Parents love to complain about how much more challenging it is for them to parent than it was for THEIR parents, or frankly, any preceding generation in human history. But you have to feel some sympathy for the parents of millennials (let alone those dealing with the Generation Zers). As Steve Jobs said in 2007…
Sadly, five people have died during 2015 while taking photos or selfies on active railroad tracks. Those deaths are a disturbing sliver of a growing phenomenon known as “death by selfie.” This has become a large enough issue to merit its own Wikipedia page; the debate over whether more people have died in 2015 from…
Nearly 900 years ago, in 1154, an English bishop named Nicholas Breakspeare was elected Pope, and took the name Adrian IV. He is thus far the only Englishman to serve as the Holy Pontiff. Pope Adrian IV only served for five years before his death in 1159, and left at most a modest footprint on…
2015-10-19 Teens, Technology, and Suicide: Understanding Causes, Effects, and “Bullycide” from Frederick Lane A Featured Presentation delivered with Joanne Harpel, JD, MPhil, at the 2015 Annual Conference of the New York State School Boards Association on October 19 and October 20, 2015 in New York, NY. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or…
At the 2014 Annual Conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, I had the pleasure of meeting of Ken Corish, the Senior Manager responsible for Compliance and the UK Safer Internet Centre at the South West Grid for Learning, a not-for-profit charitable trust in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of products, services…
It Does in Fact Take a Village In 1996, then-First Lady (and now presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton wrote It Takes a Village, in which she argued that the raising of successful, accomplished children is a task that requires the commitment and contributions of our entire society. The book acknowledged the central role of parents in…
The Importance of Setting a Good Example Before you can start negotiating effective rules regarding online behavior with your older, more technologically competent children, it’s important to make sure that your own house is in order. Few things will more quickly undermine a serious conversation about safe and ethical online behavior than your child’s awareness…
Uh-oh! Jonny Can Read From a family acceptable use perspective, things start to get rapidly more challenging in grades 2-4. Three significant developments occur that will change your child’s relationship to electronic devices: First, he or she will learn to read, spell, and hunt-and-peck on a keyboard, all of which means that your child can…
Where’s My Phone? Who Took My Tablet? In a remarkably short time (thanks in large part to Steve Jobs and Apple), we’ve transitioned from “Don’t touch Dad’s computer” to “Do you want to read a Sesame Street book on the iPad?” My sons were toddlers in the mid- to late 1990s, and seeing them heading…
What Is a Family Acceptable Use Policy? A Family Acceptable Use Policy (FAUP) is a document designed to help you and your children understand the benefits and risks of using the Internet and electronic devices, and to establish household rules regarding their use. It is a document that can be used to organize and clarify…
