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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.

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21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital change, digital life, digital parenting, education not fear, Facebook, parents and technology, risky behavior, social media, supervising digital kids, values in digital life

On Digital Parenting Fear, Part #2 – We Must Know More About Kids’ Digital Lives

Posted on February 10, 2016February 10, 2016 by Marti Weston

In our connected world unfamiliar activities make adults worry about kids, and violent and exploitative events, some connected to the digital world, make us fear for our children’s safety. This past week two events, a 13-year-old’s ruthless murder that was associated with online app interactions and a Wall Street Journal article, Cyberthieves Have a New Target: Children, made many of us wonder, once again, whether the digital world is degrading the quality of our lives.

For me the week reinforced the importance of parents understanding what their children are up to on digital devices. It’s a serious responsibility, it requires enormous time and energy, and we cannot hire outside experts to do it for us. The work requires every parenting skill that we’ve ever developed and more, and if you are not up to it you need to consult a parent education organization, such as the Parenting Encouragement Program (PEP) in my area, that offers training to parents. Continue reading “On Digital Parenting Fear, Part #2 – We Must Know More About Kids’ Digital Lives” →

21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, digital parenting, parents and technology, social media

Pinterest: A Digital Passport to the World of Images

Posted on August 7, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

If you are the parent of a 21st Century digital kid, and you want to try something new in the turbulent, always-changing social media world, you might explore Pinterest — a social media site that helps people accomplish an old activity in a new and better way.

In the “olden days” people spent time looking through magazines and catalogs, identifying images such as the best-looking clothes, interesting plants, comfortable shoes, or pictures with ideas for an upcoming home construction project. An individual cut out the image and put it into a folder (or a pile). I used to have folders filled with images on all sorts of topics, waiting for me to consult, and I used them from time-to-time. Now Pinterest makes this process digital.

Pinterest, a social media sharing site, allows users to collect and store digitized images from all over the web, along with the image links, and it offers a way organize the pictures into digital folders — Pinterest calls them boards. When a person searches for and finds a useful image, it’s pinned along with its web link into a board’s collection. An individual can also discover, collect, and pin web images from outside of Pinterest. Continue reading “Pinterest: A Digital Passport to the World of Images” →

21st Century Learning, 21st Century parenting, digital footprings, parents and technology, privacy, sharing media, social media

Sharenting? Kids Are Beginning to Notice

Posted on May 16, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

Two years ago, for the first time, students took me aside to wonder aloud how to go about asking their parents not to share photos. It happened again last year when a child commented about baby photos that were especially embarrassing.

All of this adult sharing of kids’ images and information is called “sharenting.” A fair number of people, including researchers, are wondering about the effect that too much sharenting has on kids.

A few months ago researchers at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital conducted a survey on the subject. The hospital’s National Poll on Children’s Health investigates topics several times a year, polling adults in around 2000 randomly selected, nationally representative households, about significant health issues that relate to children. In March the hospital announced the results of a November-December 2014 poll that asked 21st Century parents a range of questions about how they use social media to gain knowledge about parenting on social media as well as how they share information about their children.

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21st Century life, digital life, digital parenting, family conversations, parents and technology, social media, teaching digital kids

So What Happens to Social Media Data? Read the Terms of Service!

Posted on April 30, 2015March 17, 2019 by Marti Weston

I am preparing to make a presentation to a group of well-informed teens at a school. In the process, I’ve reread the terms of service at a range of social media sites to remind myself about what can potentially happen to the pictures, comments, videos, and other content that we share on social media.

Social media is a part of life in today’s 21st Century world. Rather than wringing our hands about these apps, and the things that can go wrong, it’s a far better strategy for adults to proactively learn about social media, know what their digital children are using, and help them understand the power of social media apps. Moreover, every social media user — young and old — needs to develop strategies to use when things have the potential to go wrong.

Check out the terms of service for your favorite social media site. What do you think these policies mean for the pre-adolescents or teens in your life? The social media companies design these statements — albeit long documents — to make it clear what happens and what does not. What can you do to ensure that your child develops the necessary tools and strategies to think carefully about what content to post and share and what content to avoid sharing? Ongoing conversations about living in the digital world are a critical part of family life.

Each of the clips is from one of the social media websites, and I’ve added a link to each site’s complete terms of service document. Most of the companies want us to understand these documents.

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21st Century life, digital learning, digital life, sharing media, social media

Getting to Know Pinterest: A Parent’s Guide

Posted on February 20, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Pinterest digitizes image collecting, the non-digital activity that lots of us have been doing for years. In a sense Pinterest offers a 21st Century way to bookmark and collect images instead of accumulating pieces of paper. I’m loving it!

Many people spend time looking through magazines and catalogs, identifying images such as the best-looking clothes, interesting plants, comfortable shoes, or pictures with ideas for an upcoming home construction project. An individual cuts out (or tears out) the image and puts it into a folder. I used to have folders (and more folders) filled with images on all sorts of topics, waiting for me to consult. And I used them from time-to-time, especially at the beginning of a project.

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21st Century life, 21st Century parenting, parents and technology, social media, supervising digital kids

Play in the Social Media Sandbox? Decisions, Decisions!

Posted on February 19, 2015March 18, 2019 by Marti Weston

Check out Nick Bilton’s New York Times article, Letting Your Kids Play in the Social Media Sandbox. The February 18, 2015 piece shares Bilton’s experience as he considers how much initial access his nephew should have to social media, after the boy asked about signing up for a YouTube account.

The best part of his decision-making process is the author’s metaphor describing the three doors that open to progressively more complicated social media and how each door leads to a more complicated social experience for a younger person. Bilton explains how each door opens to trickier types of social media that allow — or more likely promotes — certain types of negative behavior. He is not against social media access at all, but he has some specific recommendations about child supervision and parent responsibilities.

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