parenting

18 Jul 09

200807090745.jpg (JPEG Image, 400x527 pixels) - Scaled (92%)

The time magazine article about cyberporn where the facts ended up being totally disproven later.

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Teenager commits suicide over MySpace - ParentDish

The story of a girl who commited suicide over a mother pretending to be a boyfriend turned hater.

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A teenager, who had struggled with depression, ADD, and weight issues, was finally experiencing her Cinderella moment. She'd lost 25 lbs, was about to get her braces taken off, had found the perfect dress to wear at her upcoming 14th birthday party, and best of all, had become very friendly with a handsome 16 year- old boy she had met on MySpace, Josh Evans.
Josh inexplicably turned mean
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- Then she hung herself on her closet rod.
- the account had been created by a neighbor and mother of one of Megan's former friends to 'find out what Megan (Meier's daughter) was saying on-line' about her daughter.
- Because the case didn't break any laws, there have been no charges filed against the mother who got so involved in her own daughter's life she set the wheels in motion for another girl to take her own.

17 Jul 09

Weblogg-ed » “So Why Do You Only Give Your Kids 45-Minutes a Day on the Computer?”

conversation on how much or how little is too little to restrict kids on computer time

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Social Networking Workshop for Parents | The Thinking Stick

An overview of one schools SN workshop for parents. Outline of program and then talks about how kids are still kids we just need to update our vocab. Good stuff here

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In the 3 hours we covered the following:
- 20 minutes on introductions and Inside ISB our new educational portal
- 20 minutes on PantherNet (Moodle) our walled garden for learning
- 20 minute presentation on why students are so connected (this year’s seniors were born the same year the Internet was invented…they will never know a time without the Internet)
- 20 minutes on using YouTube as a life lone learning tool (parents searched for ‘how to’ videos on things they were interested in).
- 20 minutes on Internet Safety
- 20 minutes on web based library resources
- 20 minutes on Facebook
- 20 minutes on Google Search Skills
- 20 minutes on breaks, Q&A
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- I didn’t realize how little our parents knew. At one point we stopped to explain tabbed browsing and the back button.
- for the first time in the history of education we not only have to spend time on the students in our charge, but on re-educating our community as well on what it means to learn in today’s world.
- parents had taken an “Ignorance is Bliss” approach to technology, and rather than learning the tools what they really wanted was to find a way to spy on their kids.
- where should they start. My answer is always the same. Start with your own children. Grab a pen and piece of paper and really care about these spaces. Have them walk you through their Facebook account. Try and learn and understand what they do there
- Ask the questions:
  
  What do you think this pictures says about you?
  Do you know all (number of friends) of your ‘friends?
  Can you trust everyone on your ‘friends’ list not to download that picture?
  What does that update say about you as a person?
  Is that who you want to be known as?
- Limiting access to the computer is also not a bad thing
- Mom: “You can go play with your friends, but be home in an hour.”
  
  which is what my mom use to say….today:
  
  Mom: “You can go on Facebook, but you need to be back here in an hour.”
  
  It’s the same message.
  
  Dad: “Yes, you can go to the store with your friends, just know that dinner will be served at 7 and you are expected to be here.”
  
  which is what my dad use to say….today:
  
  Dad: “Yes, you can go on the Internet, just know that dinner will be served at 7 and you are expected to be here…and disconnected.”
- The conversations haven’t changed…or at least haven’t changed that much, we just need to update our vocabulary and understand these social spaces are the new ‘hang outs’ for students.
- Kids want to talk about their friends….we just need to ask. This is the time of their life to be soical and this generation has more ways to be connected socially than any generation before it. But they still want to know we care, we just need to update our conversations…but the conversations are the same.
- What I love about kids is that kids are kids. The language might have changed, the conversations might be different, but in the end they just want someone to care about them. They want to know you care enough to ask the questions, to get to know their wired world, and to be facinated by it, not scared by it.

Parents, Teens and Technology - Pew Research Center

A 2007 study of internet/media between parents and teens. Covers lots of data even diff in race and household income.

