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WHAT has ‘online safety’ wrought (with parents)?!

June 11, 2012 By Anne 5 Comments

Thankfully, the youth part of “Talking to Youth and Parents about Life Online” had a whole lot of good news in it, because my heart sank when I read this first paragraph on parents’ views of online kids in this study from Canada’s premier digital and media literacy organization:

“The parents we spoke with were beleaguered by fear of danger and exhausted from the burden of constant vigilance. Although the exact nature of that danger is poorly defined, many parents told us that surveillance is now equated with good parenting, and that the days of trusting their children and providing them with space to explore the world and make mistakes are long gone.”

I asked MediaSmarts’s co-director, Jane Tallim, about that finding, and she emailed me that “this was consistent with almost all of the parents in our focus groups – we were actually surprised at the intensity of emotion many expressed in this regard – and as we know, this runs counter to the mutual trust, confidence and communication between parents and their kids that is so essential to helping them develop the skills they need for digital life.”

THIS is where Internet-safety messaging – amplified by the news media – has gotten us. Parents not only feeling beleaguered, fearful, and exhausted but, worse, feeling they can’t trust their children. Can the net result of that somehow increase our children’s safety?

Is it as clear to you as it is to me that we need to turn this Internet-safety ship around?! Our children deserve better – for one thing, more respect (tune in tomorrow for why!).

The curious thing is, researchers say…

  • Parents and kids are closer than ever
  • We’ve largely closed the generation gap so widely lamented 40 years ago
  • “We could be celebrating the strong bonds between today’s young people and their parents rather than lamenting the foibles of the next generation” and
  • “Technological and economic developments have contributed to this shift.

Those points are from prominent sociologists Karen Fingerman and Frank Furstenberg in the New York Times. Tech developments have contributed to what keeps kids safer than anything: the self-respect and resilience that come from love, communication, and respect.

So we’ve moved from one kind of gap to another: the gap between reality – how our children are living their lives from day to day, including what’s reflected and expressed of them in social media – and more than 15 years of exaggerated claims and misrepresentations of Internet risk.

How to bridge this new gap? Two simple things for starters: Listen to our own kids more and look at the data. For example, just go to p. 6 of MediaSmarts’s executive summary about “What Young People Get Out of Networked Technologies.” Take scary commentaries and news reports we hear to our kids, analyze them together, and test the claims against our kids’ own practices and privacy settings. Fold those claims into the conversation and listen to our kids’ responses. If negative experiences emerge, develop strategies together for dealing with them – that calm, loving support from their parents is powerful! I truly believe we’ll not only find comfort and mutual respect in the process, we’ll feel a whole lot less reason to be scared, beleaguered and distrustful!

Next, Part 2: MediaSmarts.ca’s research showing how smart our kids are!

Related links

  • The PDF of MediaSmarts.ca’s full study is linked to here.
  • “‘Juvenoia,’ Part 2: So why are we afraid?”
  • “Understanding cyberbullying from the inside out” – from the kid out rather from the headlines in
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Filed Under: Research, Risk & Safety Tagged With: Internet safety, MediaSmarts, online safety, Parenting, social media research

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Youth sexuality, romance & digital media in Canada: Study by Anne Collier | MiFam says:
    July 25, 2014 at 12:30 pm

    […] in 2012: “WHAT has online safety wrought (with parents)?!” and “Kids & teens not only ok, but smart!: […]

    Reply
  2. Protecting Teens: Does Tracking Every Move Make Them Safer? | MMGuardian says:
    September 1, 2013 at 8:25 pm

    […] and providing them with space to explore the world and make mistakes are long gone” (linked to here). I so agree with MediaSmarts.ca’s co-director Jane Tallim that surveillance “runs counter to […]

    Reply
  3. Anonymous says:
    February 3, 2013 at 6:25 pm

    […] and providing them with space to explore the world and make mistakes are long gone” (linked to here). I so agree with MediaSmarts.ca’s co-director Jane Tallim that surveillance “runs counter to […]

    Reply
  4. Sosyal Adam – Social media monitoring: Is it good or bad parenting? says:
    October 11, 2012 at 8:41 am

    […] and providing them with space to try a universe and make mistakes are prolonged gone” (linked to here). we so determine with MediaSmarts.ca’s co-director Jane Tallim that notice “runs conflicting […]

    Reply
  5. Social media monitoring: Is it good or bad parenting? : HotSocialBookmarks.info – Social Bookmarking tips! | Twitter tips | Facebook tips | says:
    October 10, 2012 at 5:50 pm

    […] and providing them with space to explore the world and make mistakes are long gone” (linked to here). I so agree with MediaSmarts.ca’s co-director Jane Tallim that surveillance “runs counter to […]

    Reply

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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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