Archive for the ‘teens and technology’ Category
Posted by Marti Weston on March 24, 2012
I’ve just finished re-reading The Price of Privilege, a 2008 book by Madeline Levine. Last week at a professional development event at my school, I heard Dr. Levine speak, while taking nearly three pages of notes and recalling some of the parenting strategies my husband and I used when our daughter, now out of graduate school, was in middle and high school.
Almost every concern that Dr. Levine raised — perfectionism, discontent, and insecurity — is familiar after years of parenting and teaching. I especially like her descriptions of effective parenting. Most importantly, when I read her book four years ago and reread it again last week, I thought about sleep and how much of a priority it needs to be for parents and children.
After the lecture my husband and I thought back to our daughter’s middle and high school years, considering all of the things we did well or could have done better. In the process we remembered the emphasis our family placed on getting enough sleep and eliminating computer screens each evening — sometimes to our daughter’s chagrin.
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Posted in cell phones, digital devices and gadgets, digital parenting, gadgets and sleep, parents and technology, teens and technology | Tagged: adolescents, bedrooms, digital kids, digital parenting, gadgets, Madeline Levine, Price of Privilege, sleep deprivation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on December 15, 2011
If you or your children or your aging parents are active Facebook users, take a look at these articles and continue to follow the news on the just introduced Timeline feature. Looks like, despite setting our privacy controls, that our information will be widely shared. We may have some decisions to make.
What to do? Google + is looking awfully good right now. Still, I’ve deleted a few things and set up my timeline.
Read these Articles (I’ll add others as I read them.)
Posted in digital citizenship, digital footprints, digital parenting, online learning, parents and technology, social media, social media friends, social networking, teens and technology | Tagged: Facebook, friends, history, personal history, privacy, Social media, tags, Timeline | 2 Comments »
Posted by Marti Weston on December 10, 2011
Pew infographic. Click and view larger version of this image.
Take a few minutes to read at least the main points of the November 2011 report on teens and social networking, published in November 2011 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The executive summary is a fairly quick read.
During the spring and summer of 2011 researchers made calls to 799 teens between the ages of 12 and 17, and they also spoke with a parent or guardian of each adolescent. Interestingly, a large number of the teens surveyed reported that their parents and teachers provided them with the best and most helpful advice on digital citizenship issues and other virtual concerns. The media were the third most significant influence.
Browse all of the infographics from this Pew Internet report.
A Few Other Interesting Points
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Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking, teens and technology | Tagged: digital parenting, Pew Internet, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Social media, social networking, teens | 1 Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on June 12, 2011
I recommend this documentary for a summer family movie night.
Are you thinking about digital citizenship and safety conversations? Do you want to learn more about Wikipedia? Summer is a great time for these talks. Here’s why.
School’s out and many children fill at least part of their summer days with World Wide Web activities on fast internet connections. Camps and daycamps feature computer labs and lots of specialized digital programs. On the go we increasingly carry more gadgets — mobile phones, smartphones, iTouches, Blackberries, and iPads. In fact, even on vacations and at hotels, cottages, and many of those rustic country cabins we all hope to escape to, we stay connected. After years of teaching I’ve found that my students’ digital skills usually expand during the three-month summer hiatus from school.
Adults can learn more, too. Ask your children to help you expand your own skills. Maybe you want to download videos or save podcasts to your smartphone. Perhaps you can start a family blog, really learn how to use your digital camera, or ask your child can show you how to make special ringtones from your favorite music. If you don’t know how to text, summer is a great time to learn. Read 7 Constructive Digital Suggestions from Kids to Parents.
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Posted in digital parenting, family conversations, online safety, online security, parents and technology, teens and technology | Tagged: children, digital citizenship, digital parenting, family conversations, summer vacation, technology, teens, Truth in Numbers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on May 30, 2011
Made with Wordle!
Day after day frightening stories bombard us with warnings about what might happen to children and teens when they use the Internet and World Wide Web, so it’s useful to remind ourselves that these digital resources can provide our children with unparalleled opportunities to learn, socialize, and become active citizens. An article, Our Overblown Paranoia About the Internet and Teens, recently published in the online publication, Salon, provides just such a reminder.
