Talking About Tech
“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the errors that counts. ”
Mentoring conversations to cultivate healthy tech use need to be as ubiquitous as the devices themselves. Below find curated talking points and resources you can share with your children. It’s never too late to get started on this work, no matter where you are on the journey to healthy tech use!
Top Talks With Your Kids
1. Media literacy
Teach your child the #1 skill while discerning content: ask questions. Learn to read laterally like a fact-checker.
2. How and why tech is sticky
Learn about persuasive design. Use these great conversation starters and a Twitter example.
3. Tricky topics: porn, sexting and cyberbullying
Get the facts and great videos to watch with your kid.
4. Vital unplugged activities
What activities support deep connections and our healthy human development? Reclaim your time.
5. Your family’s values
What makes a healthy relationship? How does tech factor in?
6. Healthy vs. unhealthy tech use
Practical tips to define "healthy tech use" for your family.
7. The concept of “tricky people”
How to handle strangers online.
8. Online actions are public and permanent
Read examples of digital footprint gone wrong. Discuss what data are OK to share online.
Talk About Tech Guide
We take sixteen years to transition our kids from car seats to driver’s licenses, with a variety of supports, guard rails and training along the way. We need a similar scaffolding for our children and technology.
As parents, we need to support their safety and wellbeing until they can be trusted to wisely use technology on their own. Research confirms that digital mentoring leads to the healthiest tech habits in young people.
These mentoring tools are not meant to be overwhelming--use them to inspire small actions. Pick an area that sparks your interest and get started today!
“The quality of our information shapes the quality of our decisions. The quality of our decisions shapes the quality of our shared experience as humans.”
Content & Truth
Content & Truth Goals
I want my child to learn how to navigate media to discern trustworthy and reliable content from potential mis/disinformation.
I want my child to create and share media responsibly.
Common Sense Media describes media literacy as the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they are sending: “Kids take in a huge amount of information from a wide array of sources, far beyond the traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines) of most parents' youth. There are text messages, memes, viral videos, social media, video games, advertising, and more. But all media shares one thing: Someone created it. And it was created for a reason. Understanding that reason is the basis of media literacy.”
When is the last time you forwarded or retweeted something only to find out that the information was less than accurate? We are living in a “participatory culture” of media consumption and creation. Not only do our children need to learn to be critically-thinking consumers, they must learn to create and share media responsibly.
What You Should Know- Content & Truth
Students (and Adults) Can’t Tell Fake News From Real. A study at the Stanford Graduate School of education revealed more than 80 percent of middle school students couldn’t tell the difference between an ad and a news story. An industry study showed 59 percent of adults couldn’t tell the difference either.
False news is passed on *6 times* more often than true news. According to MIT researchers conducting a 2018 study, this is because fake news grabs our attention more than authentic information: fake news items usually have a higher emotional content and contain unexpected information which inevitably means that they will be shared and reposted more often.
Therefore, a lot of what you see on the internet isn’t true!
“Raising kids in the internet age means teaching them to recognize when someone is trying to sell them new things or new ideas, from toys to misinformation.”
What You Can Do- Content & Truth
1. The #1 skill: Teach your child to ask questions. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) has a great guide for parents including conversation scripts and questions to ask around common situations such as fake news, ads, original content and scams. John Green’s excellent Crash Course video series, Navigating Digital Information, teaches us all to ask these questions when consuming or sharing online:
Who is behind the information (the source)?
What are the claims and what is the evidence behind the claims?
What are others saying about the source or claim?
2. Use TV and movies to teach your kids media literacy. Because TV and movies are likely the media you use most together with your child, use the opportunity to get your kids to think more deeply about what they are watching. This Common Sense Media Guide shows you how to discuss topics around marketing, stereotypes, ethical dilemmas and more.
3. Practice reading like a professional fact checker. Sam Wineburg from the Stanford History Education Group provides a great cheat sheet called “Digital Hacks” which includes reading more like a professional fact checker by reading laterally across new browser tabs rather than scrolling down the page. A first step is to open a new tab and search for more information about an organization/source and their claims.