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data study pew parents parenting teens technology msfb4p computer internet gadget

89% of online teens say the internet and other devices in their lives like cell phones, iPods, and digital cameras make their lives easier, while 71% of their parents agree.
while a majority of parents with online teens still believe the internet is a beneficial factor in their children's lives, the number of parents who see the internet as a good thing for their children has declined since 2004.
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- - Graph of Parents and Teens Attitude Towards the Internet - on 2009-07-17
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- In most families, internet use is a subject of family rule-making and discussion.
- The content of web material, more than the time spent online, galvanizes the most parental intervention
- - Graph of what parents regulate on the internet - on 2009-07-17
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- Some 93% of youth are online and 94% of their parents are online. Overall, 87% of parents who have a child ages 12-17 use the internet, up from 80% in the 2004 survey.
- parents who use the internet frequently have teenage children who use the internet frequently.
- - Graph of frequency of Internet use among parents of teens - on 2009-07-17
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- Parents and teens own a similar number of gadgets, but parents and children in the same household do not always own the same kinds of devices.
- The majority of parents (64%) and teens (60%) in this survey own two or three gadgets
- do not own the same kind of devices
- Cell phones are the most widely-owned device among parents, followed by desktop computers. Among teens, desktop computers are the most widely-owned, followed by cell phones.
- - Graph of gadget ownership within the house - on 2009-07-17
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- iPods and other MP3 playing devices, the one type of technological device that teens are more likely to own than their parents are.
- Parents with more household income and education are more likely to use the internet and have other gadgets.
- internet use among parents with teenagers correlates directly with income. Of parents who live in households earning more than $75,000 a year, 98% report that they use the internet. At the lowest end of the household income spectrum (people who earn $30,000 or less), 60% of parents report that they go online.
- White parents are more likely to report using the internet than black parents. Fully 88% of white parents say they use the internet at least occasionally, compared with 72% of black parents. Hispanic parents who speak English fall in between white and black parents, with 84% saying that they use the internet at least occasionally.
- In general, parents who are highly educated are more likely to think that email and the internet have been good things for their children than are parents with less education.
- The majority of parents are trying to stay involved with teens' online lives.
- Despite the stereotype of the clueless parent, parents of today's online teens are staying involved in their children's online lives. Some 65% of parents report that after their child has been on the internet, they check to see what websites he or she viewed. In addition, almost three quarters of parents (74%) can correctly identify whether or not their online teen has ever created his/her own social networking site profile that others can see at sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
- Parents are more concerned about media content than about the amount of time their kids spend with media devices.
- Over two-thirds of parents (68%) say they have rules about the kinds of internet sites their teenaged children can or cannot visit, as well as rules about what kinds of information their children can share with people they talk to on the internet. Three-fourths (77%) of parents say they have rules about what sort of television shows their children are allowed to watch, and 67% of all parents say they have rules about the kinds of video games their children can play.
- - Graph on media ruels by parents for teens
    - on 2009-07-17
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What Kids Really Do Online (Despite What Parents Think)

New study looks at what parents think kids are doing online and what kids are actually doing online. Also looks at what parents are doing online.

