Parenting For The Digital Generation

"Reviews the broad landscape of legal and practical issues facing parents and adolescents when using smart phones and online technologies"--

Children today are digital natives, growing up in an age where social media and online communication is the norm. This book is an indispensable guide for parents who may feel they are struggling to keep up, addressing the issues that young people and their families face in the world of modern technology. Suzie Hayman, a parenting counsellor, and John Coleman, a distinguished psychologist, use their combined expertise to explore the challenges and possibilities of being constantly connected, helping parents to make choices about how they communicate, set boundaries and establish rules. Using real-world examples and solid psychological theory, the book looks first at the anxieties parents express about digital technology, followed by the serious potential threats such as cyber-bullying, sexting and easy access to pornographic or violent materials. However, the internet is also full of enormous potential and a further chapter explores the positive side of the digital playground. The authors also share their expert understanding of child and adolescent development and how this relates to the appeal of digital media, with special attention paid to the importance of good communication. The end result is a toolbox for parents, full of tips, strategies and techniques designed to help navigate the digital world, ensuring it is safe yet still exciting for young people. Parents and Digital Technology is essential reading for all parents and guardians as well as those caring for children and teenagers in a professional setting, who want to get the best out of life and modern technology while keeping safe in a family that talks to each other, spends time with each other and enjoys each other.

Children today are digital natives, growing up in an age where social media and online communication is the norm. This book is an indispensable guide for parents who may feel they are struggling to keep up, addressing the issues that young people and their families face in the world of modern technology. Suzie Hayman, a parenting counsellor, and John Coleman, a distinguished psychologist, use their combined expertise to explore the challenges and possibilities of being constantly connected, helping parents to make choices about how they communicate, set boundaries and establish rules. Using real-world examples and solid psychological theory, the book looks first at the anxieties parents express about digital technology, followed by the serious potential threats such as cyber-bullying, sexting and easy access to pornographic or violent materials. However, the internet is also full of enormous potential and a further chapter explores the positive side of the digital playground. The authors also share their expert understanding of child and adolescent development and how this relates to the appeal of digital media, with special attention paid to the importance of good communication. The end result is a toolbox for parents, full of tips, strategies and techniques designed to help navigate the digital world, ensuring it is safe yet still exciting for young people. Parents and Digital Technology is essential reading for all parents and guardians as well as those caring for children and teenagers in a professional setting, who want to get the best out of life and modern technology while keeping safe in a family that talks to each other, spends time with each other and enjoys each other.

From how to deal with cyberbullying to the strange, true stories behind Barbie and G.I. Joe, media insider Bill Ratner takes an inside look at our wired-up world in a fascinating book—part memoir, part parenting guide—for the digital age. Landing his first job in advertising at age fourteen, Ratner learned early that the media doesn't necessarily have our best interests at heart. His career as one of America’s most popular voiceover artists and his life as a parent and educator gives readers a first-hand look at the effects of digital media on children and what you can do about it.

Becoming a Digital Parent is a practical, readable guide that will help all parents have confidence to successfully navigate technology with their children. It accessibly presents evidence-based guidance to offer an overview of the digital landscape, empowering parents to embrace opportunities whilst keeping children responsible and safe online. Covering a range of topics including developmental stages, screen time, bed time, gaming, digital identities, and helpful parenting apps and resources, Carrie Rogers-Whitehead explores the challenges and opportunities involved in parenting in the digital age. With advice for parents of babies through to teenagers, each chapter includes an explanation of the latest research, interviews with parents and experts, and helpful case studies gathered by the author during her extensive experience of working directly with parents and children. This book will show parents how to communicate better with their children, create a family technology plan, put in place intervention strategies when things happen, and take advantage of the benefits technology can afford us. Becoming a Digital Parent is ideal for all parents looking to effectively navigate the technological world, and the range of professionals who work with them.

"In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. Drawing on extensive research with diverse parents, this book reveals how digital technologies give personal and political parenting struggles a distinctive character, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent, or support. The book reveals the pincer movement of parenting in late modernity. Parents are both more burdened with responsibilities and charged with respecting the agency of their child-leaving much to negotiate in today's "democratic" families. The book charts how parents now often enact authority and values through digital technologies-as "screen time," games, or social media become ways of both being together and setting boundaries. The authors show how digital technologies introduce both valued opportunities and new sources of risk. To light their way, parents comb through the hazy memories of their own childhoods and look toward varied imagined futures. This results in deeply diverse parenting in the present, as parents move between embracing, resisting, or balancing the role of technology in their own and their children's lives. This book moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research in the United Kingdom, the book offers conclusions and insights relevant to parents, policymakers, educators, and researchers everywhere"--

SELECTED AS A 2008 BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST The Net Generation Has Arrived. Are you ready for it? Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital--and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay. The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer: This is your field guide. A fascinating inside look at the Net Generation, Grown Up Digital is inspired by a $4 million private research study. New York Times bestselling author Don Tapscott has surveyed more than 11,000 young people. Instead of a bunch of spoiled “screenagers” with short attention spans and zero social skills, he discovered a remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing. Grown Up Digital reveals: How the brain of the Net Generation processes information Seven ways to attract and engage young talent in the workforce Seven guidelines for educators to tap the Net Gen potential Parenting 2.0: There's no place like the new home Citizen Net: How young people and the Internet are transforming democracy Today's young people are using technology in ways you could never imagine. Instead of passively watching television, the “Net Geners” are actively participating in the distribution of entertainment and information. For the first time in history, youth are the authorities on something really important. And they're changing every aspect of our society-from the workplace to the marketplace, from the classroom to the living room, from the voting booth to the Oval Office. The Digital Age is here. The Net Generation has arrived. Meet the future.

This book emphasizes a mother's role in the development of the child's brain and emotional infrastructures.