4. Follow voices you disagree with. For older teens and adults, social media often serves us content we already agree with in order to keep us online longer. It becomes our “echo chamber.” This erodes our ability to engage with people who don’t share our viewpoint and limits our problem solving abilities. In order to solve complex problems such as climate change, racism, or poverty, we should purposefully engage with different perspectives.
The Center for Humane Technology suggests that we check news sites whose perspectives you disagree with. “AllSides gives readers a cross-partisan view of world events covered by the media, and sustains itself on a consciously created hybrid revenue model to avoid bias and clickbait incentives.”
5. Ask: Is it TRUE, is it KIND, is it NECESSARY?
Before you create or share (i.e., retweet or forward) something, ask yourself:
✓ Is it True? While we rarely speak with the intention to tell outright lies, that doesn’t make our words true. We can perpetuate rumors, spread gossip, exaggerate in ways that cater to our egos and personal bias. When speaking, ask yourself, Is this true? Have I checked the source?
✓ Is it Kind? When you say things, are you showing empathy? Are you taking into consideration the feelings of others? Are you saying something that will lift the mood or lift the spirits of those receiving it? Expressing kindness isn’t about mindless optimism or giving gratuitous compliments: it’s about knowing which words are the most compassionate. Sometimes, this means refraining from speaking at all. Other times, it means saying what has to be said but using only the gentlest phrasing. Always ask, is this kind? Does what I’m about to say express compassion?
✓ Is it Necessary? Words that take the form of negative comments, complaints, or insults can help air our grievances, but they don’t always improve upon the silence. There are times when what we want to say isn’t necessary or helpful for the situation at hand. Or, it might be necessary, but not for the given time, place, or audience. It’s always worth considering, Is this necessary? Is it necessary right now? Are these exact words right for the message I want to communicate? Similarly, sometimes we want to share things that are whimsical or funny . Yet someone is on the receiving end who will invest time in reading it- are we making the best use of their time-- especially if we are sending a text or other instant notification?
Adapted from Balance At BuddhaGroove: Mindful Speech
Persuasive Design & Digital Wellness
“The technology that connects us also controls us.”
Persuasive Design & Digital Wellness Goals
1. I want my child to use tech to support their intrinsic interests and motivation, not to use tech driven by advertising or special interest groups.
2. I want my child to balance tech use with unplugged activities that support their healthy development.
3. I want my child to understand why we limit their tech and that it will take a conscientious effort to set limits and to create digital wellness habits because tech platforms are currently designed to grab and keep our attention.
How do we thrive as humans in today’s digital era – in which persuasive design, endless opportunities to scroll and exchange likes, and the constant thrills of instant access command our attention and time? For young people with developing brains, excessive screen time too easily displaces basic needs for healthy development like sleep, self-soothing, and meaningful in-person relationships.
How do we create and support meaningful, high-quality, enriching ways to spend our time? How do we use technology as a tool to support our values and goals... and consider the parts we don’t value as noise to ignore? How do we, as parents, model and teach good tech habits to our children?
What You Should Know- Persuasive Design
1. Tech is sticky. The average 8-12 year old spends over 4 hours/day on screens (not including schoolwork). Adults check their phone 96 times/day on average- that is once every 10 minutes! This is by design. Because our attention is monetizable, today’s technology platforms use persuasive design--techniques devised to influence human thoughts and behaviors (like intermittent positive reinforcement and manipulating our drive for social approval) -- to keep our attention. Every time we swipe to refresh email, check “likes” on our social media post or reach a new level in a video game, our brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is a brain chemical that drives our motivation to seek a reward or pleasure. Persuasive design in tech manipulates our dopamine reward circuitry. There is a biological reason why it is so hard for both kids and adults to put down our devices.
2. Young brains are vulnerable. Parents need to manage screen time because a young person’s prefrontal cortex (the behavioral control center or executive functioning) is not fully developed until age 25. What---age 25? The tween/teen years are a dynamic time of brain development. In fact, there is a limited window in which important developmental activities occur, as a significant amount of neuronal pruning happens around puberty. Those activities that your child/teen engages in get reinforced in the brain and those connections not reinforced are lost. It is a “use it or lose it” phenomenon. For more see The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults by Frances Jensen M.D.
