Parents and educators can learn a lot about children’s digital lives — and the importance of helping young people develop strong digital citizenship skills — by listening to a series of broadcasts from National Public Radio (NPR) on raising digital natives (also available in print). The radio reports focus on children’s experiences in daily connected life and present wide-ranging information about the responsibilities of parenting 21st Century digital kids. All of the stories are posted at All Tech Considered blog, but I’ve included links for each story below.
The entire set of news stories, shared by a number of different NPR reporters, contains information that can help parents and educators think more carefully about how to strengthen their roles in children’s lives.
- Exploring Digital Childhood on NPR – October 28, 2013
- What You Need to Know about Babies, Toddlers, and Screen Time – October 28, 2013
- Raising Social Media Teens Means Constant Parental Learning – October 29, 2013
- How You Handle Screen – Technology Time With Your Kids – October 29, 2013
- How Video Games Are Getting Inside Your Head and Your Wallet – October 29, 2013
- For the Tablet Generation a Lesson in Digital Citizenship – November 1, 2013
- Tech Week That Was: Kids and Screens – NSA and Our Data – November 1, 2013
Those of us not born into the digital world may never feel quite as technically capable as digital kids, and we can only dream about the charmed lives of young people when it comes to figuring things out in the digital world. Yet adults have much to teach children when it comes to developing strong citizenship skills that apply in daily life — online and off. A young person, even one who is technologically savvy and creative, may not be well-prepared for the rigors of 21st Century adult life if he or she cannot apply values such as respect, integrity, compassion, reliability, focus, discipline, and leadership in digital life.
Read a related post, Is It Digital Citizenship or Just Plain Citizenship? To learn more about NPR’s digital footprint series, broadcast at the end of September 2013, check out my September 30, 2013, MediaTechParenting post,
Media! Tech! Parenting! 