Tag: family conversations
10 Safe(r) Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids
Over at KQED News, Linton Weeks wrote a July 11, 2011 article describing the need and desire of younger children to participate in social network activities (despite the expressed doubts of many parents). In his article, 10 Safe Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids, he lists ten kid-friendly social networking sites along with editorial comments on topics such as privacy and parent administration options.
If I were writing the headline, I would use the word “safer.” Why safer? Continue reading “10 Safe(r) Social Networking Sites for Younger Kids”
Summer Vacation and Family Digital Conversations
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 day camps 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.
Continue reading “Summer Vacation and Family Digital Conversations”
Kids, Parents, and Those Very Public Digital Mistakes
Attention!
Another public figure has made yet another public digital gaffe, giving parents one more opportunity to engage the family in a discussion about the unrelenting power of digital tools.
Representative Weiner (D-NY) is just the latest, and it looks like public figures and celebrities will continue to make these public mistakes, like clockwork, for a long time to come. We can laugh at the ineptness of these public personalities, but the bottom line is that we are all one instant gratification click away from making a public and embarrassing error.
Although we may worry about the safety of our children and their activities on the web, most of these problems, while alarmingly publicized and widely and repetitively covered in the media, are not the biggest risk for children.
What we should dread, however, is the potential harm from a digital misjudgment spontaneously sent off via e-mail, text, Twitter, voicemail, or whatever else we all find to use in the future. Instant digital missives, unlike the gossipy handwritten notes we adults used to pass around to a few people at school, can instantly become public and humiliating. Or they can lie quietly, waiting in the vastness of the web, until some reason arises for people to seek out information about us.
The New York Times article, Erasing the Digital Past, is a must-read for everyone who uses electronic tools and toys, pointing out that the electronic world is public, permanent, and non-erasable. Watch the digital footprint video (embedded at the bottom of this post) from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society to learn even more. Continue reading “Kids, Parents, and Those Very Public Digital Mistakes”
Media Literate Disaster Discussions Balance Concern with Hope
After a disaster like the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear catastrophe in Japan, media — both social and traditional — saturate our lives. We process the events as radios and televisions blare the news and our smartphones, laptops, and computers constantly update. Paper editions of newspapers, quaintly behind the news cycle, nevertheless provide a kind of security, allowing us to hold a finite amount of news right in our hands — amounts we can process.
By the time children are in fourth or fifth grade, the pervasive media coverage ensures that almost nothing remains hidden for long, despite adult attempts to shield their children from the most frightening images. Media literacy matters at times such as these, but conversations with children about the news can still be challenging. I address this topic in an earlier post, Talking to Children About the News. That blog piece included online resources to support family discussions.
When a disaster occurs and the news churns on about it, I am always on the lookout for the unique article or media story that allows children balance concern and anxiety with hope and resilience.
Continue reading “Media Literate Disaster Discussions Balance Concern with Hope”
Grandma/Grandkids Use Facebook: Do You?
Join Facebook? For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, and of course the kids at school were all over it, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. Way too different, I thought. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook (she spoke these words in bold). Still I refrained.
At some point, however, I became aware that my mother and my twenty-something daughter were communicating with each other more than usual. They knew things about each other that I did not know. Finally my daughter mentioned that her grandmother — my mother — was on Facebook and that the two of them had “friended’ one another. That’s when I called Mom, at that time age 81. She explained that her fellow workers from the Obama campaign, exceptional young people she called them, had arranged virtual reunions on Facebook. They wanted her to participate and helped her get started.
So, like many of today’s parents, I found that I was in the middle, but basically out of the generational communication loop. By the time I tuned in, my mother had over 100 friends, all people she knew in one way or another (no strangers and privacy settings in place, she reassured me), and quite a few in her age-range. I signed up for Facebook.
More on Facebook Privacy
According to the LA Times Technology Blog, Facebook is again updating its privacy policies. The February 25, 2011 post, Facebook Rolls Out Test Version of Simplified Privacy Policy, describes how the company is testing a simplified, maybe even one-page version. The company will be seeking feedback from Facebook users.
Read the information about new privacy guidelines posted on Facebook’s site.
As soon as children begin using computers, parents can begin to introduce the concept of online privacy, and these conversations focusing on privacy and social networking should continue throughout a child’s pre-adolescent and teenage years. Ongoing discussions can help children understand the power of the digital footprints they leave as they engage in web-based work and play.
Other Places to Read about the Facebook Privacy Updates
Media! Tech! Parenting! 
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