Listen to This Podcast About Teens and Technology
As a parent raising a child in Screen Time, I often try to find a balance between letting him research age-appropriate technologies and determining how much is too much.
Just last night, as we were leaving my son’s karate class, he started complaining that all his little karate buddies were bringing their Nintendo switches with them to play before training, and he was the only one who was not allowed to take them. Without hesitation, I immediately plunged into one of my favorite (i.e. annoying) lectures:
“I am not the parent of these other children; I’m your parent , ”I began. “It is my job to educate you so that you can operate in this world, and a large part of life is waiting. You have to wait five minutes for something to start without looking at the screen. “
I missed the point, he told me: “It’s not that I can’t wait; it is that I feel left out. “
Ouch. The answer was still no , but for me it was a reminder that children see screens not as a distraction from real life, but as a means of communication with each other.
We are raising a generation of children who use devices and connect to each other through technology, which we have not seen – and in a sense, still do not know. So when I heard about a new podcast called Their Own Devices with the slogan “MTV Parents Raising Children YouTube,” I knew I had to check it out.
The show is hosted by Mark Grohman (a former White House adviser on technology and privacy) and David Reitman (a teenage doctor), who are married and have a teenage son. They delve deeper into topics such as social media, screen time, online gaming and privacy, and interview other parents, experts, and real-life teens .
Mark says that he and David studied these questions as professionals, but now they are confronting them personally with their own son. They created a podcast to share their experiences and knowledge with a wider audience.
“I’ve worked on some of the toughest and most high-profile privacy and cybersecurity issues facing society today,” he says. “David talks to teens and their parents every day about social media, gaming, lack of sleep, anxiety, sexting, and a wide range of issues, big and small. We know the problems. We are tech savvy. We have given advice to others hundreds of times. And then one day our child with a smartphone, game console, laptop and social networks. Suddenly we saw problems from a different perspective. “
In the very first episode, which was released in November (new episodes are available every Thursday), I learned a few things from 17-year-old Athena that amazed me.
1. All about “finst”
Finsta is a fake Instagram account; Teens often have their regular Instagram account that their parents know about, and then a secret “finsta” account where they post completely different content. Athena says that all of her 100 Finsta followers are also Finsta accounts. But Finstas isn’t necessarily bad, she said .
“I think this is starting to get a little confusing,” she says on the show. “Because often parents think that everything that my child is hiding from me must be harmful or bad, but this is not always the case. Sometimes it’s just for privacy, or it’s just, “You don’t understand this, so I’m going to hide it from you.”
2. Teens no longer exchange phone numbers.
“Your phone number?” has been replaced by “What’s your snapcode?” Athena said teenagers write little; instead, they communicate with each other through apps like Snapchat because “it’s easier this way.” The main exception? Her parents. “Every time I try to teach them how to use Snapchat, it doesn’t work. Generally.”
3. They also burn out on social media.
According to Athena, every last photo in her feed is so meticulously edited and “refined” with filters, and children know how to pose correctly to get the most flattering image that sometimes she needs a break from the unreality of it. In fact, over the past year, she has limited her social media use by not scrolling through her feeds first thing in the morning.
“I saw the pictures the night before when people were going about their business and they always looked very happy … and (I) wouldn’t be there,” she says in an interview. “And it’s kind of, well, it’s annoying. And it would just ruin my mood. “