Bookmark
|
|
Your College Life Online - Page 4 |
Tips for parents
1) Sit with your teenager and go to popular video-sharing and social networking Web sites. Put “college parties” into the search engine and see what comes up.
Ask them what their impressions are of the people involved. Be warned: Some of what you find may shock you! Ask your child to imagine some of the future consequences for the people in the videos and photos that come up. Then ask them to imagine that they are an employer viewing the content. Nothing hits home like seeing someone else’s photos or story that can’t be taken back.
Several studies show that viewing popular media together with your teen and countering sexist and degrading messages with positive ones can be an effective tool for improving girls’ self-esteem.(1)
2) Type your teen’s name and other identifying information into a search engine and see what results come up. Also search “tags” on social networking and photo-sharing sites. These are the keywords posters use to categorize their content. This will help you find photos and comments others have posted.
Then work with site administrators to have offensive or identifying information removed. There are also Web services such as http://www.reputationdefender.com that will comb the Internet for offensive material about your child and delete it for a fee.
3) Make sure all of your child’s Web pages make optimal use of privacy settings.
4) Have more family dinners when the kids are home. Use this time to disconnect from technology—have everyone turn off all wireless devices until dinner is over.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teens that ate meals with their families five to seven times per week were half as likely to drink too much and three times less likely to use marijuana, compared to other teens. They also reported lower levels of tension or stress among family members and were more likely to say they had a parent in whom they could confide.(1)
For conversation starters get a free card game containing 72 questions that can be sorted from easy to hard here. This game is part of a program called Make Time to Listen, Take Time to Talk, which was developed by the Center for Mental Health Services at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to help parents and teens engage in at least 15 minutes of meaningful conversation each day.
5) Get informed. - Download the Incredible Internet’s free Parent Guide here.
- Read more about how gossip, rumor and privacy are affecting this generation in a free report called The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, by Daniel J. Solove, professor at George Washington University Law School. (2007, Yale University Press). It can be found here.
6) Teach assertiveness. Discuss sticky issues with your kids. Model the ability to be able to talk about something even if it feels uncomfortable or embarrassing to you.
It’s become commonplace for young people to use the Internet as a forum to bare their souls, vent and gossip about others. But putting one’s life online can have a price. Parents must stay informed about these online activities to provide relevant advice to help keep their children safe.
Links
Parent Guide
Make Time to Listen, Take Time to Talk cards
The Future of Reputation
References
1. The Importance of Family Dinners IV. (2007). The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. September report. Retrieved from http://www.casacolumbia.org/absolutenm/templates/PressReleases.aspx?articleid=502&zoneid=65
|
|
|