Your child’s brain will be developing from back to front until they’re about 25 years old. Their behavior control center develops last so that’s one reason why parents were invented!
Neuron connections and pruning. While your child’s neuron connections are growing, your child has tremendous learning potential. They can learn anything. Neuron connections that are used get established; otherwise they are pruned. This means the activities your child does a lot get reinforced, whereas those they don’t get lost, so how they spend their time matters.
3. Opportunity costs are high. How much time does your child spend on sleep, creative play, seeing friends in real life, being in nature, exercise, reading --activities we know support healthy human development? There are only so many hours in the day. What is screen time displacing? How can you reclaim healthy development?
What do you value that may be displaced by screen time? How can you help redirect your child when they are lured to their screens?
“When [Chase, our oldest] turned thirteen, we bought him a cell phone because he desperately wanted one and we wanted to make him happy. Slowly we watched him fade away. He stopped drawing maps and reading and writing, and we stopped finding poems around the house.
We’re going to wait until high school to get Amma [our younger child] a phone....We want to give her the gift of boredom so she can discover who she is before she learns what the world wants her to be. We’ve decided that our job as her parents is not to keep her happy. Our job is to keep her human.”
-Glennon Doyle
What You Can Do- Persuasive Design
1. Watch these great videos with your child to learn more about persuasive design.
We've Been Sneaking Into Your Brains (recommended for any age child/teen using a device) -40 min. Center for Human Technology's Max Stossel talks directly to students about some of the specific ways technology is designed to be addictive & distracting, and he provides tips to help combat these designs. He is a tech-insider and one of the BEST speakers on digital wellness. This is a must-see, and it's great to co-watch with Tweens and Teens!
How a Handful of Tech Companies Control Billions of Minds Every Day -16 min. Thought leader, Tristan Harris, shares how tech companies prey on our psychology for their own profit and calls for a design renaissance in which our tech instead encourages us to use our time well.
2. Name it! Define "healthy tech use" for your family. Introduce that term (or similar phrase for your family - e.g., healthy tech habits, good tech use) so you have a common language that your family understands and can refer to together as your north star. Explicitly share your values and philosophy around what healthy tech use looks like.
✓ Narrate your surroundings - Point out and discuss tech use you see around you organically on a daily basis -- ones you like vs. don't like. If you see something you don't like (e.g., a bunch of kids hunched over their phones, or kids all looking down at their phones as they exit school, or someone texting while biking or driving), have a frank conversation about it, asking your child what they think about what they see, and how they might handle specific situations differently.
✓ Praise healthy tech moments - Once you have introduced a common term like "healthy tech use," you can refer to it when you want to praise your child for making good choices or for demonstrating good habits with their tech. For example, if they get off their iPad when you ask them to, you can say, "I'm so proud of how you're developing healthy tech habits."
✓ Teach the power of reflection and choice - Another part of mentoring towards healthy tech use is occasionally asking your child to reflect on how certain uses of tech make them feel. If they play video games for hours, how do they feel when they stop? How does that compare to when they spend that time outdoors in nature, or creatively making something - whether digitally or with their bare hands? Do they feel better or worse after scrolling social media for hours? Empower your child with the choice to opt in or out of something that feels energizing or draining, safe or unsafe, positive or negative. Having conversations that encourage reflection are an ongoing part of teaching healthy tech use.
3. Learn a bit about how algorithms and search engines work. Did you know that more than 70% of what people watch on YouTube is determined by its recommendation algorithm? Explore this and other mind-blowing Youtube statistics and read about how YouTube’s algorithms actually boost alternative facts told by Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-Google software engineer who worked to improve YouTube’s recommendation engine. He now speaks out against it.
Search engines have become our most trusted sources of information and arbiters of truth. But can we ever get an unbiased search result? If you and I search for the same thing on Google from our respective devices, the results will be different--- Give it a try with a partner, friend or child. Learn what drives these different search results.
