Parenting in the Digital Age

As an athlete of a university, you represent yourself, your team, your school and even your community – whether on the field, on campus and now more than ever, online. If used well, online connections can help you succeed. If used poorly, it could create obstacles toward your goals.



First, it is important that you be purposeful in your online presence. You have got to lose the bad habits you had when you were younger and re-think how you want to present yourself now that you are widening your networks. What you want is to create a positive foundation you can build upon.

Let’s Start with Defense

The best way to maintain a positive digital reputation is to take control of it. You are responsible for your personal data, your safety, your knowledge, and your behavior online. Here are some simple defensive strategies to up your game:

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Score Big On Offense

Now that your defense is set, think about what you want to achieve on offense. Your ultimate goal is to prepare yourself for life after college. That starts now. Whether you have the opportunity to continue on with sports or you are looking to a career in a completely separate profession or even if you don’t yet know what you want to do next, it’s important you cast yourself in the best light now. What do you want future employers, teammates, or coaches to know about you? Once you have decided, find a way to share that online.

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Social Media Game Plan

With all that said, don’t edit out your personality. Social media is meant to be social, so have fun! Connect with positive people and be your best self online. Don’t let others define you. Take advantage of the power of social media to tell your story. Define your personal brand to present who you are, how you got here and where you want to go. When designing your game plan remember social media is:

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Social media can be a great facilitator toward your success. Make the best of it. Take advantage of what is at your fingertips to showcase how truly great you are.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

I have read that according to a recent study, 2 out of 3 parents are completely unaware of their children’s activities using the internet. You might be thinking that kids can manage themselves and exploring is fine and that it’s something you encourage in your household. Like a corporate zombie, you then resume with your busy schedule, phone calls, meetings and you barely even have time for your kids anymore when you get home. I understand how this is becoming a rinse-and-repeat process as I am one of those corporate slaves too, but we are parents.



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Based on my own experience, I listed down useful tips for digital parenting:

1. Set boundaries – it could be a no-internet-zone in your house or a browsing curfew set after dinner. Just create an air of authority on this. I know kids will always be kids but it’s necessary for them to know the essence of responsible freedom as early as possible.

2. Security – Use site filters, check applications before installing them in any device, know the age requirement in these applications too. If you want to breathe a sigh of relief, Visible Internet is an awesome monitoring application for parents, too.



3. Moderation – Anything excessive is bad. Limit your kids’ usage of devices such as tablets and phones. Well, they don’t really need one of their own so let them borrow yours and as mentioned, set a time limit which is non-negotiable.

4. Talk to your kids and explain that digital devices are not toys – they are tools that make our lives convenient only if utilized the right way.

Kids will always imitate what they see so it’s important to be a role model in this endeavor and participate in their digital experience. Let your kids know your values and share how to see the world in a digital perspective.

Source: visibleinternet.com

Absolutely no screen time for kids younger than two years old; for children two years and older, limit screen time to up to two hours max. That has been the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for more than fifteen years now.

However, as times change, the AAP has started loosening its strict guidelines. "In a world where 'screen time' is becoming simply 'time,' our policies must evolve or become obsolete," pediatrician Dr. Ari Brown of the AAP said in a statement, as the previous recommendations were made way before the invention of the iPad.



5 Tips on Raising a Low-Gadget Kid in the Digital Age

The AAP conducted a two-day symposium entitled “Growing Up Digital: Media Research Symposium” to evaluate the effects of digital devices on a child’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and developmental growth. Based on up-to-date and more recent studies discussed during the convention, the AAP updated its advice on young kids and media use accordingly.

While new formal recommendations are still not available. Dr. Brown stresses that "digital life begins at a young age, and so must parental guidance."

We have summarized four key takeaways from the new guidelines, which you can read in full here.

1. Play key to a child’s learning.

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2. Prioritize quality content.

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3. Set limits and unplug once in a while.

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4. It’s okay for teens to be online.

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Psychologist Vange Alianan-Bautista, of PsychConsult, Inc. in Quezon City, and school directress Maggie Rose Almoro, of Children’s Formative Learning School in Laguna, suggest these real-life activities. One, play with babies and tots; it's the primary way they learn to make sense of the world they are in. Two, more than visual stimulation, babies and young tots should be doing activities that require them to move and interact as opposed to watching TV which is a one-way medium. Lastly, reading to these young kids is also crucial as well as letting them play with blocks or books alone. Don't forget to incorporate these activites in your tot's daily life.

