Help Wanted

Kurt on May 10th, 2007

I’m sitting on a panel this Saturday hoping to help a room full of moms of teenage girls get a better understanding of youth culture. One thing I would like to do is provide a list of “Things Every Mom Should Know About Technology” or something of the sort. I don’t want it to be a listof scary stuff or a list of the evils of the internet (although I’m sure some warnings are needed), but rather just some stuff they need to know.

I’d love to get input into this, so here’s my question:

What are one or two things every mom of teenage girls needs to know about technology?

Related posts:

  1. Randomness

Share Discuss (11)

James at 8:27am May 10

How about instead of talking negatively, approach the dangers from the positive point of view that you CAN prevent/control access to the dangers of technology.

Case in point: The iBoss. Very user friendly, parental tool to allow/disallow/log/time/curfew Internet access

Scott Schlatter at 12:06pm May 15

I think that all those things are good things to talk about and maybe this might be a little late, but I think we need to address the over-reaction of parents. Students know much more about the internet then we give them credit for, and for what they don’t know they go to their friends. So when it comes to knowing what our students are up to online you have to trust that you are talking to them about it and they are telling you the truth. I know this doesn’t always work, but in today’s day and age there are more websites, and easier access to everything and unless we are openly talking and discussing with our kids we won’t know the half of what they are doing. Something to ponder is. Why freak out over bathing suit pictures, or pics of your teen girl posing “seductive, sexy, cute,” whatever you want to call it. I have seen a lot of students post these type of pictures, they are looking for guys attention, and that is normal for a girl to do. The key to this though is that they are doing it online, where they can see all these guys say things that they want to hear, which usually makes them feel better about themselves and is safer then actually trying to provocative, and sexy in front of the boys themselves. With a lot of these girls I have seen them be more ok without having boyfriends, and with hanging out with more of their gilfriends through HS. I know there is the danger that it leads other places, and it’s innapropriate. However, students are looking for ways to express their sexuality. To find out what makes the opposite sex tick. To find out who they are and build their self-esteem. So is it safer they do it online on myspace, or at school with real boys? I think it is a case by case situation.