyle parenting editor for Tecca.com. "They are integrating the hands-on with the visual for a multi-sensory learning experience."

Who doesn't at least like TED Talks, the "Technology, Entertainment and Design" conference that aims to smarten us up without asking us to work very hard? We sit at our computers, watch someone give an 18-minute-long talk, and believe that we are rapidly learning and understanding complex ideas. This is much better than wasting time pinning cat images to Pinterest or messing with the Google LOLcat generator. TED Talks' shareable quotes make it feel even easier to spread great TED ideas via Facebook and Twitter. After all, says TED Media's Executive Producer Julie Cohen, "Quotes are ideas - in their post compressed and contagious form."

But what if the very talks that we believe are making us smarter are actually dumbing us down, simplifying complex ideas into snippets of "shareable" information apt for fast consumption? This is why Chicago-based improvisers Seth Dodson and Kellen Alexander created "NED Talks: Spreading Worthless Ideas," a spoof of the popular TED Talk videos. Their show challenges the entire structure upon which TED is built.

Site by site, you now have the power to erase the entire Internet. Now just figure out where you want to start.

Erasey Page, a new Web-based project conceived by artist Jillian Mayer in collaboration with Eric Cade Schoenborn, ask Internet users to take back their lives by erasing the Net, one site at a time. At first glance, this feels like just another gimmicky Internet spoof site, an idea that you wish you probably thought of at one point or another but were too busy surfing the Web to actually execute. But look beyond the parody feel of this project, and you'll find something that's a bit - dare we say it? - darker. Most readers of ReadWriteWeb couldn't imagine a life without the Internet, let alone what it would mean to enjoy a more "real-time reactive lifestyle."