4. Find good online content. Common Sense Media helps families make informed media choices by offering “the largest, most trusted library of independent age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites, books, and music.” This is our go-to resource before any iffy movie or game.
5. Reclaim/Prioritize your time. Time is your most valuable resource. How satisfied are you with the amount of time your child devotes to non-screen activities that promote healthy brain development? Take the (printable) ScreenSense Opportunity Cost Survey and determine at least one action you could take to reclaim a non-screen activity you value.
✓ Check out our Setting Screen Limits guide to protect certain times and places as screen free.
✓ Create Approach vs Avoidance Goals. Avoidance goals are those which require us to avoid something (i.e., screen time), whereas approach goals are something we move towards (i.e., more book reading, daily outdoor time, going to bed earlier, etc). Approach goals are more likely to be met — and they are more fun. Read more from mom and psychologist, Meghan Owenz, PhD, about how to create the right kind of goals that naturally cut screen time.
6. Make space for white space. Simon Sinek tells us that relationships are built on the in-between moments in life: before a meeting, in-between classes, waiting in line. Do we need to fill it by checking our phone? We need to exercise the muscle of being comfortable with not filling every moment. Why else is white space or downtime important?
✓ Diffuse Learning and Creativity. Unlike focused learning, where you concentrate on a task, “diffuse learning” takes in the big picture and allows you to have breakthrough and creative insights. Diffuse learning happens when you let your mind wander freely, making connections at random. Your brain has the opportunity to connect the dots and link neural processes. That is why you get so many “ah-ha” moments in the shower!
✓ Renewal and Cultivation of Self. It is best said by Alan Lightman in his book, In Praise of Wasting Time, “Mental downtime is having the space and freedom to wander about the vast hallways of memory and contemplate who we are. Downtime is when we can ponder our past and imagine our future. Downtown is when we can repair ourselves.”
✓ Boredom is the birth of creativity. Boredom is what you feel when you are uncomfortable with white space. We need practice getting through the feelings of boredom in order to reap its benefits.
“When we hand our children phones we steal their boredom from them.”
7. Try these Tech Talk Tuesdays. Each short article can be read with your child/teen and includes conversation starter questions.
✓ Digital Binging- Is it a problem? - We love this article about high vs. low dopamine activities and the importance of alternating between them. E.g., take a break after one hour of high-dopamine screen activity to regulate the dopamine pathway.
✓ Why 3 hours is too much. Explore the impact of excessive use and engage your children in a conversation about how long is too long on our devices.
✓ How often do you check your phone? If your child has a phone- this is a great check in about creating awareness of our habits.
8. Explore Real Persuasive Design Examples. One savvy grad student highlighted eight examples of persuasive design on a single Twitter page. Use it as a conversation starter in your family.
Twitter: Examples of Persuasive Design
1) counts of unread messages,
2) asymmetric dot buttons on the “Home” tab,
3) artificially promoted trends at the top of the trends list,
4) text quantifying the amount of content to catch up on,
5) animated buttons that fill with color as users click them to share content,
6) large ads formatted to look similar to other posts,
7) customized suggestions of more people to follow, and
8) one-click contact imports from other SNS.
Safety & Privacy
“Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”
Safety & Privacy Goals
1. I want my child to be safe from stranger engagement and misuse of private information.
2. I want my child to establish a positive digital footprint and be a good digital citizen.
3. I want my child to identify a trusted adult they can turn to if they feel sad, scared or confused.
Parents care about their child’s safety and privacy. In fact, parents care more about their child’s personal safety and privacy than their school performance, social relationships, physical health, technology use or behavior. Kids/teens (and parents) want access to all manner of free online stuff. It’s essential we teach our kids that “free” has a price---our personal information.
While tweens/teens spend the majority of their time watching videos and gaming online, data also show that 40% of 4th-8th graders have connected or chatted online with a “stranger.” We need a new framework for “Stranger Danger” in cyberspace. We have mentoring work to do to keep our children safe online!
