Digital Parenting Awareness
Digital Parenting Awareness should not only be confined to avoid Cybersecurity issues, but also to fully embrace the great learning and skill development opportunities the digital world can offer to communities, families, and individuals. If you step early into the digital life of your kids, you will even find how you can teach your kids to also embrace self-learning applications, new technologies such as STEAM, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, and become more productive while they also have fun.
When I talk to other parents on screen time limits, parental controls for each digital platform, content web filtering, and so on, I, unfortunately, find little or no knowledge at all. Despite the ubiquitous influence of the Digital world, most parents still do not understand well enough the digital world and urgently need strong re-education to help their kids to thrive in this digital era. Our Hyperconnected universe constitutes those days both a threat and an exponential strengthening and growing opportunity for our kids; there is an ever-growing need for Digital Parenting awareness.
By 2017 by the U.S.A. Census Bureau indicated that 87.2% of households had broadband Internet access, and according to the World Bank, the worldwide Internet usage by individuals reached 50% of the world population. To those facts, we should also add that according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the percentage of children ages 3 to 18 who had Internet access at home had already reached 86%. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) estimates that the average child spends seven hours a day looking at a screen, be it a cell phone, computer, TV, or other electronic devices.
Let us not deceive ourselves, there won’t be a substitute for close guidance and supervision, and if you want to stay up to date on the essentials, you will certainly need to study, train, and even occasionally burn the midnight oil.
While the opportunities are exponential, the odds at stake are huge; and we also need to protect our children from explicit Popups, adult situations, self-harm materials, hate groups recruitment, cyberbullying, impropriate relations, pornography, gambling, social media addiction. I do not pretend to lecture you on the details, but at least I would like to point you toward the right direction, of this challenging, but at the same time rewarding Universe.
If you would love to see numbers and infographics on the matter, I highly recommend you read this article https://safeatlast.co/blog/kids-online-safety/ from Ana Bera.
My strongest general guidelines-suggestions on the topic:
1- The digital era is here to stay; acknowledge it, embraced it, and create a balanced approach between the digital world and the physical one; where your kids can enjoy playing, researching, learning but at the same time grow conciseness on the significant risks that they will face. The gaming console Dancing games constitute a good sample of this mixture world, you allow console time, while at the same time encourage physical activity.
2- You are the adult; therefore, you are the one responsible for enforcing limits, regulations, and why not rewarding and encouraging good digital behavior.
3- As our kids are digital natives – and they will most likely exceed us on the learning curve for new technologies- we need to keep an Open mind and a constant humble and learning attitude.
4- Care about cybersecurity and be diligent on actively studying, an excellent kick start free Website to learn about security is https://wizer-training.com/, I highly recommend it.
And as I do not want to finish this post without providing at least some very general recommendations, I will end this article with a list of my ten sacred commands for digital parenting.
1- Due to many relevant published articles, and to my own limited experience, I strongly believe that physical activity in children Improves their sleeping patterns, and also that good sleeping helps to minimize mood disturbances and potentially cognitive issues, please encourage exercise and physical activities to balance the equation.
2- Forcibly regulate screen time at all ages until 15 years, but gradually transition your kids into self-control, you will not be there to police them eternally. Screen time amounts for the time expended watching a screen; you should add TV time plus smartphone time plus gaming console time plus computer time plus table time and so on.
3- You need to negotiate and not to impose, be wise, and exchange “Fun time” for “Learning time.” Set clear digital learning goals by application and constantly review them with your kids. To mention a few digital learning platforms, my kids have used KhanAcademy, DuoLingo, SplashMath, Adaptedmind, Education.com, LingoKids.
4- Do not rely just on manual control/Monitoring, research study, and use parental software/filtering tools at all platforms.
5- Before getting any new gadget, please consider the existence of security, parental control, screen time control tools when acquiring technology, of course, this must not only computers, gaming consoles, and computers but also include smart TVs, Streaming platforms, IOTs and so on.
6- Review each application in advance to installation if possible and properly setup age settings and parental controls. When possible, prefer applications or devices specifically designed for each age range, as an example, choose YouTube Kids over the regular youtube App, but please still validate the security/privacy settings of the App.
7- To the possible extent, do not allow the usage of gadgets in close rooms until your kids reach 15 years old. Valid exceptions are forcibly regulated usage for Homeworks, labs, or school activities, but please make sure to lock app usage so your kids do not deviate from their learning activities. Then once again, the Internet and Technology represent an exponential amount of potential distraction opportunities, and we need to help our children to narrow their focus for better productivity.
8- Constantly talk to your kids about how reality relates to the digital world and preach by example on regulating your digital behavior, practicing exercise, and using technology as a learning growing tool.
9- Regardless of the working fields, there is an ever-growing need for everybody to learn to code, robotics, big data, artificial intelligence, and so on, use your gadgets wisely to motivate and encourage you kids in these areas.
10- Encourage your kids to read; this is a much more complex task for the human brain than just watching videos, and it strengthens brain connections and builds new ones. A great plus for kids is that Physical book time does not account for screen time.
Please feel free to ask for additional information or to provide ideas for new articles on more specific topics.
Author
Marvin Mejia
Sources:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/25/americans-going-online-almost-constantly/
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cch.asp
https://safeatlast.co/blog/kids-online-safety/
https://www.any-parental-control.com/what-your-teen-is-doing-on-social-media.pdf
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/16-apps-and-websites-kids-are-heading-to-after-facebook
https://www.eehealth.org/blog/2016/02/too-much-screen-time-and-kids-mental-health/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-020-0663-2
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