Source: smartparenting.com

In the quick-paced world that we call our home, the marathon to success is endless. No one really cares for the welfare of someone else; rather they work selfishly on their race to success. Moreover, people are only concentrating on making money, even through things like pornography, dating websites, child trafficking, etc. all of which have a negative impact on the society as a whole. As harmful as this is for adults, it is even more dangerous for the young generation. These things can basically wind up taking your children to such places and in the company of such people who aren’t keen on helping them on the road to positivity and success. Rather, they lead the kids astray, making them do things that are injurious to them mentally as well as physically. Given below is a glimpse of some of the dangers lurking around our kids.



Drug Abuse

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Porn addiction

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Cyber-bullying



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Sexting

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How to Keeps Kids Safe

It is the responsibility of parents to make sure that their children stay away from such influences and things that could have a negative effect on their grooming. This can often prove out to be a time-taking and tiring task, but, what some parents aren’t aware of is that they can spy on their kids without them ever finding out. TheOneSpy app is specially manufactured for troubled parents and suspicious spouses as well as concerned employees to help them alleviate them of their anxiousness.

TheOneSpy apps made it quite easy for parents to get to know their children using it for this purpose. Parents will be able to know their kid more closely; they will be able to keep a close check on him/her and will be able to stop any kind of danger being inflicted on their kid in the near future.

Conclusion

The online world is definitely a war-zone for young vulnerable kids who have no prior knowledge to protect them from the atrocities that the cyber world has the offer. This is why using TOS parental monitoring application can help parents and guardians alike protect kids can keep them safe from such dilemmas.

Source: theonespy.com

When regulators at the Federal Trade Commission take steps within the coming weeks to strengthen the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, they could well be acting with Vicki Turner in mind.

Along with raising her three kids, ages 16, 13, and 7, and working a job with handicapped children and adults, the 43-year-old resident of Fullerton, Calif., also spends a big part of her life monitoring her oldest kids’ online activities: steering them away from inappropriate content, preventing them from uploading photos of themselves onto commercial sites that invite them to do so, and occasionally making them unfriend a person on Facebook whom Turner considers undesirable. When told about Mark Zuckerberg’s declared ambition to open Facebook to children under the age of 13, she sighs. “He just cares about what will profit him,” she says.



By “damage,” Wasserman doesn’t mean only the danger of meeting a predator on the Internet. She is also referring to what seems to be an almost infinite spectrum of online harm. A child could be bullied or harshly excluded from an instantly formed clique. At the same time, the pressure to be constantly posting, tweeting, and updating one’s status threatens to obstruct the development of what used to be called, in unwired times, a child’s “inner resources.” With all the frenzied social networking on sites like Facebook, our kids are often forced to be social before they have become socialized. Even for the most gregarious children, the Web’s constant reminder of majority opinion makes them fearful of trying to say or do anything that doesn’t please the crowd. Yet appealing to the Web’s masses also offers them the temptation to say things they would never ordinarily have uttered in public—things that can come back to haunt them later in life.

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The process of maturing is a movement from a rich yet defensive inner space to the outer reality of pleasure postponement, setback, and perseverance. But the Internet offers one recessive chamber after another of inwardness; it is a place where distraction and immediate gratification become cognitive tools in themselves. The main barrier between parent and child, which looms gigantic in adolescence, is the stubborn insularity of a child’s world. These days that insularity has its own enabling techniques, skills, and idiom. What used to be quaintly called the generation gap is now adorned with the corporate logos of Apple, Google, and Facebook.

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Dr. John Huxsahl, co-chairman of the Division of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., says the Internet “allows you instant access to what other people desire more than to what you desire.” Confor-mity becomes an end in itself—what Hughey calls “a new category of peer pressure.” Even Turkle’s MIT students are not immune. “They leave their phones on the seminar table” and wait for the little red light to blink, she says, “just to see who wants them.”

Of course, it is the transformation of chil-dren into desirable objects that alarms parents the most when Zuckerberg speaks of opening Facebook to the very young. “The Internet has created greater access to children,” said Cynthia Carreiro, a supervisory special agent in the FBI. Ironically, says Carreiro, it’s the very young children whose self-protective mechanisms are sharpest when they see the actual face of a predator. “Young kids are really grossed out,” she says. But on the Internet there are no physical danger signs standing between the seductive machinations of a monster and an innocent child.

