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…
[View the story “2015-06-24 #Cyberparenting Twitter Chat” on Storify]
The Family Online Safety Institute announced yesterday that it will be hosting a Twitter chat “focusing on Cyber Parenting and Internet Safety.” The chat will take place at 3pm EST on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, and will use the hashtag #cyberparenting. For the uninitiated, a “Twitter chat” is a planned question-and-response conversation in which all…
Parents, educators, and law enforcement agencies around the world are grappling with the phenomenon of underage sexting. Despite increasingly strident warnings from adults to children about the risks of taking and distributing nude photos, the trend shows no sign of slacking anytime soon. In fact, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency recently declared that sexting…
As I discussed in Cybertraps for the Young, virtually every new technology has been adapted by students to cheat on exams. It has led to a digital cat-and-mouse game between schools and their pupils, and by and large, the students seem to be winning. Now Internet security firm iSheriff is warning that Apple’s latest consumer…
[This blog post originally appeared on Good Digital Parenting.] With summer vacation looming (but not fast enough for the kids!), parents are once again confronted with the question of how to keep their children occupied, entertained, and safe during the long break. The challenge of keeping kids safe is a little more complicated than it…
An unwelcome explicit photo sent by a 17-year-old to another high school student in Marion, NC has resulted in a multi-town, multi-state investigation into teen sexting. WLOS, an ABC affiliate in western North Carolina, reported on May 29 that the Marion Police Department had charged (or was about to charge) several teens (some as young…
During my lecture this morning at Simmons College, a phrase occurred to me which summarizes an approach parents can take to choosing technology for their children. The phrase is “Least Feasible Technology” (LFP). It is a philosophical and practical approach in which parents begin by figuring out what their children need to accomplish and then…
Out of the far northeast of England comes a disturbing report, courtesy of a Freedom of Information request filed by the Daily Mail. Over the last year, the Northumbria Police have investigated a number of sexting cases involving children as young as 10, 11, and 12 years of age. The Northumbria Police force is one…
If you are of a certain age, you may have heard about the so-called “Mozart Effect,” the idea that playing classical music (particularly any of the music composed by a short, spendthrift Austrian prankster with a fondness for scatalogical humor) is a sure-fire way to boost the intelligence of your unborn child. This idea gained…