What You Should Know- Safety & Privacy
Digital Reputation and Footprint are “Forever”.
Kids/Teens should know they are creating a digital reputation; they are leaving a digital footprint with their online activities (searches and posts). This can be tied to their identity and it can influence outcomes when they apply for schools, jobs and enter relationships.
College admissions officers may search for online information about your child. Potential and current employers may read what your child posts on social media or YouTube. There are numerous conversation opportunities from stories about the unintended consequences of social media posts including:
How ten students lost their Harvard college acceptances over obscene memes;
How a girls’ softball team was disqualified from the Little League World Series after a Snapchat post;
Six examples of people fired for their social media posts.
✓ Early talking points:
Consider anything on your phone/device to be “public” - even if you think it’s private.
Assume your friends’ parents are reviewing your texts/posts, so only write something you would let them overhear.
If you want privacy, write in a diary or talk on the phone.
✓ We can not iterate enough as digital mentors:
Online actions are public.
Online actions are permanent.
What You Can Do- Safety & Privacy
1. Discuss personal vs private data - what information is OK to share?
We are hardwired to share information. It makes us feel good, and it helps us connect, learn and even persuade others. But because online information is public and permanent, we can not share everything.
Make a list of information that is personal but OK to share in many situations and private information that should not be shared without permission. The key here is that any information that can identify you specifically as an individual is private. (Adapted from a Common Sense Media lesson.).
Here is a sample list:
Personal (could be OK to share)
Favorite music
How many brothers and sisters you have
Favorite food
Name of your pet
Your hair color
The city you live in
Private (not OK to share)
Mail/home address
Date of birth
Social Security Number
Phone numbers
Credit card information
Name of your school
(Explain that although school name is something that is true for many people, it is risky to share it with someone you don't know, and you should get permission from a trusted adult first.)
2. Optimize Privacy Settings
Check out our Parental Controls guide for the most details, but here is a starting point:
✓ On mobile devices, turn off location sharing when not in use (e.g., see our iOS instructions).
✓ Adjust Privacy settings specific to social media sites, including making your account private so only users you approve can follow you and browse and comment on your posts (e.g., see our Instagram instructions).
✓ On Internet browsers, consider whether you want to prevent cross-site tracking, block cookies, adjust access to camera and microphone, and more (e.g., see our Safari instructions).
3. Set Strong Passwords & Rules
✓ Work together with kids to help them come up with complex passwords. Think outside the dictionary. Use phrases and special characters that make passwords hard to guess but easy to remember. Remind kids to keep passwords private and change them regularly.
✓ Remind kids not to share passwords with friends. One in five teens has shared a password with a friend. The more social media accounts a child has, the more likely they are to share passwords with friends.
4. Discuss Online “Friends” and Strangers/Tricky People.
We need a new framework for “Stranger Danger.” Everyone “looks” nice online or can be perceived as someone they are not, so we need new tools to teach our kids about digital strangers. One of our favorite resources is Tricky People: The New Stranger Danger in the Digital Age, a great posting from Protect Young Eyes. It includes tricky people red flags to share with your child, such as:
✓ Tricky people are people who I don’t know who are very nice to me. Some of the most dangerous people on the internet are also some of the nicest people on the internet. “You’re very pretty. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
✓ Tricky people are people who I don’t know who ask me questions. They want to know things about me so that I will trust them. “What things do you like? Do your parents ever make you mad?”
✓ Tricky people might invite me to use a different, more secret platform. “What’s your Snap name? Can we talk more over there?”
In addition, here are some key conversation starters about strangers online:
✓ Do you like to “chat” while you game? Do you ever chat with new people?
✓ If you are in a group chat and someone invites someone you don’t know, how do you make sure they are who they say they are?
✓ On social media, how much chatting happens with people that people don’t really know?
For all of these- are you 100% sure they are who they say they are? Have you met them in person? Has a friend met them in person?
General rules to verbalize:
✓ Do not send photos or chat with people you do not know.
✓ Do not allow someone you do not know to follow you online.
✓ Never agree to meet up with someone you do not know either in person or on another portal.
