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Raising Kids in the Digital World

September 26, 2014 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

OK, game on!! With the new iPhone out and the tussle between Apple and Samsung swelling, our kids are diving right into the mix wanting the latest and greatest of smartphones. My girls are so mad at me for not upgrading them to at least an iPhone 5 – not until their renewal in January. (Patience is a practice). I know. I’m so mean. The real reason they want new iPhones with iOS8 is so they can upgrade to the newest Snapchat features. This apparently means they can opt out of group chats they have no interest in. I’m all for them avoiding peer drama, but they still have to wait.

So once again we are revisiting the family guideposts on technology use at home. It’s a good time as ever with the start of high school, and not to mention that I’m a guest on next week’s Mommybites.com Teleclass: Kids & Social Media: Social Impacts, Potential Risks and Setting Limits. It’s Tue 9/30 at 12noon, EST. Be sure to register, come with questions, and share with friends.

The fact of the matter is that kids with smartphones is like watching a full-body contact sport on the digital playground. It’s fast, competitive and at times, brutal. We need to meet kids where they’re at, and yes, coach and referee when needed.

It’s why the BodiMojo team and I are trying like heck to leverage the use of mobile technology for the good. Mobile technology is here to stay and it’s just a matter of time before its embedded in our clothes, jewelry, and skin! The movement is called the Quantified Self and our kids will be on the frontlines of new technologies. So let’s use the technology tools they use everyday to teach, support and, yes, run interference. BodiMojo is taking on the mission to use mobile phones in kids’ health. We call it emotional intelligence on the go. Ironic, yet apt.

We believe we’re on to something and we need your help. I’m asking for Your VOTE. Mission Main Street will be offering grants of $150K to 20 small businesses in the USA. Yes, big banking is trying to help the small guys. Sweet. It may be a long shot, but a business grant like that would help BodiMojo get off the ground as a business and to bring our innovation out of R&D and into the big playground of healthcare. Read more about it on the BodiMojo blog, or go and vote right now!

Let’s stay ahead of the curve and teach our children well.

Ode to the Flip Phone

November 6, 2013 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

I wish we all used flip phones, she lamented. Here was my 17-year-old client, a lovely girl I’ve been working with for three years. She said this as a seasoned expert, having been in the trenches of modern digital social life.

She’ll be one of the few in this generation who actually started on a flip phone, a device, if you recall, where the major feature was good old fashion text messaging (SMS). If there was Internet capability on her starter phone I’m certain it wasn’t worth the slow connection to be of any use. When my client was 13-years-old the iPhone was too expensive for her (or any) family to buy. It wasn’t until about 2010 that the iPhone really took off—and mostly with savvy business professionals. Then there was the brilliant move by Apple with the sell off of the iPhone 4 for $1 with the introduction of the 4S model. It changed the world of tweens. That’s how my younger daughter got her iPhone at last X-mas—2 years earlier than her older sister. I totally regret it. I say this as a mom. And I say this with irony as I spend half my work life creating a wellness app to teach kids self-care, self-kindness, and compassion. (I’m determined mobile phones can be used for the greater good.)

It’s the stories that I hear from my clients and friends that collectively cry out, “Help!” The stories are mostly from girls and moms; they bring the weariness and battle wounds of the smartphone front-lines to my attention. My young client who pines for her old flip also closed her Facebook account. I didn’t have a chance to ask why but I’m sure it’s because of the drama and distraction of the teen world of ranking, rating and endless profile pruning. She’s a levelheaded young woman. She is mature enough to know what’s important to her and how to spend her time (like applying to college). But the little ones—the wee tweens—have no chance to graduate from mere flip phones to handheld computers—that’s what smartphones are. Today’s smartphones no longer serve as the safety devices that parents once purchased for their kids. They are all-purpose entertainment devices. Now 11 and 12-year olds are handling smartphones that give them access to an enormous amount of information, unwittingly intrude on their privacy, and begin to shape the ways in which they form identify and self esteem.

Let ‘Em Prove it

My older daughter is turning 16 this week. She’s obsessed with getting her driver’s permit while I’m in no hurry whatsoever to drive her to the DMV. She studies for the test via her iPhone, of course. (Yes, there is an app for states’ driver tests.) I have come around to thinking teens also need a license to use a smartphone and that they need to have their brains’ executive function in fairly decent working shape to use one. Yet, the teen brain really isn’t out of the weeds of the massive remodeling it undergoes until later in adolescence (and even in the early 20s).

Here’s my wishful thinking: Middle schoolers should be banned from smartphones altogether. Their emotional, cognitive, and social lives are just too fragile to take the assault of being mocked, blocked or unfriended. Tweens also get obsessed with their chat groups and have the urgent need to be connected every second of the day for fear of missing out. When they do discover they missed out—from all the photos of friends having a great time at someone’s house or the mall—they cry themselves to sleep at night. They are also impulsive and will whip off inappropriate language or photos with no sense of the potential consequences. Of course, this age group also quickly learns how to use their social networks as a way to torment others, and there are now enough stories in the papers to suggest that we have a serious social problem on our hands. Now let’s say a 16-year-old is mature enough to handle a smartphone. These teens should take a test on responsible use of a smartphone, proper etiquette, respectful correspondence, and understanding what cyber-bullying, sexting and text abuse actually is. Maybe they need to do a self-test to see if they meet some criteria or risk for being abusive or inappropriate—and tips on what to do or how to get help if they need it. Some may even need a support group.

