Category: acceptable use

Posted in acceptable use, cell phones, digital devices and gadgets, digital parenting, parent child conversations, parents and technology

Parents and Electronic Devices: Taking Time Out?

Posted on by Marti Weston

We’ve all seen them. Perhaps people have seen one of us. The temptation to use a phone or smart device,  no matter where we are or what we are doing — even when we are with our kids — is way, way too strong.

I keep seeing children being pushed around by people (parents?) on telephones.  Sometimes children are playing along in yards or parks, not watched over because the parents are tapping or merely talking on their smart phones. The trouble is, this used to be quality time – enjoyable and relaxed interaction — pointing out dogs, discovering leaves, and learning new words for all sorts of things.

Read Anybody: Parents are Ignoring their Children for their Blackberry in the February 1. 2011 Washington Post. Here’s a short quote, but check out the whole article. Continue reading “Parents and Electronic Devices: Taking Time Out?” →

Posted in acceptable use, cell phones, digital citizenship, family conversations, parents and technology, teens and technology

Make a Digital Action Plan for Kids’ New Gadgets

Posted on by Marti Weston

 Any time a child receives a new digital device, parents need to update or introduce a digital gadget action plan — something akin to the rules-of-the road that are so critical to new teenage drivers. Flashy new smartphones, iPads, iPod Touches, music players, computers, laptops, notebooks, and video games — most connected in some way to the exciting, but rough and tumble world of the Internet — require parents to focus just as intently as they do on driving lessons. Sometime during the first week of gadget ownership, and especially before school vacation ends, sit down with your child and go over the expectations in your action plan.

My New iPad

Even as a youngster thrills to the capabilities of a new device, the potential for digital mistakes and judgment errors exists. A short, sarcastic comment or text can be perceived as cyber-bullying when it reaches its destination. A game can be played online with someone who is more interested in your child than the game. A couple of less than thoughtful words, sent to one person, can be forwarded easily and embarrassingly to many others. The right time to talk about acceptable use and intention versus consequence is when the device is new.

A digital action plan — an agreement, contract, or list of guidelines between you and your child — anticipates potential issues and lays out specific expectations that will arise when a youngster uses a digital device in the wider, less supervised, world.

A Few Points to Emphasize in Conversations With Your Child Continue reading “Make a Digital Action Plan for Kids’ New Gadgets” →

Posted in acceptable use, digital citizenship, digital parenting, family conversations, parents and technology

Intention vs. Consequence: What Kids Don’t Understand

Posted on by Marti Weston

In the world of digital parenting, three words help adults understand how a child’s digital activities get out of hand. Using these words — magnification, intention, and consequence — in parent-child conversations can, over time, help everyone understand more about why digital problems occur.  

  • Magnification – If digital media is involved, mistakes, even those made by well-behaved and thoughtful kids, loom large and quickly become public. The magnification of a seemingly small problem often leads to embarrassment or even humiliation for everyone involved. In the digital world, private mistakes can evolve into magnified public ones.

 

  • Intention – While the world of pre-adolescents and adolescents can be rough and tumble on any day, unintended reactions to their digital activities often surprise kids. Most often a problem involves one student communicating with another, and if the initiator had only taken even moment to think over an impulsive action, the incident might not have occurred.

 

  • Consequence – If a digital problem becomes too public, too magnified, and too hurtful, consequences matter much more than anything a child intended to happen. From a young age, we teach children to say they are sorry when something goes wrong, but in the digital world, the degree of hurt and humiliation may mean that an apology is only the beginning of the recovery process.

Most adults remember a time when behavioral mistakes were more private. Rarely were our errors, even the big ones, known by more than a few people. The mechanisms for passing information from place to place, for broadcasting a problem to the world, were minimal. Times have changed.

This video below — Stop Think Connect — is a helpful resource for families with children in grades 4 – 7.

 
Posted in acceptable use, digital parenting, family conversations, media literacy, parents and technology

Terms of Use — How Much Can You Read?

Posted on by Marti Weston

I often write about parent-child conversations. We parents initiate these chats all the time, concentrating on this issue or that, and encouraging our children to participate, respond, or even disagree. When the talks focus on digital issues they can be enjoyable or arduous, or anything in-between. The fun but still educational conversations, however, only come along from time-to-time.

So the other day, when I read a posting by Linda Criddle over at the I look Both Ways blog, I became excited because kids will love the discussion on this topic — whether at home or school — and they will learn a lot in the process.

Criddle described her experience examining terms of use documents posted on well-known and popular websites. She looked over the terms of use documents for the sites such as the New York Times, Amazon, iPhone, Club Penguin. Then she ran each document through a readability index — a tool that examines a passage and estimates how easy or hard it will be for a person to read the words, as well as what level of education the reader might need to comprehend the information.

Continue reading “Terms of Use — How Much Can You Read?” →

Posted in acceptable use, answers to media questions, cultural changes, digital parenting, interesting research, parents and technology, social media, social networking

Social Networking Researcher, dana boyd, Speaks at Brown University

Posted on by Marti Weston

As the parent of a Brown University alum, I occasionally check the Brown Daily Herald, the engaging student newspaper that kept me connected during years when my child did not necessarily let me know what was happening. By reading the student newspaper I could find out who was speaking at the university, why certain important issues concerned Brown students, and what significant faculty research projects interested me. More importantly during that time, an amazing woman, academic superstar Ruth Simmons, Ph.D., assumed the presidency of the university, and from that moment on, there was never a dull moment, at least from my perspective, anywhere at Brown or in the Daily Herald.

This week I read with some interest a Brown Daily Herald article about the visit of dana boyd (yes, she spells her name with no caps), a Brown alum (’00) who has established a reputation as an astute observer of the social networking culture and the issues that arise from so many of us using one or another of these virtual communication tools. Her research has focused especially on teens and social networking.

Continue reading “Social Networking Researcher, dana boyd, Speaks at Brown University” →

Posted in acceptable use, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology

On Websites, What Age is the Right Age?

Posted on by Marti Weston

Is it OK for your child to visit a site with age restrictions, register, and then fib about his or her age?

Recently at my nearby public library I overheard a conversation between two parents. Discussing a fairly well-known website and its age requirements, one parent commented that she was not letting her child use the site because the rules said users must be 13, and her child was not yet 13. The other parent, whose child was in the same grade, thought that the age limits were ridiculous, so she allows her child to sign up and pretend to be age 13. “We are just fudging a bit,” she said (laughed).

My question — is this just fudging, or is a parent sending a message that it is OK to put false data into website information blanks? It’s tricky, because kids eagerly learn things that we don’t intend for them to learn. Even if we think a rule is silly, do we really want to encourage our children to break the rules that they think are silly? Are there other alternatives?

Continue reading “On Websites, What Age is the Right Age?” →

Posted in acceptable use, cell phones, digital citizenship, digital parenting, parents and technology

Driving? Texting? Phoning?

Posted on by Marti Weston

Read a post from the Thrive blog at Children’s Hospital Boston. In R U Ready 2 Stop Txting, Lois Lee MD, MPH, links to statistics, discusses the new Massachusetts texting law that took effect September 30, 2010, and offers suggestions about digital era parenting.

Dr. Lee directly addresses parents about virtual connections while driving.

Most of us would never drink and drive in front of our kids, race other cars, or even start the engine without buckling up first. Why then would we set a bad example for our children by texting behind the wheel? Though they may deny it, we have a much greater influence over our teens’ behavior than they let on. If you practice safe driving, there’s a far better chance your teenager will as well. ‘Do as I say, not as I text’ isn’t just hypocritical, it’s dangerous.