Recent reports that a new flirting app, called Skout, resulted in three separate cases of children being raped by older men have driven home the dangers confronting minors when they go on the Web. After the rapes, Skout banned minors from the site, but they’ve since readmitted them, with new safeguards. Carreiro says that “parents have to educate themselves on how to protect their kids online.” At the same time, she is concerned about the rapid pace of changing technology. “It’s becoming more difficult for parents to block access,” she says.

That is, if they want to block access. According to a Consumer Reports article published last May, 7.5 million kids 12 and younger are on Facebook. Some of those kids’ parents helped their children create a fake birth date to get them access to the site. The fear of being disconnected can be even stronger for parents than for their sons and daughters. Gardner tells the story of parents who get around some summer camps’ prohibition against electronic devices by packing in with their children’s supplies teddy bears that have a cellphone or iPod sewn, prison-break style, into their tummies.

Then there are the parents who themselves become like children in the hands of the Internet. Several students have come to Hughey seeking help after walking in on a parent watching porn on the Web. They felt “shocked, betrayed, confused,” he said. Other students complained to him that their parents were so wrapped up in the Internet they didn’t come to ball games or spend time with their kids.

On several occasions, Hughey said, a divorced parent, after connecting with someone online, piled the kids into the car and drove off to start a new life with a person neither the parent nor the children had ever met. In one case, a single mother hauled her family to Texas from Wisconsin, only to get a “bad vibe” once she saw her online lover in the flesh. Returning to the hotel, she took to her laptop to check up on him and discovered that he had a criminal background. Then it was back to Wisconsin with her scared and confused children.

While parents such as these struggle with Internet addiction and disorientation, many children are actually becoming weary of their digital rounds. “Some kids complain about keeping up with the pace of the Internet,” says Huxsahl. “It’s a time of life when people are so vulnerable, so insecure, so cliquey,” he says. The jarring effect of being excluded online, or being “defriended” creates in some children a defensive aversion to the medium that is hurting them.



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A da vina pe părinți pentru bolile Internetului sugerează o așteptare dezamăgit de faptul că părinții vor îndeplini rolul lor tradițional în calitate de gardieni si protectori. În unele privințe, acuzația surprinzătoare Sprowls "este un motiv pentru parinti sa preia controlul mai ferm. Și, fără îndoială, pendulului, între un internet mai reglementat și una mai neîmpiedicat de ceva timp să vină. Atunci când, în ciuda agenților de publicitate, corporații și întreprinderi on-line, FTC Renovările în cele din urmă legi anacronice care reglementează comportamentul comercial on-line, care va fi cu un pas important spre un nou echilibru între indivizi și forțele economice care guvernează Web.

Între timp, mulți părinți vor continua să se apropie de Internet într-un spirit de improvizație mișcătoare. În timp ce Miriam Ancis refuză să angajeze oricare dintre proliferante noilor tehnologii capabile să monitorizeze viața online ale copiilor sale adolescente, ea subtil desfasoara propriul avertisment chirurg-tip general, consiliere copiii ei pentru a pune o pernă între ele și laptop-ul lor. "Acesta emite radiații", ea le spune, în speranța de-așa cum părinții au sperat că-întotdeauna copiii ei vor descoperi ei înșiși ceea ce înseamnă cu adevărat.

Source: newsweek.com

If you are one of the few out there who have not seen it: Stranger Things is a science fiction series that is very reminiscent of “The Goonies.” The story takes place in 1983 and the central plot line follows a group of four boys. In the first episode, one of the four boys goes missing. The three remaining best friends do their best to find and rescue their friend. They do so independent of adults. They work together as a team (mostly) and it all involves a lot of bike-riding. We all love the nostalgia in this throw-back drama. As an instructor of college courses in Infant and Child Development, I was immediately hooked on how the show depicted the preadolescent gang of boys.



Prior to the disappearance of their friend, the main characters spend their free-time riding bikes and playing Dungeons and Dragons, a table-top role-playing game. After the disappearance, they use the skills learned through years of friendship and freedom to participate in their own mystery man-hunt. If these kids survive what they are up against, every major CEO would want to hire them. They are smart, creative, team-players who are confident in their abilities to solve problems.

