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Rachel Simmons’s house rules for social tech

September 15, 2011 By Anne Leave a Comment

“Most middle and high school girls need their parents to limit social media use,” writes Rachel Simmons, author of the new, revised Odd Girl Out. “They are not able to do it on their own. Many girls are addicted to social media because, simply put, they are addicted to their relationships.” I’m not sure I agree with her second sentence, stated so categorically (because we know from social media research that some teens have sophisticated strategies for managing their social networking), but I definitely agree with Rachel that it’s not Web sites, technology, nor devices that young people seem addicted to. It’s relationships, the school social scene, and more specifically they’re addicted to knowing what’s going on – who’s posting what about who, especially themselves. This is more (understandable) self-defense than the narcissism this generation of teens is too often accused of. The other thing I agree with is that young people are looking for regulatory support and backup from their parents in the area of social media.

So how do we provide that? Rachel has some great strategies in her book and offers some of them here, including establishing a park-and-charge place for cellphones in the house (not your children’s bedrooms!), disallowing cellphones and/or laptops/notebooks under pillows or within reaching distance during sleeping hours, and I’ll add one: turning off phones during homework time and having a rule that says, “You can spend some time in Facebook (or whatever the preferred digital social tool is) for __ minutes before you start your homework or in between subjects, but not while you’re trying to concentrate, absorb, read, study, etc.” I also think it’s usually fine for them to check in with their friends before bed, too, but not after the lights are out. In her blog post, Rachel also offers some advice on how to make all the above work – do check it out.

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Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: family policy, Odd Girl Out, Parenting, Rachel Simmons, Social Media

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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