Big Brother is Watching Your Teen!

This from a teen I know. Advise your students, more than ever, what they tweet, Snapchat, Facebook,  put on Vine, etc, is not private or anonymous!

	CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk)
9/14/13, 5:05 AM A Southern California school district has hired a company to monitor students' social media posts. on.cnn.com/17WrbQx

Is that child REALLY a sex offender?

Do you know what sexting is?

According to Wikipedia, sexting is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, primarily between mobile phone.

Smart phones easily take and send photos.

In my school district, I seem to hear of at least one or two instances every year. A couple of times I have known the students, and I would describe them as smart, nice, and well raised young men and young women. My point is, anyone's child might stumble into this pitfall.

Did you know...The State of North Carolina does not have any specific laws addressing sexting? In fact, few if any states do.

In NC, the laws that come into play in a sexting incident are the state's Child Pornography Laws. As a result, any individual, even a minor, who is convicted of sending, or receiving a sexually explicit image (even of themselves) could be sentenced to jail time, and required to register as a sex offender. Even if a minor is sending pics of themself to another minor, the actions of both sender and receiver could constitute a felony under the North Carolina child pornography statute.

I am confident, those young people engaged in this innapropriate behavior had no idea of the potential ramifications, and they are not what most of us think of when we think of a sex offender. It seems to me, the laws were made to protect young people in a time when smart phones and texting technologies were not available. The laws have not changed to keep up with technology.

None of us want our kids sexting, but likely, we don't see kids who sext as sex predators... I think the laws will eventually become more sophisticated and nuanced to deal with texting teens, but until then, educate your youngsters, even if you think "they would never", because, they just might.

One more argument to keep tabs on your child's social media activities. If you don't live in NC you may want to look into how your state deals with such issues. My guess is that it won't be too different.

Happy parenting.

Teens and Cars: Texting, Talking, and Speeding...

My son got his driver's license back in January. He is a really good driver. For the last 5 years he has been driving a full size tractor mowing our fields (I called this pre-driver's ed). He is competent, and confident. Also, he is generally a rule follower. However, he is also 16, and there are a lot of opportunities to make simple mistakes while driving that can have complex outcomes... 

Our biggest fears are that he will text or talk on the phone while driving. There are a number of ways we could address this, including taking the phone away, buying a non-texting phone, or telling him to put his phone in the trunk when driving. All of those solutions have shortcomings.

 What would be terrific is if we could be notified whenever he makes a text, or phone call while driving, or even if he speeds. With Canary that is just what happens. The app is free for the first seven days. If you purchase the app before the seven days are up, it's only $9.99. If you purchase it after the seven days it is $14.99. Canary works with both the iPhone and Androids. By loading the app on the parent phone and on the teen phone parents get instant notifications when calls are placed or answered while on the road. Parents can also know exactly when there’s texting, tweeting or Facebook use behind the wheel. In addition parents can set maximum speed limits and get alerts when they are exceeded.

 A few other features include:
• Emergency button: Designate contacts to receive immediate alerts and location information in the event of an emergency.
• Instant locator: Find out exactly where your “Canaried” phones are.
• Customizable settings: Get alerts via push notifications or email. Set up daily or weekly reports summarizing each driver’s record.
• Advanced analytics: Access deep details, charts and graphs to track progress.

Let's take a look at Canary in action:

 

Catch up Parents!

As a parent, do you know which kids your child goes to the mall with? If your child says "I'm going out driving around with my friends", do you say "okay"? Or do you ask "who, what, where, when, and maybe why"?

An engaged parent asks those questions. 

I remember when I was a teenager. There were a few phones in our house. One in the kitchen, and one in my parents room. My last few years at home, I got a phone in my bedroom, but it was the same telephone line, and I was not supposed to stay on the phone during the day, as my father worked from home. Having private, unsupervised phone calls was a challenge.

Many teens today live in two separate worlds, the physical world where we reign as parents, and another, the cyber world where we are often woefully absent. Today's youth have multiple social media venues they participate in.  Many of them have a smart phone and maybe a computer to use as they see fit. At it's best, the cyber world is a tremendous social tool which they navigate with remarkable skill and it enriches their lives. At it's worst, it becomes a Lord of the Flies situtation with cyber bullying, sexting, academic cheating, and super-gossiping.