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US moms and dads estimate that their children spend only two hours a month on the internet, but kids say they actually spend 10 times more time - or 20 hours
41% of respondents age 13-17 say their parents have no idea what they do online, and only 33% of parents worldwide say they set parental controls and monitor their children’s online activities.
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- Making friends. About a third (35%) of US online children age 8-17 have made friends online. That percentage increases as kids get older: 50% of US teens age 13-17 report making online friends. Some 33% of kids 8-17 report that they prefer to spend at least as much time with their online friends as their offline friends.
  Social-networking. More than three fourths (76%) of US teens age 13-17 “constantly,” “frequently” or “sometimes” visit social-networking sites. Worldwide, about half of boys (51%) and girls (48%) do so.
  Shopping. About one in three US children (35%) report being “very confident” or “confident” in shopping online. That number is 69% among children in China.
  Fielding requests for personal information. About four in 10 (42%) US teens age 13-17 say they have received an online request for personal information.
  Being approached by strangers. Though US adults estimate that 6% of their children have been approached online by a stranger, 16% of US children report being approached.
- “Parents are in the dark when it comes to knowing what their kids are doing online. They don’t have a clue how much time their kids are spending online,” said Marian Merritt, internet safety advocate for Symantec. “This report clearly demonstrates a global digital divide between parents and their cyber-savvy children,” she added.
- Social-networking: More than half (52%) say they had made friends online, and nearly half of those (46%) say they enjoyed those relationships as much as or more than those made offline.
  Blogging: Nearly a third (32%) worldwide work on their personal blogs at least sometimes.
  Dating: Around the world, 23% (26% of men and 19% of women) report dating online.
  Reading news: Internet users read news online at nearly an equal rate as they read it in traditional printed newspapers and magazines: 79% report reading news from online sites or blogs at least an hour a month, compared with 85% who report reading news from a printed newspaper or magazine at least one hour per month.
  Getting beauty & fashion advice: About half of users across the globe get beauty or fashion advice online at least “sometimes” (48%).
  Shopping: About half feel confident shopping online (53%), with confidence strongest in the UK (78%) and the US (63%). The region having the least amount of confidence in online shopping is Japan (33%).
  Viewing pornography: About 4 in 10 (41%) in all countries report visiting pornographic sites, with about one-half of Chinese (51%) and Brazilians (55%) reporting doing so. Globally, men (58%) are much more likely than women (18%) to say they visit porn sites.
  Gaming: Playing games online was reported by 72% of worldwide internet users.
  Emailing: Nearly all adults across all countries email at least sometimes (99%).

Spying on the Text Generation - The Boston Globe

Several real life stories of how parents are handling their "Always On" teens in a world of technology

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One mom does her best surveillance work in the laundry room.
Effective detective work? Absolutely. Effective parenting? That's less clear.
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- Teenage Research Unlimited, one-quarter of teens admitted to having texted or called their boyfriend or girlfriend hourly between midnight and 5 a.m.
- teenagers live in a state of continuous connection
- MIT professor Sherry Turkle is a leading thinker on the relationship between human beings and technology.
- "Parents were not built to know the kinds of things that technology makes possible."
- Some 75 percent of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 have cellphones, according to a 2008 survey by the research firm Yankee Group
- In Norway, according to Telenor/Statistics Norway, 87 percent of 10-year-olds now have their own cellphone
- allows direct, adult- circumvented communication at any time, whether under the desk during class or under the covers at home after lights out.
- "For grown-ups, intimacy involves a kind of privacy. For teens, they're coming up with a kind of intimacy that doesn't depend on privacy."
- (Two other things most teens I know increasingly have little use for: e-mail and voice mail. They see e-mail as something akin to the rotary phone in an elderly neighbor's house: usable if necessary, but why would you choose it when there are so many better options? And they see leaving or checking voice-mail messages as a waste of time that only parents seem to indulge, since caller ID makes it clear who called you, and texting makes it easy to transmit information.)
- Much has been made of how this interconnectivity is making teens more independent. But Turkle has come to the opposite conclusion. "The parent is always on speed dial,"
- No one is added to Jackie's IM "Buddy List" without Su- san's approval, and that list includes Susan, so she can always tell when her daughter is online.
- Jackie is allowed to visit only those websites that Susan has approved, and Susan receives a daily report of Jackie's online activity. About once a week, she logs on to Jackie's account to eyeball her e-mails and any instant messages her daughter has saved.
- "A lot of my contemporaries are reluctant to police their children's activities," Susan says. "I don't stand over her with a shotgun, but I do believe in being diligent."
- My Mobile Watchdog, which sends parents real-time copies on their own cellphones of every text message and picture sent or received on their child's phone.
- To make things more manageable, parents can elect not to receive copies of texts from people they "approve."
- he's found that predators "are moving from the PC to the cellphone" because carriers generally expunge text messages after a week or two. That makes it easier for predators to avoid getting caught.
- Teenagers have gotten pretty savvy at sussing out who is a complete stranger online.
- he knew they had been spying on him, and it didn't take long for him to determine they'd been doing it for some time. "He was pretty angry," Sam says, "He felt kind of invaded.
- "WU," "NMU," "JC" - shorthand for "What's up?" "Not much, you?" "Just chillin'
- his generation, which has refashioned the concept of time into a series of interruptions so constant that they hardly seem like interruptions anymore
- Edline, the service that Xaverian Brothers and schools across the country use to give parents continual e-mail updates on their children's academic performance.
- Calling it his "fear of God" speech, Greg warned them, "I can know everything you're doing online. But I'm not going to invade your privacy unless you give me a reason to."
- y relying on the threat of intervention rather than intervention itself, Greg has been able to avoid the drawbacks that several friends of mine told me they experienced after monitoring their teenagers' IM and text conversations.
- these parents came to the conclusion that it would be impossible for them not to think less of their kids if they continued to listen in, and that would be unfair, because their own parents never had transcripts of their teen conversations and were no worse for not knowing.
- social theorist Erving Goffman is instructive. Goffman talked about how we all have "front-stage" and "backstage" personas.
- "Everyone needs to be able to retreat to the backstage," Palen says. "These kids need to learn. Maybe they need to use bad language to realize that they don't want to use bad language. If parents are always going to be monitoring, their kids are always going to be front-stage."
- When teens get into uncomfortable territory online, they need to turn to parents for guidance and perspective. And the parents who seem connected to technology, rather than advertising their disconnect like an ever-blinking 12:00 on a VCR clock, are going to be better equipped to help.
- The Mac that Hayley uses sits in the high-traffic dining room, allowing them to keep tabs on her just by walking by.
- Because kids can remain in the loop with whole groups of their friends without actually being next to them, the urge to always be out of the house isn't as intense as it was in the days when kids roamed the town, unpoliced in packs, until curfew.