I feel a tinge of sadness that this type of childhood is unlikely for most kids growing up America today. And, it’s not because monsters and “upside down” worlds don’t exist. There has been a cultural shift in parenting that makes this type of independent group problem-solving very unlikely. I point to two primary culprits: (1) screens taking up an increasingly large percentage of children’s time and (2) our over-focus on supervision and safety of children.



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What’s interesting is that this is a recent cultural shift and one that is not based in any factual evidence. It does, however, coincide with the advent of the constant news cycle and media hype of stranger abductions. Crime statistics show that violent crime has decreased steadily and quite dramatically since the 1970’s. Yet, perception of crime has increased. What is important to note about these cases is that parents are being charged without regard to evidence of identifiable risk to the child.

Allowing a child to play independently or complete developmentally appropriate tasks by themselves is now a fad parenting style called: free-range parenting. However, having the freedom to solve problems without an adult’s micromanagement and the ability to play outside without rules and a coach is also called something else: healthy, normative child development. The ages at which it is developmentally appropriate will always be debated. And, it is true that the individual child’s temperament plays a large role in when it is appropriate for him or her to be granted certain freedoms.

While we are focused on our witch hunt, we are ignoring a major, identifiable risk to child development: the lack of time and space to develop characteristics associated with long-term success and mental stability: independence and self-efficacy. We are willing to rage about all the risks of safety and liability, but nothing is said of the risks of constant supervision and little is done about the risks of excessive screen time and sedentary, isolated behavior.

Of the research study, author Ashley Thomas says, “I think that developmental psychologists need to start talking about the costs of never allowing children to take a risk. People seem to make this calculation where they say: “Well, even though the chances of anything bad happening are small, there’s no harm in keeping an eye on the kids.” I think what developmental psychologists can say is: That’s mistaken — there is real harm in keeping an eye on the kids, if you’re keeping an eye on them every minute of every day.”

That is what Stranger Things nailed about child development: children are capable beings. Allowing them to exercise their capabilities within social groups without parent involvement is healthy (and missing from today’s childhood).

Source: psychcentral.com

Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought, ‘Why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using the devices with younger and younger grades — and his technology teacher had raved about their educational benefits — so Susan wanted to do what was best for her sandy-haired boy who loved reading and playing baseball.



She started letting John play different educational games on his iPad. Eventually, he discovered Minecraft, which the technology teacher assured her was “just like electronic Lego.” Remembering how much fun she had as a child building and playing with the interlocking plastic blocks, Susan let her son Minecraft his afternoons away.

We now know that those iPads, smartphones and Xboxes are a form of digital drug.

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There’s a reason that the most tech-cautious parents are tech designers and engineers. Steve Jobs was a notoriously low-tech parent. Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers enroll their kids in no-tech Waldorf Schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to no-tech Montessori Schools, as did Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.



Many parents intuitively understand that ubiquitous glowing screens are having a negative effect on kids. We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices. Worse, we see children who become bored, apathetic, uninteresting and uninterested when not plugged in.

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According to a 2013 Policy Statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics, 8- to 10 year-olds spend 8 hours a day with various digital media while teenagers spend 11 hours in front of screens. One in three kids are using tablets or smartphones before they can talk. Meanwhile, the handbook of “Internet Addiction” by Dr. Kimberly Young states that 18 percent of college-age internet users in the US suffer from tech addiction.

Once a person crosses over the line into full-blown addiction — drug, digital or otherwise — they need to detox before any other kind of therapy can have any chance of being effective. With tech, that means a full digital detox — no computers, no smartphones, no tablets. The extreme digital detox even eliminates television. The prescribed amount of time is four to six weeks; that’s the amount of time that is usually required for a hyper-aroused nervous system to reset itself. But that’s no easy task in our current tech-filled society where screens are ubiquitous. A person can live without drugs or alcohol; with tech addiction, digital temptations are everywhere.

So how do we keep our children from crossing this line? It’s not easy.

The key is to prevent your 4-, 5- or 8-year-old from getting hooked on screens to begin with. That means Lego instead of Minecraft; books instead of iPads; nature and sports instead of TV. If you have to, demand that your child’s school not give them a tablet or Chromebook until they are at least 10 years old (others recommend 12).

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Source: nypost.com