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21st Century life, digital kids, family media plan, media and family life, media diet, parents and technology

Pediatricians Recast Screen Time Recommendations & Give Parents Online Planning Tools

Posted on October 22, 2016April 5, 2019 by Marti Weston

Thanks to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), parents and teachers now have two simple and easy-to-use tools that can assist with developing a family’s media plan and estimating how family members can organize their time so that screen time is balanced with physical activity, reading, face-to-face connections, and homework.

screen-shot-2016-10-21-at-8-47-49-pm — A screenshot of the two new media tools.

Every school administrator and every PTA group will want to share the information about these digital planning devices in as many ways as possible. The new tools are available at the AAP’s HealthyChildren.org website.

The Academy has also refreshed its screen time recommendations for children of all ages, making needed updates to reflect the changing digital landscape as well as the many media activities in the lives of family members. Whether you agreed or vehemently disagreed with previous AAP screen and media guidelines, the professional society of children’s physicians deserves high praise for its ongoing efforts to address a media and digital landscape that dramatically affects the health and wellness of young people.

Continue reading “Pediatricians Recast Screen Time Recommendations & Give Parents Online Planning Tools” →

21st Century life, 21st Century teaching, advertising, civics, civility, credibility, digital devices, digital health and wellness, digital kids, digital life, ethical behavior, information credibility, media and family life, parents and technology, social media, teaching digital kids

Civility Is Now Devalued — So What Will Adults Do About It?

Posted on August 4, 2016May 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

dry-cracked-earth-texture-408x544 — Image from http://www.public-domain-image.com.

If there is ever a time to emphasize ideas on civility, commenting, fact-checking, and media literacy, it’s during an election. Children, preadolescents, and teens will learn much during the 2016 presidential campaign just from all the watching. (Read my post The Children are Watching and Seeing, Listening and Hearing.)

Our traditional expectations for civility and ethical behavior are cracking apart right before our eyes.

On the basis of what’s happened at recent political conventions and the beginning of the election season, young people will be witnessing name-calling, stereotyping, hateful comments, online hate, and in some cases veiled bodily threats. Kids will hear things on TV at home and on the televisions that are broadcasting in lounges, waiting rooms, doctor’s offices, and everywhere else. They will hear radios broadcasting the news at home and in other peoples’ homes. And, of course, there’s social media.

Continue reading “Civility Is Now Devalued — So What Will Adults Do About It?” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, coding, collaborating with kids, Conversation skills, digital kids, family conversations, gadgets of convenience, modeling for kids, parents and technology

Digital Kids’ Summer – Collaborative Projects & a Printable

Posted on May 26, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

** Please feel free to share this post with parents at your school
or parent group using this PDF. **

Summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime!

Summer 2016 is almost here. It’s a great time for family fun, outdoor activities, visiting museums and historical sites, and choosing from all sorts of camps and special programs. Problem is, many kids spend a lot of their summer vacation in front of screens, and it’s one of the hardest time of the year to focus on digital moderation.

With less frenetic schedules and no school, the summer months are a good time for parents to learn more about the digital whirl that’s such a huge part of kids’ 21st Century lives. So when school is out, plan to do some connected world exploring and learning together, concentrating on projects that can help family members — children and their parents — connect with interesting and meaningful work together. Everyone will figure out more about digital life and add some variety to the types of digital activities that they typically do.

Below are 10 family digital project summer suggestions — all activities require collaboration — to consider for the upcoming summer vacation.

Ten Summer Digital Projects for Families Continue reading “Digital Kids’ Summer – Collaborative Projects & a Printable” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, cell phones, digital devices, digital kids, family conversations, parents and technology, screen time, teens and technology

Digital Devices & Parent-Teen Time Issues — New Research

Posted on May 5, 2016May 5, 2016 by Marti Weston

Click here to visit the Common Sense Media research page and sign in for a larger and higher quality image.

Check out the interesting new research just out from Common Sense Media about the issues and challenges when it comes to 21st Century digital kids and their mobile devices. The image depicts a range of statistics and device issues, collected via a poll of 1,200 parents and teens.

This infographic can be an excellent resource to use for family conversations about teens’ and children’s screen and digital device times (and adults’ times, too). It offers a range of information that can help parents discuss potential problems and concerns.

Continue reading “Digital Devices & Parent-Teen Time Issues — New Research” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital devices, digital kids, digital parenting, parents and technology

Screenagers: An Excellent New Documentary & Digital Parenting Resource

Posted on March 17, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

I just finished reading a New York Times Well Blog article about Screenagers, a new documentary that addresses the challenge that too much screen time presents for families. The March 15, 2016 piece by Jennifer Jolly interviews Dr. Dulaney Ruston (read about some of her past projects), the director of the documentary, Screenagers. Dr. Ruston is also in the film.

This movie shares evidence-based scientific research on screen time — a reason the movie will become an important resource for educators and parents as they struggle with the issue of how to manage 21st Century young people and screen time. The experts in the film offer advice about how to support and guide young people as they grow up in a densely digital age. Thank goodness the film focuses on facts and does not inspire fear.

The issue of parents designing and using contracts or agreements and how much they help parents and kids focus on important screen times issues come up in the article and in the documentary. You can check out a comprehensive list of sites that offer these types of contracts and agreements on MediaTechParenting.net. You can also read this blog’s digital parenting checklist.

View the Screenagers Official Trailer Continue reading “Screenagers: An Excellent New Documentary & Digital Parenting Resource” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital devices, digital kids, digital life, mentoring digital kids, parents and technology

Another Digital Parenting Book That’s Scary – Sigh…

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Marti Weston

So many digital parenting books and articles generate fear and anxiety, and American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers is no exception. The big question is whether or not this book, or any of the others, can inspire parents to get serious, learn about the relationships and issues their children encounter with poorly supervised mobile devices, and then figure out how to guide and, yes, supervise their children.

Journalist Nancy Jo Sales offered us a preview of her book in a 2013 Vanity Fair article, Friends Without Benefits, and now that I’ve read both the book and the article, I’d recommend going for the article. The book definitely offers many more interviews with girls, providing an intensive gaze through the prism of 21st Century adolescent digital life.

Continue reading “Another Digital Parenting Book That’s Scary – Sigh…” →

21st Century parenting, connected learning, digital citizenship, digital kids, parents and technology, research on the web, risky behavior, social media friends

On Digital Parenting Fear, Part #1 – What Risks Should We Worry About the Most?

Posted on February 2, 2016March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

When we teach and interact with digital kids about their hyper-connected lives, I wish we could de-emphasize the fear factor and re-emphasize education and understanding, helping young users become stronger digital world problem-solvers. While monitoring, learning, and guiding, we also need to be sure to help kids, develop the antennae to identify and avoid a range of online problems — not just the big ones.

A day doesn’t go by without hearing an adult comment about children’s digital world risks, and invariably these conversations focus on predators, strangers, pornography, cyber-bullying and even the death of a child. In the area where I live, a grievous and tragic event is unfolding as I edit this post.

My concern as an educator is that my students, without fail, noted how important it was to be aware of the frightening situations. Their deep concern about potentially horrible Internet encounters — events that do not occur nearly as often as the mainstream media imply — obscured for many of them, the importance of many other interactive problems that happen on a daily basis to digital kids — misjudgments, miscommunications, and daily social events gone awry. It’s these problems, often the result of minor online misjudgments or typically adolescent missteps that regularly cause public humiliation and embarrassment, and such events wreak havoc on a child’s and a family’s daily life. Continue reading “On Digital Parenting Fear, Part #1 – What Risks Should We Worry About the Most?” →