5. Help your child/teen identify a nonparent ally and mentor. Can your child/teen identify one person they feel comfortable talking to if they didn’t feel comfortable talking to you? Our mental health colleagues tell us that it is important for kids/teens to have an adult they can talk to- in addition to a parent. This builds your child/teen’s support network.
✓ Watch this two minute video Finding an Adult You Can Trust with your child.
✓ Amaze.org has a whole page of great resources on finding an adult you can trust including conversation starters for parents and lesson plans for educators.
✓ Not sure why this is important? Read this article Tweens And Teens Should Have A ‘Go-To’ Adult Other Than Their Parents.
Family Values & Healthy Relationships
“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.”
Family Values & Healthy Relationships Goals
1. I want my child’s experience on tech to support our family’s values.
2. I want my child to develop healthy relationships both online and offline- with friends and dating.
3. I want my child to be safe from or know how to handle seeing porn, cyberbullying and inadvertent content.
Defined by Wikipedia, Family values are traditional or cultural values that pertain to the family's structure, function, roles, beliefs, attitudes, and ideals.
No matter your definition of family, a set of family values provides a moral compass, clearly articulating the attitudes, meanings and behaviors your family associates with living their lives. These values may include moral values, personal conduct and social behavior, spiritual and religious activities, work ethic, educational values, financial values, and health, fitness and entertainment habits. These values are the foundation of our relationships.
What You Should Know- Family Values & Healthy Relationships
Your specific family values may not be discussed in school- don’t assume your kid is learning about the values that matter most in your family - in fact, they may be learning what you don't want from social media, etc. You will need to regularly impart the values most important to your family. You will also need to navigate tricky topics— keep reading to learn more!
Tricky Topic #1: Cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is identifiable by four characteristics: it is online, intentional, repeated and harmful. We sometimes use this term too broadly when we see occasional teasing, miscommunication or mean behavior that falls short of harmful. Yet one in four teens has experienced cyberbullying and one in six teens has done it to others, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center.
Additional facts include:
Adolescent girls are just as likely, if not more likely than boys to experience cyberbullying (as a victim and offender).
Cyberbullying is related to low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, anger, frustration, and a variety of other emotional and psychological problems.
Cyberbullying is related to other issues in the ‘real world’ including school problems, anti-social behavior, substance use, and delinquency.
Traditional bullying is still more common than cyberbullying.
Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are closely related: those who are bullied at school are bullied online and those who bully at school bully online.
This one page quick guide from ConnectSafely.org is a great place to get up to speed on what to do if your child experiences cyberbullying either as a target, bystander or offender.
Tricky Topic #2: Porn. Your kid will likely see porn online--- Nearly half of online users ages 10–17 had seen porn (two-thirds of whom had done so on accident), according to one study by the University of New Hampshire (UNH). The numbers were even higher in another UNH study: 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls said they saw online porn sometime during their adolescence. Hard to imagine how this happens? Read this great New York Times piece which includes five parent stories plus expert advice on how to handle your response.
Tricky Topic #3: Teen Sexting. “Sexting” is the exchange of sexually explicit (nude, semi-nude, sexually provocative) images between minors via tech, usually mobile phones. According to a JAMA Pediatrics report from April 2018 that analyzed 39 studies of just over 110,000 teens under 18— it was found that roughly 15% of teenagers send sexts and 28% receive them.
Why do teens sext? ConnectSafely.org says the reasons are widely varied.
It may be a form of flirting or showing affection to a romantic partner or someone the teen is interested in.
Sometimes it is impulsive behavior sometimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol at a party.
There are also cases where teens are responding to peer pressure, bullying or threats. In rarer cases, adults solicit images from teens.
Some teens view sexting as a form of “safe sex” because unlike physical sex there is no risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
What are the consequences of sexting? Consequences range from nothing at all to extremely serious. Sending naked pictures of minors is considered child pornography--and unless there are explicit sexting laws, teens involved in sexting may be prosecuted for violating child pornography laws, including felony charges. You can look up Sexting Laws by State from the Cyberbullying Research Center. The more likely consequence is teens who send these photos often regret it, feeling scared, depressed or even traumatized. It is our job to engage in conversation about sending risky images.
