Wow. Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday's "cry for help." There were some great suggestions. I got in late after speaking in Palo Alto last night and had to catch up on "The Wire" finale of course after being in Austin all weekend. So...I decided to sleep in and get a full 8 hours. That coupled with some other stuff I need to do this morning means I'll be posting much later today (east coasters: That means night time for you!).
In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in what the Palo Alto parents were asking me after my preso. Some of it was familiar, like is there any decent block/filter software that doesn't block porn and stuff we actually need? (this was referring to the new parental controls in Windows Vista). I'm grateful to Henry Jenkins and his keynote for helping me attempt to answer the question around whether teens are technology addicts. I tried the whole addiction is a disease, addicts usually have underlying mental health issue approach, but I could tell it wasn't going over too well with a couple of parents. I tried to say the word addiction is a label with negative connotations -- maybe compulsion is a better word to describe the desire we all share when it comes to constantly checking our email/Twitter/Crackberries. That it's about setting limits and more importantly connected parents (there are lots in the Valley) modeling this for their teens. The other question, which I've had before is how set limits or manage kids' technology use (especially younger kids) when it is coming from an institution, i.e. schools. When your child says, "I have to do this for school" or has a school laptop. I don't really have an answer to this one -- do any of you?
Posted by anastasia
Totally Wired
Comments
You are right on point when you say it's all about setting limits. Parents need to have ALL the control,no matter what. Who's footing the bill for all this in-house technology after all?
I have a few techno rules in my house that work pretty well:
All kids OFF the computer by a certain time. 8pm for the little one(5 years old). 9pm for the older one(14 years old). If my teen has homework that needs to be done on the school's site she needs to give herself enough time to have it done by nine. If she has to do online research for a report, same thing. They also know that they need to be conscious of the fact that other people want to use the computer. You can't spend all afternoon IMing when someone else is waiting to play "Wubzzy's Adventure" on Noggin.com.
No all day video game marathons. The 5-year-old can easily play Game Cube from sun-up to sun-down. So it's limited to 1-hour during the week. 2 to 3 hours on weekends.
Texting is not really an issue for us. My teen would rather IM while she's at home or talk on the phone. And if she's in the house, she's using the land line, not the cell.
It's not a perfect system, but it's not too painful and it works pretty well right now. Much like all of our techno-gadgets, it will certainly need to be upgraded every once in a while.
Posted by: Mommy B | March 13, 2008 11:23 AM
When I have a school related need to be on the computer, my mom is usually pretty loose about a time limit. She lets me take as much time as I need to get it done, but sometimes makes me take a break, or let someone else on for a while.
The only thing is I can't be on the computer without one of my parents permission, so I'm monitered in that way.
My family used to have a 30 minute time limit on the computer, but now that my siblings and I are getting older, that's not enough time to, let's say, type a paper/report that we need done. Now the time is more like an hour, but like I said, my mom's pretty flexible as long as it's school related.
I normally am not on the PS2, but my brothers and sister are ADDICTED, no joke. Because they play as much as they can whenever they can, my parents are pretty strict about the time limit. It's 30 minutes a person. If they're time runs out and they're in the middle of a level, my parents usually let them finish it.
We don't really have a telephone restriction, just that we need to be done with our chores before we have a long conversation with our friends.
Posted by: Emily | March 13, 2008 2:47 PM
Mommy B, Emily, thanks for your comments on this. Good stuff.
Posted by: anastasia | March 13, 2008 5:20 PM