Either way, this cyber world and it's social tools are here to stay. We can catch up, and be stewards of our children in this complex ever shifting environment, or be left far behind, asking our children to raise themselves to the best of their abilities.

I challenge all of us to ask who, what, where, when, and maybe why regarding our kids social media usage. Know which tools they use. Friend or follow them. Make it mandatory. You wouldn't let them go to the mall with a known drug seller, or a kid known for shop-lifting, right? Hold the same standard to their social media.  My kids have to share their passwords to all their media tools with my wife and I. I go on as them periodically. I don't post as them, and I make a point not to embarrass them, but you will see things as the "user" that you can't from the "following side".

Happy Parenting!

Playtime Matters: another great Acorn Dreams blog article!

The blog Acorn Dreams provides tremendous early childhood resources that can "equip you to guide children, starting in the preschool years, to make friends, cooperate, handle anger and disappointment, calm down, and solve problems peacefully."  

The "blog discussions share information and effective strategies that nurture children’s social-emotional development and healthy behaviors. 

Playtime Matters is a really terrific article on the power of play, and what play can look like. Check it out!

Bike more, game less!

Ride Bikes!!

Recently read this quote:

"More young people know how to play a computer game (58%) than can ride a bike unaided (52%)."

I don't know the source, but as a parent, a therapist, an educator, and of course a rabid cyclist, I find this statistic disconcerting!

A little iTip...

Did you know that once you log into iTunes on an iPad, iTouch, or iPhone your password is "good" for up to 15 minutes?

The ramifications of this are that if you log in and download an app for another user, and then hand them the device, they can begin downloading more apps or in-app content. This is not to say that they would have malicious intentions, they may simply be young and not understand the impact. 

Make certain that sufficient time has passed before you leave an iDevice unsupervised if the password is active, or simply sign out of the App store upon downloading the content. 

Happy Parenting!

The Covenant

Raising children… The single most challenging and rewarding task put before us. If it is done well, it is both of those things. Children change so often. Just when we think we have a handle on what’s needed, what’s needed changes. 

Today’s adolescents look like adults. They are adult sized, which I suppose we were as well at their ages. But there is more to it than that. Teens today present with a greater world sophistication than we did. They dress like adults. My children go to school with children from Mexico, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. There is no question they cannot get an answer for via the internet, yet I’m fairly confident that they don’t ask for moral advice or guidance, and frankly I’d be leery of Internet based advice! Thanks in no small part to the internet, teens today are exposed to much more sexuality and information about sex than my peers and I were. Despite this, I worry about the emotional depth of their knowledge, because once again, they look like adults, but they are still children.

On occasion I hear parents lament how quickly children grow up. We lament the huge and negative impact technology has played on our adolescents, sometimes resulting in premature adultification. I am cogent that if my son got his first Facebook page at too young of an age, the responsibility lies only with me. In my excitement to embrace technology, perhaps I should have set better limits for him. As a  parent, I think it is of utmost importance that we understand the technologies that our children are using. To ignore Facebook, twitter, or tumbler, just to name a few, means that we are making a choice to not be informed about most of the major ways that our teens are socializing and communicating with each other.  I believe it is imperative that we be our children’s Facebook “friend”. I believe it is imperative that we follow our children’s twitters, and give them feedback when appropriate, not necessarily feedback on their digital post, where we will likely embarrass them, but face to face. Children need to learn to be good cyber citizens, and as we guide them in their social interactions in the community, we also need to guide them in their interactions in the cyber world.

These are some of the topics I think about often.  I am not an expert by any means. I am a dad who is engaged in parenting, and probably making more mistakes than I wish. Time will tell… as will my children, but hopefully not in a memoir! I am writing about these things mostly just to think out loud, and possibly to get some thoughtful feedback.


Originally published on Shinobijimbo.blogspot.com as part of Tech-Ninja on 4/17/2012