digital wellness – Media! Tech! Parenting!

21st Century life, back-to-school, Back-to-school digital reading, digital wellness, parents and technology

Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist

Posted on August 12, 2019August 21, 2019 by Marti Weston

This post includes a downloadable handout.

At the beginning of the school year, what can parents and teachers do to ensure that digital kids — with their hand-held devices, connected school activities, homework, and other online endeavors — get off to a good start?

Back-to-school preparation is more than school supplies, lunch boxes, and carpool arrangements. It also involves reviewing and articulating connected-life expectations with family members and working together to set up a family media plan that works for each person in the family.

Below are a few issues for parents and educators to consider as they seek to maintain quality in kids’ 21st Century digital lives during the 2019-2020 school year. Raising strong and competent digital citizens requires teamwork and immense effort — at home and at school.

handout image 2 — Download this PDF handout.

1. Make decisions about screen time in your family. Altogether, as a family, figure out your plan and then think about how you will re-address your decisions as the year progresses. Check out the 2018 article, How Much Screen Time Affects Kids’ Bodies and Brains at Forbes. Family issues to consider might include:

What limits will your family set up for digital devices, electronic games, and television?
If your child uses a personal device from school, are you aware of specific teacher expectations and time commitments?
What else would you like your child to spend time doing?
A good article for parents and educators (and a great back-to-school piece to share with parents) is on the NPR website — Kids and Screen Time-What Does the Research Say?

Continue reading “Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital health and wellness, digital kids, digital parenting, family conversations, New York Times, parent child conversations, parents and technology

Learn Lots More from the New York Times About Addressing Kids’ Tech Use

Posted on July 15, 2019July 28, 2019 by Marti Weston

After nine years of blogging at MediaTechParenting, I’ve written posts about kids, technology, parenting, screen time, citizenship, 21st Century life, digital devices — well you get the idea. Now a New York Times Smarter Living published report summarizes a good deal of what I’ve been writing about in a parents’ guide to raising and guiding kids in the digital world.

How (and When) to Limit Kids’ Tech Use by Melanie Pinola (@MelaniePinola) includes just about everything a digital age parent needs to know. The comprehensive and well-packaged guide overflows with information. Keep it nearby, whether your child is a new baby, a teenager, or any age in between.

Pinola breaks her digital parenting guide into three parts: Continue reading “Learn Lots More from the New York Times About Addressing Kids’ Tech Use” →

21st Century life, digital devices, digital health and wellness, images, parents and technology, privacy

Three Concepts that Build a Foundation for Digital Wellness & Health

Posted on April 1, 2019April 1, 2019 by Marti Weston

unnamed Various types of digital devices and toys are now a given in the lives of many children — even toddlers and preschoolers. From three and four years of age, many of their play activities include a vast array of toys and books that talk, beep, sing, cue activity, and play music. Even two-year-olds quickly learn how to use digital devices — after all they are generally adept at figuring out cause and effect and how to operate buttons.

The moment children begin to hold or play with digital devices of any kind is the time for parents and adult mentors to begin introducing three important digital life concepts — privacy, fairness, and respecting images. These three connected-life values, introduced early and reinforced regularly, contribute to a child’s long-term digital wellness. The three concepts create a knowledge base that supports decision-making as a child grows older, uses more powerful digital tools, and faces increased peer pressure. Continue reading “Three Concepts that Build a Foundation for Digital Wellness & Health” →

21st Century life, brain, cell phones, changing digital habits, digital devices, digital habits, Facebook, moderation

A Bit Less Facebook, a Bit More Writing & Piano Practice — I Feel More Relaxed

Posted on March 22, 2019March 22, 2019 by Marti Weston

It’s been nearly four weeks since I wrote Digital Device Time Off, a post that described how one individual readjusted his extreme mobile phone habits, aiming to become less addicted to using his phone to fill every moment of the day.

apple applications apps cell phone — Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

After writing the post, I decided to keep track of my phone use, and lo and behold, I discovered that I have some of the same tendencies. So, I made a resolution to cut back a bit.

I decided to start with Facebook. I found that I opened Facebook many times each day, mostly because I received a notification or discovered something interesting to share with friends. But I also decided to start with Facebook because the company’s myriad privacy and data collecting problems sometimes make me want to completely wean myself off. Continue reading “A Bit Less Facebook, a Bit More Writing & Piano Practice — I Feel More Relaxed” →

21st Century life, collaborating with kids, digital change, digital devices, digital parenting strategies, family media plan, parents and technology

Melinda Gates Parents Digital Kids, Too

Posted on August 30, 2017March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Parenting digital kids?

kids devices Gates — Image downloaded from Pixabay.

If you sometimes feel lonely and unprepared as you take steps to craft appropriate media guidelines for your family, check out Melinda Gates’ digital parenting essay I Spent My Career in Technology: I Wasn’t Prepared for Its Effect on My Kids, appearing in the August 24, 2017, edition of the Washington Post. Her family experiences some of the same 21st Century challenges.

Despite spending years working at Microsoft, Gates describes her amazement at the pace of change and the ways that digital activities have taken over, in different ways, the lives of her children. She compares and contrasts her older child’s technology experiences with the increased access of her younger daughter. And she thinks about and shares a range of resources to help parents understand more about digital wellness and how to raise children who understand the digital world where they live.

Continue reading “Melinda Gates Parents Digital Kids, Too” →

21st Century life, digital citizenship, digital kids, digital life, family life, monitoring kids online, parent child conversations, parents and technology

Can You & Your Kids Balance Life With So Much Social Media & Tech?

Posted on July 19, 2017March 13, 2019 by Marti Weston

Take a few minutes to read Five Ways Parents Can Help Kids Balance Social Media With the Real World, appearing in the July 11, 2017 Washington Post.

Written by Adrienne Wichard-Edds, the Post article offers common-sense suggestion that parents can use to establish a sense of balance between digital endeavors and the rest of a family’s activities. Most of the ideas come from Ana Homayoun’s, Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World. Continue reading “Can You & Your Kids Balance Life With So Much Social Media & Tech?” →

21st Century life, bedrooms, devices and bedtime, digital devices, digital devices and gadgets, digital devices and sleep, digital life, parents and technology, tech free time

When Did We Stop Thinking of Bedrooms as Places to Sleep?

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Marti Weston

bedroom device Should we make kids’ bedrooms better for sleeping?

I’ve just finished reading an October 2016 editorial in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics, Problems Associated With Use of Mobile Devices in the Sleep Environment — Streaming Instead of Dreaming. The short piece describes the problems that digital devices, especially those that are mobile and easy to glance at or grab in the middle of the night, reflects on research published in the same issue of the journal. Unfortunately neither article is freely available; however, the links I’ve added offer a summary describing how the research was conducted and highlighting the findings.

The JAMA Pediatrics research article explains how the study asked the question, “Is there an association between screen-based media device access or use in the sleep environment and sleep quantity and quality?” Researchers conducted a meta-analysis (examining the results of many studies and combining the results) by searching through 20 previous studies, involving more than 125,000 children, that examined sleep patterns of children between 6 and 19 years old. Continue reading “When Did We Stop Thinking of Bedrooms as Places to Sleep?” →