Teach Your Parents Well

When it comes to the Internet, the kids are fearless and the parents are clueless.

This is the first technology in human history where the children are leading the adults. During the agrarian age, we taught our kids to plant, to weed, to nurture and to harvest. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, we brought our kids into the factories and created apprenticeships to patiently teach them, over time, the skills they would need to succeed in this brave new world. In my lifetime, my father taught me how to use a manual typewriter and showed me the basics of how to operate a car.

Now, when you bring a big box home from Best Buy, you seek out a 14-year-old boy to help connect, configure and operate the latest PC, TV, PDA or techno-gizmo you've purchased. Not only do the kids have greater digital literacy -- the knowledge and ability to manipulate the technology -- they instinctively know where to go, what to do and how to do the things you do in the wild world of Web 2.0. And they are leaving their parents in the dust.

So how do we parent, provide guidance, set rules and create sanctions when we are so ignorant of this new medium that appears to be taking over our kids' lives?

Firstly, we must not abdicate our responsibilities as parents to provide protection and to set up boundaries for our tech-savvy kids. While it may well be true that our children have greater knowledge and experience of social networking sites, instant messaging language or file sharing, we have (or should have) greater life experience, discernment and judgment to assess potential danger, harm or deception that often lurks in the darker corners of the Web.

We must not simply give our little darlings the latest Web-enabled laptop avec Web cam, place it in their bedroom and walk out of the door. Too often, harried parents give into the pleadings of their offspring out of guilt or a sense that their kids will be at a disadvantage if they are not supplied with the very latest technology. Our children are adept at making the case that everyone at school has an e-mail/MySpace/IM account. It is very difficult to know what to allow and at what age, particularly when you have only a vague handle on what it is they are talking about. And the knowledge disadvantage inverts the traditional adult/child relationship. When you have to ask your nine-year-old exactly what Club Penguins is, the power shifts ever so subtly in the opposite direction.

We, the caregivers, who are less traveled and are more like tourists to our commuter-like children, will simply have to explore this online world more and get over our fears of its strange meeting places and confusing language. We will have to be humble enough to allow our children to show-and-tell us what and where they are going and what they are doing. Then we will have to be strong enough to impart our values, our rules and enforce sanctions when things or our kids go wrong.

We must accept our responsibilities as adults, even if we feel we are on shaky or unfamiliar ground. If we walk away, ignore or resign our roles as parents, we do our kids a huge disfavor. Call it tough love, Parenting 2.0 or whatever, we must take our job seriously and use a combination of filtering and monitoring tools for the younger kids and house rules for the older ones to keep them safe and pointed towards the good stuff on the Net.

Follow Stephen Balkam on Twitter: www.twitter.com/StephenBalkam

Comments

[Qbear]

Any assertions that the "greatest" generation had a clue about Beat artists, Haight Ashberry, the Castro, and the Village...is patently false.
Think the "Father Knows Best" generation read Langston Hughes, Ginsberg, Isherwood, Gloria Stienem, Betty Freidan?

[Qbear]

Your naive version of the Industrial Revolution sounds like a Walton's or Little House's version of the era. Young men who learned about a broader world than their parent's farms by being in the Armed services of WWl, and young women deciding they could be educated, hold jobs, and vote....wasn't guided by their Moms and Dads...quite the contrary.

" How ya gonna keep em down on the farm..."

[Qbear]

I can't speak for your age range, but my generation was planting weed, with our parents being absolutely clueless.

Before you get all crazy about the internet, I suggest you investigate the dangers of the CURE, Ron Luce and his Christian Warriors. Children (pre-teens)lured into bogus media and band concert contests where this cult figure brain washes your kids, and cuts them off from any outside influence.
"About Acquire the Fire
At Aquire the Fire God's voice can be heard calling young people to come and FOLLOW HIM. In response, the voice of thousands will unite in worship OF HIM. Your students will begin to use their voice FOR HIM in their schools, with friends and around the world.The voice of a generation will reach a generation.This is the power of a voice.
And it's what your youth group will experience at this year's ATF event. LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD

Since 1991 Acquire the Fire has been providing young people with a weekend-long event packed with drama, pyrotechnics, powerful worship, uplifting messages, and music from some of the best bands on the Christian music scene. Hundreds of thousands of teens from across North America have come away with lifelong friendships, a renewed hope for their future and a peace that can only come from Christ!

JOIN THE MOVEMENT THAT IS SWEEPING NORTH AMERICA!"
http://www.acquirethefire.com/page/about_atf


how hard is it to figure out a damn V-chip Sparkie?

[chilifan]

Parents? What parents? You must mean the video games, television, cars, drugs and other things far too numerous to name that have been "parenting" children, especially in this country, since teenagers became the most important consumers in American history.

Few families exist anymore in the real sense of the word, at least not in this age of technology. I enjoy the toys of the computer age as much as anyone, but I think they have become just the opposite of what they were meant to be used for, which was to give us more time to spend with each other and less time on every day chores. No one can really keep up with all the latest gadgets, because they have become so complex that we waste most of our time figuring them out, when we could be spending it with actual living beings. I think we should start teaching our kids, and ourselves, about living, instead of filling their lives with gadgets, and I'm willing to bet kids would be a lot happier if we let them develop their minds before they start programming them based on someone else's ideas.

[Natural]

The available technological gadgets are very interesting, but they can be a distraction that limits young people academically. My nuclear family consists of two parents and two teenagers. We have four computers in the house, but the kids have internet access available to them only on one computer that is situated in the middle of the kitchen/dining area. We have monitored their on-line activities and limited the time available for them to engage in recreational web use. The results of this regimen speak for themselves: near-perfect marks in all subjects, and university scholarships galore. The internet can be very helpful as a study tool, but strong academic performance is still mainly a result of a lot of hard work studying books, writing, and solving problems.

[ecotopian]

"When it comes to the Internet, the kids are fearless and the parents are clueless."

Horse feathers. You as clueless as you choose to be. Computers aren't that difficult to understand. Neither is the so called new media. For the love of Mike, it's been around since the mid 90's and you haven't figured it out yet? And you blog?

How do we keep the new media from taking over their lives? By letting them know there is a world beyond it. There is an off button on all electronic equipment. My advice is to train the younguns to use it...often. Seems to be working so far with mine.

[Mack20]

Interesting post. This must be a result of human evolution. Our kids (mine are 22 & 19) are completely unafraid of technology. I had a cell phone long before my oldest, but she has embraced every new technological breakthrough of each new generation of phones while I can’t figure out how to send a text message. The next generation of tekkie kids will have some savvy parents to deal with. Maybe they will want to spend more time with their clueless grandparents.

[BadChristian]

Interesting. Part of our family history was a bitter split between raising the old cows, or listening to the "college kid" who came home talkin' about Holsteins and their unmatched milk production. The older generation didn't like it, and thought the milk was too thin, and the money was in the milk fat, or something. Way before my time, but the "kids" were leading the way on that Ag tech.

[ORSunshine]

If only parents would take the same lead (learning, listening, finding out more and sharing their guidance rather than offering rules and restrictions) in other areas of their children's lives (sex, drugs, other recreational activities) the world would be a better place. But parents of kids in my generation didn't really do that... so hopefully the next generations will be better.