Monitor Your Child's Cell Phone, Text Messages and Email With Alerts to Unauthorized Activity with RADAR, My Mobile Watchdog

My Mobile Watchdog, which sends parents real-time copies on their own cellphones of every text message and picture sent or received on their child's phone.

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Spying on the Text Generation - The Boston Globe - PAGE 1

Parent shares how she spys on kid while doing his laundry

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One mom does her best surveillance work in the laundry room.
Effective detective work? Absolutely. Effective parenting? That's less clear.
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- Teenage Research Unlimited, one-quarter of teens admitted to having texted or called their boyfriend or girlfriend hourly between midnight and 5 a.m.

6 Things You Need to Know About Cyberbullying | Radical Parenting

6 (rather basic) tips on cyberbullying

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2) Instant
there is no ‘off’ time and the second something happens, everyone knows about it
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- Teens are checking these services CONSTANTLY, so before what took a few days to spread, now can take a few minutes.
- 3) Permanent
- 4) Accessible
- 5) Cool
- 6) Buffered
- It is really hard to walk up to someone and say to them: “You are a fat slut.” It is much easier to write that on someone’s Facebook wall

16 Jul 09

Swift Kick Central: Stop Making Parents the Punchline and Include Them in the EdTech Conversation

The start of our parent trainings on technology

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Oh NO! My Kids Joined Facebook

A parody of the already popular OhNoMyParentsJoinedFacebook website that pokes fun at parents activity on Facebook.

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Internet generation leave parents behind | Media | The Guardian

Gives a solid amount of data on how teens are consuming the internet, but it never sites where the research is coming from....Maybe ChildWise (but no link). Give some age specific stats too.