What You Can Do- Family Values and Healthy Relationships
1. Check in (regularly) about Digital Drama and Cyberbullying.
✓ Watch How To Be An Upstander to Cyberbullying with your child. This less than 2 minute video from CyberWise.org is our favorite introduction to cyberbullying and what to do if you encounter it.
✓ Common Sense Media has a longer list of cyberbullying resources by age group including how to block and report cyberbullying. (Note: access requires free registration to Common Sense Education.)
2. Block explicit content and have frank conversations about porn.
✓ See our Parental Controls guide on how to block explicit content.
✓ Polly Ely, family therapist, recommends having short chats every few months starting in grade 2 with this suggested script to get you started: There are some things on the internet that can feel scary to see - e.g., actors pretending to have sex who are paid with money or drugs. It’s not love or sex. You may wish to unsee it. I’m working hard to make sure you don’t see it and I need your help: If you see it, look away and let me know.
✓ Watch this two minute video “Porn: Fact or Fiction” from Amaze.org then share it with your child. Check out additional resources on “Having the Talks'' which include conversation starters and key messaging scripts. We love the direct yet positive tone these resources use and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ and gender identity topics.
✓ Not sure what to talk about? See this age-specific discussion guide from Internet Matters. It covers topics from puberty, body image, healthy relationships, consent, sex and porn.
3. Be explicit about your family values and where you stand in relation to topics that often come up in digital media (e.g., explicit language, violence, drugs/alcohol/smoking, sex, sexualizing of women, the N word, body image, gender stereotypes, unhealthy relationships). For example, be clear if violent behavior is unacceptable.
✓ Co-view your own social media postings and share your thoughts on why you follow vs. don’t follow certain people. NextDoor.com contains ample examples that relate to local issues. Share examples of positive vs. negative uses of social media, of appropriate language vs. inappropriate language. Ask your teen to share some of their own observations from their social media sites.
✓ If you want to discuss what your kids watched and you weren’t there, Common Sense Media has a list of discussion questions below each review - under the header: “Talk to your kids about”. Here is a good movie example. (scroll down the page to Talk To Your Kids About section)
4. Relationships! We want our kids/teens to develop nurturing relationships with friends and eventually---romantic partners. Amaze.org describes three tenants of a healthy relationship: respect, equity, and communication. This two minute video What Makes a Healthy Relationship? goes over what it means to have a respectful relationship - each person is valued for who they are, and each can express themself or say no to something they disagree with.
The video also goes over what it means to have a lack of respect in a relationship, such as someone pressuring you to do something you don’t want to do. The video describes equity as both people being treated as equal partners and cooperating and compromising in a balanced way, while a lack of equity means someone is trying to control their partner or relationship. A relationship based on communication means that both people can say what they mean and mean what they say, discuss disagreements openly, and are willing to apologize. An unhealthy relationship might mean that disagreements are met with silence or pressure.
Additional discussion points:
Tech amplifies issues happening in real life- the audience is larger, our connectivity can be 24/7 and there is a new permanence of what we say or do through our posts on social media. This great Wait until 8th blog post, Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take, illustrates the details.
✓ Discuss similarities and differences between friendship in real life vs. online. Ruth Whippman’s Ted talk about how happiness comes from other people not apps offers a poignant reminder to invest time and energy into nurturing deep relationships with the people in your life.
✓ Discuss what is better to be communicated in person than online. Let’s Talk About Texting is a great guide on this topic. Make a list of examples and decide if it is better in-person. For example:
OK Online
Coordinating Simple Logistics
Sharing Content
Introducing People
Better In-Person
Relationship Breakups
Arguments/Conflict
Sharing Personal Feelings
Where to Next?
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Engage Friends & Caregivers
Start a ripple of change where you live.
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Getting a New Device
Contemplating an iPad or gaming console? Start here.
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Giving a Phone
Considering a phone for your child? Explore your options.