Pediatrician Rahul Parikh, who practices in the San Francisco Bay area, points out that, despite all of our anxiety about teens and Internet risks, no statistics really exist to offer a full picture of the incidence of exposure to risk. Those few that do are often biased because of a common problem for research, posing questions to get the desired answer. Situations that do occur are often covered by a hysterical media, making us feel like a problem happens over and over, just around the corner. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in cyber-bullying, digital citizenship, digital parenting, family conversations, online safety, parent child conversations, parent education, parents and technology, teens and technology | Tagged: adolescence, children, digital citizenship, digital parenting, exposure to risk, Internet, pediatricians, risks, teens, World Wide Web | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on May 26, 2011
Check out this cool graphic from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
These graphs (click on the image to go to a larger picture at the Pew site) depict the various ways teens communicate. Notice how low e-mail ranks among the electronic forms of communication that today’s teens use. The data come from a survey of teens age 12 – 17 conducted as a part of the research for Pew’s report, Teens and Mobile Phones.
From the Pew Website
The graphic below shows daily use of a variety of communication technologies – and suggests that while text messaging as a daily activity for teens has grown astronomically over the past three years, other communicative technologies have remained relatively stable or have declined slightly, suggesting that the increase in texting has layered on top of the other modes of communication that teens employ.
Other Interesting Pew Internet Reports include Social Media and Young Adults and Teens and Sexting, both released in 2010.
Thanks to Pew for reminding me of this research via Twitter (@PewInternet).
Posted in digital citizenship, digital parenting, electronic communication, parents and technology, social media, teens and technology | Tagged: adolescents, communication, digital, digital parenting, Pew Internet, Pew Internet and American Life Project, technology, teens | 1 Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on April 22, 2011
We should all be aware that law enforcement agencies increasingly use Facebook as a part their investigations, according to an April 21, 2011 article in Medill Reports.
Of course this means that police and detectives are searching for the bad guys, but unexpected problems can occur. Parents need to be sure that teens and pre-adolescents know that their Facebook activities can be monitored just by friending unknown people.
The article, Do You Know Who Your Online Friends Are? They Could be the Law, describes a lot more about the issues related to Facebook and law enforcement. The Medill publication, which has Washington and Chicago editions, is published by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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Posted in acceptable use, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, teens and technology | Tagged: digital behavior, digital footprints, Facebook, friending, law enforcement, Medill Reports, Northwestern University | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on April 12, 2011
Take the quiz!
To get a sense of how much you really know about the social networking world and the movers and shakers who are actively developing and tweaking it, take a social media quiz. The Big Social Media Quiz over at the Liberate Media website.
A user needs 70% to pass this quiz, and though I know all sorts of minutia about social media, I only answered 50% of the questions correctly. Sigh!
Liberate Media is a PR firm with social media expertise.
Posted in data collecting, data sharing, digital parenting, media literacy, parents and technology, social media, social networking, teens and technology | Tagged: advertising, collecting data, digital media, digital parenting, marketing, media literacy, personal data, Quiz, Social media | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Marti Weston on April 2, 2011
Last Monday I read three powerful articles, and they fit together like a puzzle. They illustrate how a generational digital divide accentuates adolescent virtual world problems — a result of the contradictory digital perceptions of teens and adults.
POISONED WEB: A Girl’s Nude Photo and Altered Lives, appeared in the New York Times. The article describes how small, teenage misjudgments in the unsupervised world of instant web, smart phones, and cyber-bullying, can magnify hate and cause terrible pain. Reporter Jan Hoffman quotes adults who wish they had supervised more carefully and pledge to do more in the future. I wondered, as I often do when I read these articles, what leads adults not to supervise in the first place? Reading about the teachers, administrators, and officials who attempted to create opportunities for growth and learning out of the senseless hurt and cruelty was a highlight of the article.
Are We Ready to Stop Labeling Ourselves Digital Immigrants? — an amazing and thoughtful post at A Space for Learning, gets to the heart of the digital divide issue. The author writes: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in American Academy of Pediatricians, cyber-bullying, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology, supervising kids, teens and technology | Tagged: AAP, adolescence, American Academy of Pediatrics, David Considine, digital divide, digital parenting, media literacy, supervising digital kids | Leave a Comment »
After the lecture my husband and I thought back to our daughter’s middle and high school years, considering all of the things we did well or could have done better. In the process we remembered the emphasis our family placed on getting enough sleep and eliminating computer screens each evening — sometimes to our daughter’s chagrin.
