“It is common for a parent to withdraw for their child at a very similar age to when that parent’s parent became unavailable to them. Or a parent will want to pull away emotionally when their child is the same age as they were when they felt alone.”
- Philippa Perry- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
At what point in your life did your parents set you free from managing your technology? When do you get to control the remote for the TV? Free reign over the Nintendo 64? Because for many of us born prior to 1990, those were the all-powerful technologies that we needed to “earn” from our parents. Now there is so much more out there, that we as parents need to step up. The common phrase “I did it this way when I was a kid” does not exist anymore, and might not ever exist again outside of specific activities or experiences. For the most part, childhood, adolescence, and coming into adulthood are completely different than what it was.
As a parent, not only do you have to learn these new technologies for your own professions, but you also have to be able to support, teach, and guide your children through the wilderness that is social media, online citizenship, device and battery management, information validity, and so much more.
The first thought is that these students understand the technology and the processes because they are “digital natives” They were born in an era where there was always technology so that means they know how to use it.
They might know how to use it and are much less afraid of it than previous generations, but that does not give them the ability or qualifications to navigate the various levels of a digital life online. If there was one title we could give kids of today it is “social media mongers”. They can navigate social media, but they don’t have the understanding or maturity to disconnect what is online from what is in real life.
So let’s start to figure this out, with the first step being, parents lean in. Your student might know how to earn a top score on the most recent version of Angry Birds or be able to create a TikTok video in a matter of minutes, but that doesn’t mean you can be there with them. Learn about what they like, dive into the content creation, cheer them on as if it is another event, and come to understand the cultures and creative endeavors that your students are diving into.
If you pull away as your parents did, you aren’t just getting a rogue episode of Jerry Springer in the afternoon, there is so much more danger out there that needs to be taken on by a collaborative front of child and adult, not the child on their own “because technology is too much”
Step Up. Chase Innovation to Empower and Protect Your Child.
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