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a third of young people insisting they cannot live without their computer.
Girls in particular are likely to chat online to their friends at night and 38% take a console to bed instead of a book.
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- But the latest from market research agency ChildWise finds children and young teens are more likely to socialise than do homework online. Some 30% say they have a blog and 62% have a profile on a social networking site.
- "This year has seen a major boost to the intensity and the independence with which children approach online activities,"
- But reading books is falling out of favour - 84% said they read for pleasure in 2006, 80% in 2007 and 74% this year.
- Children who use the internet spend on average 1.7 hours a day online, but one in six spent more than three hours a day online on top of the 1.5 hours they spent on their games consoles.
- One in three said the computer is the single thing they couldn't live without, compared with a declining number - one in five - who name television.
- Pupils are using the internet less while at school, frustrated by the low-tech access and the restrictions put in place to stop them from accessing inappropriate material.
- "It's hard for the older generation to understand what's going on with their children because they communicate in a completely different way."
- Ages five to eight
  A quarter of five-year-olds have the internet in their room. One in three eight-year olds have a mobile phone
- Nine to 12
  By the time they leave primary school two in five have the net in their room. Four out of five still read for pleasure.
- 13-16
  Around half have internet access, spending 2.2 hours a day on sites such as YouTube, Bebo and MySpace. Almost all have their own phone

15 Jul 09

Well-Connected Parents Take On School Boards - PAGE 2

Some stories on parents using tech to take on schools unlike PTAs of the past

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Schools need to be more concerned about the digital divide than ever before, Hunter said. "We don't want to create two levels of power, those with access to information and those without it," she said.
parents often get news out to the community before the school system does.
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- many school systems "are still responding to 21st-century parents with 20th-century approaches."

Well-Connected Parents Take On School Boards - PAGE 1

Some stories on parents using tech to take on schools unlike PTAs of the past

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parents parenting PTA schools msfb4p

They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions
"We are not our moms, who were just involved in the PTA,"
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- To expect us to show up and just make photos or write checks does not sit well with this generation. If you are going to invite parents in the door . . . it should be more of a partnership."
- School officials say they welcome the heightened interest in public education, because parent involvement often leads to student success
- Sometimes such parent groups, whose agendas tend to be limited to helping their own children, fail to carry the day against administrators, who must balance the needs of huge and diverse school systems. Thousands of Fairfax parents last year mounted a sophisticated, costly fight against a county plan to redraw high school boundaries to help fill an under-enrolled school that had higher rates of poor and minority students. Despite their protests, the School Board approved the change.

Dangerously Irrelevant: Parents are using online tools to push on schools

A review of a Washington post article on the topic and then some extra links

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well-connected parents to influence the decisions of their local school districts
We are not our moms, who were just involved in the PTA.
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- John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, in their excellent book, Born Digital, note that “Social identities are much richer, more varied, and more persistent – AND FAR LESS UNDER OUR CONTROL – than ever before” (p. 34; emphasis added). In other words, now that everyone can have a voice, we have a lot less control over what gets said about us than before, and what does get said is more visible and findable than ever.
- School organizations are going to have to get used to this new state of affairs in which parent activism and criticism are more public, permanent, and far-reaching. I’m pretty sure that most school leaders haven’t really thought about this…
- Some positive examples of parents working collaboratively for change can be found at the Parents as Partners website (www.ourschool.ca) or through the People for Education Ning (www.schools-at-the-centre.ning.com)

Parents pick baby names with available URLs - Internet- msnbc.com

Story of parents who pick their baby name based on available URLs.

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Weblogg-ed » What, No Footprint?

Remarks on grabbing domain names for his kids to help protect their Digital Identity. Also talks about the day when a DI will be the norm.

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this domain reserving thing is now a part of being a father, of providing as much opportunity as I can for my kids’ futures.
I’ve been wondering how long it’s going to take until the digital footprint is an expectation rather than just an exception
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- Right now, for many folks, no footprint is a good footprint. But I wonder how long it’s going to take for employers or potential mates or whatever else to wonder “what, no footprint?”

When Mom or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook 'Friend' - washingtonpost.com

A series of kids reactions to when their parents befriended them on Facebook. Nothing to surprising here.

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Facebook's estimated 66 million users are people 25 and older.
Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied digital culture
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- Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University at Dominguez Hills and author of the book "Me, MySpace, and I: Parenting the Net Generation,"
- Students say a little fiddling with the privacy controls, and those pictures from Saturday night? Never existed.

Technology in the Middle » Blog Archive » Facebook in 15 Minutes

Overview of a parent session on Facebook. Content is basic "need to know" stuff for the newbies. Gives good links to reference to as well.

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