OK, it’s unrealistic.

But let me go on. One mom recently contacted me because her 12-year-old son was devastated that his childhood friend blocked him on Instagram. This is a common experience. There are parents who ask me about which apps they should allow their child to have on their smartphone: Snapchat or Instagram? Clearly, they have no idea what the apps do and what social needs each app seems to serve.

My question is: Why are you buying a smartphone for your 6^th grader? The answer is always:

“Well, all his friends have one.”

“She’s been begging us. She’s feeling left out.”

Yes, parents are now feeling peer pressure by the tidal wave of tweens, too! There are no easy answers. Except one: Stay connected to your tweens and teens. In person connected, that is.

This means parents must stay connected to the kids’ friendship groups. Know the parents of your child’s friends (especially as their friendship groups begin to change) and make time to talk with them. Let your kids know that should there ever be a problem, like some drama in their friendship groups (online or offline), that you are there for them and will help them solve it no matter what role they played in it. The biggest barrier for teens is often shame and fear of disappointing parents when they do something wrong or become involved in a troubling situation. Teens want love and approval from parents not disapproval and judgment. When news stories come out about teen tragedies use them as teachable moments. Have a conversation. God knows there are plenty of stories.

“I love you no matter what. When you find yourself in a bad situation I want you tell me so I can help you.”

And yes, you can set a limit on when a child can have a smartphone. And once your kid has the privilege and responsibility of having a smartphone, you can set up rules and revisit them as he grows up. When it comes to all the apps, you don’t know have to know everything ahead of time (kids will share apps like you used to trade baseball cards or fashion magazines); you just have to be curious and want to learn how each works and why it’s so cool or not so cool. You can also do your research or talk to older teens. Let your kids tell you about they’ve got going on with the social networks. You can decide what seems appropriate and what doesn’t. Empower them to teach you what you don’t know and then go and learn it yourself.

Kids can raise you, too.

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Who’s eavesdropping on our kids’ social networks?

September 10, 2013 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

How would you feel if you found out your child’s school district is paying for “social listening” of students’ social networking? That trolling their tweets, Instagrams and Facebook post is in the name of preventing cyber-bullying, harm, hate, despair, substance abuse, vandalism and truancy?

Would you feel a sigh of relief, “Thank god somebody is doing something about these kids and their mobile devices at school?”

Or would you feel horrified at the potential violation of your child’s privacy? Just maybe you feel like it’s too big brother for your taste?

Now if your child’s school had experienced a crisis involving inappropriate or malicious use of social networks by one child or group of children to disparage to harm another child, how would you feel then? Or, as has happened on too many occasions in recent years, what if a student committed suicide because of relentless cyberbullying and reputation damage done by malicious peers?

It’s all relative, right?

Recently, the Glendale school system in California contracted with a company called Geo Listening to monitor their middle and high schooers use of public postings on social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. No small change either. The cost to outsource this monitoring is $40K. The reality is that such software applications may become a trend for schools that are trying to be a step ahead of any potential problems that could arise via the social media conversations taking place during or after school.

Admittedly, I fall in the middle. I had both reactions both relief and horror. Here’s a school trying to be proactive about a modern issue in childhood: the new reality of digital playgrounds. On the other hand, such efforts may not enlist trust among students (who will immediately change all their accounts to “private” or create alias accounts), and worse, in my opinion, give a false sense of security to parents that the schools have “got this one covered.”

Parents I know either:

Feel completely inept at managing their kids’ use of mobile devices, texting frequency, and social network apps. Many don’t’ even know the apps on their kids’ devices. Twitter, Vine, Oovoo, Kik… The apps just keep on coming. Or,
Believe not only that their child has a good head on his or her shoulders and would never be disrespectful, but also think that the parental controls or rules they may have set at home are actually effective.

In either scenario, kids are always a step ahead of us. We just have to accept this and know how to respond.

Social media is the perfect channel for kids to swear, act tough, be inappropriate, be silly, creative, and experimental, with little oversight by parents or teachers. On the other hand, the current generation of digital natives tends to be rather pragmatic when it comes to their use of social media, unlike their millennial predecessors who sort of went hog wild. We need to have a bit of faith. My 15-year keeps reminding me of this, in fact.

What the Glendale scenario highlights for me is that no matter what the schools attempt to experiment with when it comes to the safety of their students, the teaching and role modeling of digital communication needs to come from home no matter what. And it comes down to a few things families need to think about as early as possible:

Connection and interest in your child’s life even as they start to naturally pull away in adolescence and resist your authority
Clear core family values
Practice of the golden rule as a baseline behavior
Clear expectations and family rules (age appropriate) about the care and use of technology devices and communications

Believe me the opportunities for all of these arise all the time. When my daughter impulsively announced to her twitter following that she hated me (I made her go on a planned youth retreat), that was pause for reflection and reconnection. We can only do the best we can, when we really are doing the best we can by staying in tune with our kids.

Resources:

CommonSenseMedia.org

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