It's Technical

As we tumble into yet another school year, leavingthe carefree days of summer behind, I’ve been thinking a lot about thetechnology that surround today’s kids. Every generation faces a new wave oftechnological advancements, ostensibly designed to make our lives easier andour communication smoother.

When I was a kid, Atari was all the rage and homecomputers were just popping up on the market – unwieldy behemoths thatdominated desk space with their bulky, putty-colored profiles. Remember SpaceInvaders? Pac-Man? Q-Bert? Were you the coolest kid on the block when you gotthat new Walkman for Christmas so that you could tote your mixed cassette tapeswherever you went? Would you have ever imagined the connectivity the Internet would one day bring to our lives?

This year, the middle school in town is pioneeringa program in which each student works daily with an individual iPad. It’s abrand new way to access curriculum, and it’s amazing to me how savvy the kids are with their new tools.

But as with the advances of every generation,there are also pitfalls to avoid. With most middle schoolers’ access to texting and forms of social media, the school has put some restrictions into place to avoid having the iPads become a social free-for-all during the school day. Texting, personal email, Instagram, and FaceTime are off limits during the school day when kids are supposed to be learning. But what about at home?

We are navigating uncharted waters considering the ease (and relative anonymity) with which kids can now communicate with one another. Texting is far less personal than face-to-face communication or even a phone call. It’s not difficult to write something, fire it off to someone, and then be unable to ever retract it. My rule of thumb for my kids? If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, then don’t write it, either in an email or as a text. Once you’ve sent something off, it’s out there forever.

Another concern is how easy it is to impersonate a friend via text. I tell my kids it’s important not to text information that they wouldn’t want a friend to share with other people, either directly or indirectly. Depending on who might know or find out a person’s password, you can never be 100% certain who is on the other end of a text conversation. And the potential consequences aren’t just limited to
cyber-bullying – there will always be predators out there looking for access to
children, and what better avenue than to impersonate a child’s friend?

Finally, I find that texting is largely invisible to parents. Gone are the days when our young kids had to communicate with their friends over a shared land line, when parents were hanging around the house picking up the gist of a conversation. Sure, kids will always find a way to sneak around if they are doing something they know they shouldn’t, but erasing a damning text stream is second nature to a kid who knows his or her way around an app. And with kids getting their hands on texting technology younger and younger (and other parents out there who have no concern about monitoring its usage), their judgment about what is appropriate to say or share may not be fully developed.

I don’t have any sure-fire solution to the potential issues arising from access to today’s technology, but I do think it’s worth a conversation with your kids about how you expect them to behave when they switch on that iPad or iPod Touch. Everyone makes missteps while growing up, and this generation is no different. My goal is to help my kids avoid any far-reaching consequences that would result from careless or inappropriate use of the amazing gadgetry they have available to them.